SWN002 Introduction to Social Work Practice and Contexts

Unit Outline: Semester 1 2024, Kelvin Grove, Internal

Overview

This introductory unit initiates your foundational understanding of the professional discipline of social work as the beginning step in constructing your professional identity. Understanding contemporary social, economic and political contexts is fundamental knowledge for effective social work practice. Developing a critical analysis of society and its associated structural inequalities, and a capacity for self-awareness and reflection on one's own values and assumptions are integral for ethical social work practice. The unit is positioned strategically to allow you to locate your learning and professional aspirations within a rapidly changing and uncertain global context.

Reflecting the complex and intertwined nature of social work practice, this unit uses three inter-related pieces of assessment where unit learning outcomes are shown in a variety of ways. E.g. students do not only show critical self awareness in only one piece of assessment but across all three. 

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit you will be able to:

1. Critically examine, analyse, and explain the relationship between social justice issues and the forces (local and global) that are implicated in the issues.
2. Articulate how social work practice methods respond to social justice issues, and how critical and establishment theories conceptualise social justice issues.
3. Work ethically, respectfully and collaboratively with people to promote cultural safety, social justice, human rights, and progressive social change.
4. Cultivate your self-awareness and your capacity to question and reflect on your values, assumptions and actions, and the congruence of these to espoused social work values and ethics.
5. Communicate effectively, including to non-specialists.

Content

Learning Approaches

You are expected to attend all on campus classes. Lectures and tutorials will include didactic and dialogical approaches to the unit topics. They will specifically include information on, and support for, the assessment pieces for the unit. Required tutorials for convening student presentations and related peer discussion will also be scheduled. Through the assessment approach, you will have an opportunity to explore and present your critical analysis of a real world social justice issue of your choosing in both items of assessment through different modes (both oral and written). Critical and transformative pedagogies will be employed using a combination of problem-based learning, critical analysis of social issues and case scenarios to facilitate the integration of theory and practice across all realms of social work.

Support for learning is embedded in the unit through the availability of support from the Student Success Group and QUT library. You will also be encouraged to access SWAHPS, the Social work and Human Services peer support program. 

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

Feedback in this unit is provided in the following ways:

• A range of formative exercises will be discussed in class.
• Comments of summative assessment work in addition to criteria sheets
• Generic comments back to the cohort via QUT LMS
• Criteria sheet grading
• Feedback from peers

Assessment

Overview

You will have an opportunity to explore and present your critical analysis of a real world social justice issue of your choosing in two items of assessment (Assessment 1 and 3) through two different modes (oral and written). You will also have an opportunity to compare and contrast critical and establishment theoretical frameworks used in social work, across a range of foundational concepts including methods of practice used in social work. You will demonstrate this knowledge in application to a practice scenario (Assessment 2) 

Unit Grading Scheme

7- point scale

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Presentation (Oral)

Choose a social justice issue that you are passionate about and through critical review of this issue, apply and demonstrate your understanding of the first 5 weeks of unit topics. 

Your 10 minute presentation of the issue will include:

• examining why the issue chosen constitutes a social justice issue;
• identifying global social forces that are implicated in the social injustice;
• articulating various methods of social work practices that might be relevant in responding to the social justice issue;
• identifying differences between how critical and establishment theories conceptualise the social justice issue, and;
• examining your own values in relation to the social justice issue and congruence of these with the espoused values and ethics of social work.

Assessment: Case Study - performance

This assessment task will require you to work with members of your tutorial group in order to contribute to your group's capacity to demonstrate the application of a critical approach and an  establishment approach to a practice scenario. Your group will work together identify a practice scenario, then create a performance to highlight the differences between at least 2 theoretical perspectives in terms of their practice implications for understanding and responding to the scenario.

This assessment has group (20 marks) and individual (20 marks) assessment components (equal split of the 40 marks). The individual component comprises a self and peer assessment. 
Due date: Component 1 (Self and peer assessment) will be assessed during weeks 7-11.
Due date: Component 2 (your tutorial group's performance) will be assessed in week 11

Due date: week 12  Component 3 - The group's completed performance plan, inc script. One submission per tutorial group. 

This is an assignment for the purposes of an extension. Only component 3-  the written performance plan is eligible for extension.

Assessment: Critique

Building on your presentation in assessment 1, in this assignment you continue to research your chosen social justice issue, connecting to academic material from the entire unit. This authentic piece of assessment is in written form and requires you to engage and educate a broad audience about the chosen social justice issue. The written piece will take the form of an opinion editorial that could be submitted to The Guardian, The Conversation, or Social Dialogue magazine to raise consciousness about the social justice issue and engage in research as a practice for social change.

This is an assignment for the purposes of an extension.

Academic Integrity

Students are expected to engage in learning and assessment at QUT with honesty, transparency and fairness. Maintaining academic integrity means upholding these principles and demonstrating valuable professional capabilities based on ethical foundations.

Failure to maintain academic integrity can take many forms. It includes cheating in examinations, plagiarism, self-plagiarism, collusion, and submitting an assessment item completed by another person (e.g. contract cheating). It can also include providing your assessment to another entity, such as to a person or website.

You are encouraged to make use of QUT’s learning support services, resources and tools to assure the academic integrity of your assessment. This includes the use of text matching software that may be available to assist with self-assessing your academic integrity as part of the assessment submission process.

Further details of QUT’s approach to academic integrity are outlined in the Academic integrity policy and the Student Code of Conduct. Breaching QUT’s Academic integrity policy is regarded as student misconduct and can lead to the imposition of penalties ranging from a grade reduction to exclusion from QUT.

Resources

Resource Materials

Prescribed text(s)

Morley, C., Macfarlane, S., & Ablett, P. (2019). Engaging with Social Work: A Critical Approach. 2nd Edition. Port Melbourne: Cambridge.

Risk Assessment Statement

There are no identified risks associated with this unit.

Course Learning Outcomes

SW81 Master of Social Work - Qualifying

1. Critically evaluate and apply critical social work theories, knowledge and skills that reflect the professional standards of the discipline and identify with the values and ethics that guide professional practice, including the recognition of diversity, human rights and promotion of social equality and justice.
   Relates to: Presentation (Oral)
2. Formulate strategies for engaging in critical thinking, decision making, critically reflective and culturally safe practice to create innovative and contextually responsive interventions that work towards emancipatory change.
   Relates to: Presentation (Oral), Case Study - performance
3. Apply digital capabilities while accessing and evaluating relevant bodies of knowledge that guide collaborative, intra- and inter-professional practice with diverse populations (individual, groups, communities) to promote and advancing socially just outcomes.
   Relates to: Case Study - performance, Critique
4. Communicate respectfully and work effectively with diverse groups, including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples, LGBTINBQ+, refugee, disabled and older populations, their families, carers, interprofessional teams and community leaders, to ensure safe and coordinated support for their interests and rights.
   Relates to: Case Study - performance, Critique
5. Practise professional integrity, and effective written, oral and digital communication to analyse and convey complex information and build productive relationships across diverse stakeholders to promote ethical social work practice.
   Relates to: Presentation (Oral), Case Study - performance, Critique