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History
The history of the modern social work continuing education and the
intellectual and program antecedents’ of this Journal dates back to the
1970’s. The National Institute of Mental Health sponsored a continuing series
of training sessions for new directors of social work continuing professional
education. Several that were part of the NIMH group formed the National
Association of Continuing Education Directors, which although not long lived,
continued to emphasize social work continuing education Several members
went on the create large and active CE programs.
But most importantly, during that decade a new source of funding for
social work education came from the passage of Title XX of the Social Security
Act that made it possible for state government entities including universities
to provide faculty salaries as a match into a state’s request to the Federal
government for Social Security funds. The match would earn Federal funds that
could be used to support the intents of the legislation. These new funds made it
possible for many Schools of Social Work to establish continuing education
programs. The funds provided an infrastructure to create a variety of
educational activities. Several state supported universities including the State
University of New York at Albany, the University of Michigan, the University of
Missouri, The University of Tennessee, and the University of Texas at Austin
created large continuing education programs that provided educational offerings
during the summer, the regular academic school year and contracted programs with
specific agencies to produce some desired organizational change.
The
Creation of the Journal
This burst of creative activities in social work gave rise to the Journal
under the leadership of Thomas Kinney and William Reid in the late 1980s at the
State University of New York at Albany. During those years the Journal
established itself as the foremost voice of this rapidly growing dimension of
social work and as a means of communication among scholars in colleges across
the nation concerned with extending knowledge from social work and related
disciplines and professions. Among the original Policy Board and Editorial
Advisory Committee are people active with the Journal today, including Ronald
Green, Seymour “Cy” Rosenthal, Paul Campbell, and Michael Kelly. After a
decade at Albany, the Journal’s leadership was passed to Temple University
with Seymour Rosenthal serving as editor. Like the Albany era the Journal was
housed in a complex structure of research and service, the Center for Social
Policy and Community Development that provided continuing education, training,
research and technical assistance to individual practitioners, communities and
social agencies. During Professor Rosenthal’s tenure the Journal expanded its
scope to scholarship in other countries and changed the title from the Journal
of Continuing Social Work Education to Professional Development-The
International Journal of Continuing Social Work Education.
The
Mission
Now with the Journal moving to its third academic home it is a time
to review the mission it serves and examine any changes that might be needed.
The Journal has always reported on three broad themes. One is information about
specific programs of continuing education. Thirty years ago these tended to be
workshops often less than a day long and were directed to refreshing skills and
knowledge for social workers or introducing a new topic such as work with
refugee communities or a therapy modality. Today, licensing authorities stress
continuing education as a requirement and professional associations have become
the major providers of clinically oriented CE. However many Schools of Social
Work continue to offer short courses and topical workshops.
A second theme was research about different means of delivering
education. Continuing education has always been a laboratory for academic
programs to try new modalities and structures of movement is the relatively
recent call by several social work academics to substantiate the claims of
social work practice with empirical findings rather than resorting to a belief
in the wisdom of skilled practitioners. Its popular term is “evidence-based
practice” and is an implied declaration that social work has overlooked or not
resolved fundamental epistemological questions and, in the case of selecting
scientific empiricism, has not done the hard work of creating measures,
gathering data and establishing relative efficacy of theories and methods.
This summer and fall the academic programs of social work have been
visited by harsh criticism from groups called the Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education (FIRE), the National Association of Scholars (NAS), and the
American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) and in October by a column from a
nationally syndicated writer appearing in the Washington Post. In the case of
the criticism of groups like the National Academy of Scholars the charge may not
be the lack of efficacy of social work theory and methods but its likely
effectiveness. If poverty or crime is not best explained by resorting to
intrapsychic causes but rather to environmental arrangements, then effective
social workers will alter the community status quo and that efficacy may be the
reason for these criticisms. Or perhaps the criticism refers not to the efficacy
of social work but to its choices of unpopular clients. But inarguably one
reading of these criticisms is that social work educators are imposing views on
students rather than imparting knowledge.
Apart from these controversies of the moment, great advantage accrues to
the social work program and to the social work professor of moving beyond the
immediate classroom of the undergraduate or graduate student to the community to
work with persons charged with addressing needs. Stepping away from this debate
around teaching or indoctrinating that seems focused upon undergraduate and
masters programs, the existence of continuing education programs in schools of
social work requires faculty to teach independently employed professionals and
lay persons. We think each of us and the general public can rest assured that
participants in continuing education programs are not indoctrinated nor coerced
in these educational programs. Indeed one of the more salutary impacts of
continuing education is the fact that it demands that faculty relate to the
views, power and needs of professionals and citizens active in careers and with
vital concerns for their communities. When you teach in a continuing education
program in social work you may be teaching a protective services worker who has
had twenty years of experience working in troubled homes and providing testimony
in court, a lawyer in an agency that may be the administrator and is wrestling
with budgets, demands from staff and a vocal and powerful constituency, a
police officer that is faced with neighborhood demands on police for
enforcement, service and often concerns about racial profiling, a correctional
officer that has served in a juvenile court and worked with troubled youth or
adults in crowded, depressing and often dangerous settings, of a gang worker who
knows what it means to come between threatening youth and work to lower tempers
and forestall violence. Faculties do not intimidate and indoctrinate such
students and through participating in continuing education learn a style of
teaching that builds on critical thinking and genuine give and take between
professor and learner. Faculties take these skills and orientations into the
traditional classroom and treat students as persons soon to be professionals
that must know and think, not cite some memorized cant.
The
Cutting Edge of Change
We have learned in these three decades plus that Continuing Education is
where many if not most innovations in social work education begin. Change in
systems comes from the margin and Continuing Education sits at the margins
between the academic institution, the world of agencies and the community. It
rightfully so continues to be the “cutting edge” of innovation in the
profession and in the academe.
Today social work is a far larger social and institutional enterprise
than when it began its rapid growth in the 1960’s and 70’s. There are
roughly 670 bsw/msw programs and about 40 doctoral programs. If one includes lay
people and allied professions such as law, medicine, education, public
administration, counseling, corrections, law enforcement, community planning,
etc., then the audience of persons active in human services and consumers and
contributors to continuing education in our field runs to several million in the
United States alone. While the Journal cannot seek to be a vehicle that will
touch all of these areas, it does suggest that the journal must respond by
increasing the breadth of topics to be considered. There is much to continue but
there are many new topics that the Journal will address in the coming years.
The
Editors
Michael
Lauderdale, PhD, Michael Kelly, PhD and Noel Landuyt, PhD
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