SWN025 Critical and Ethical Practice in Organisations

Unit Outline: Semester 2 2024, Kelvin Grove, Internal

Overview

Ethical practice is central to the social justice and emancipatory social change values of the social work profession. Within globalised, neoliberal contexts, it is fundamental to your career development that you develop sound skills in critical analysis and critical reflection to be able to carry out ethical practices in organisations. The unit has a focus on developing an understanding of ethical practice in organisations, informed by critical social theories, using a critical incident from practice experience (i.e. work intergrated learning (WIL)) as a platform to develop your practice framework. The emphasis is on learning critical reflection both as a method of practice and research to enable you to undertake critical social work in neoliberal organisational contexts, and develop research skills to contribute to professional practice and scholarship.

Learning Outcomes

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

1. Critically evaluate modernist theories and practices to inform your development of advanced practice in complex and uncertain contexts (i.e career development).
2. Critically analyse the values and ideological underpinnings of dominant discourses.
3. Critically apply ethical knowledge in critically reflecting on the relationship between theory and professional practice in organisations (i.e WIL), including the ethical dimensions of critically reflective practice in contemporary organisational contexts.
4. Develop and apply a critical and reflective process for researching your professional practice experiences (critical incidents) to create mechanisms for ongoing learning and career development.
5. Use advanced written and verbal critical reflection skills, including interpersonal skills by being an effective peer supervisor in critical reflection workshops.

Content

Learning Approaches

This unit uses critically reflective pedagogic approaches to assist you to interrogate a real world critical incident from your own practice experience, whether it is prior to entering the program or from SWN021 or SWN022. The critical incident will highlight the ethical dimensions of professional social work practice within a contemporary organisational setting. The benefit of analysing critical incidents is that specific responses to critical incidents often carry generic assumptions within them. The critical incident technique is rooted in the phenomenological research tradition and presumes that learners' general assumptions are embedded in, and can be inferred from, their specific descriptions of particular events. Critical analysis and reflection on professional practice in this way enables you to develop ethical responses to contemporary practice issues within organisations from a critical perspective.

During the weekly lecture and tutorial you will engage in collaborative learning activities as critical peer supervisors around ethical practice in organisations.

This unit is one designated as assisting with your career development and employability because you will be performing the role of social work practitioner and engaging in critical reflection.

Feedback on Learning and Assessment

Feedback in this unit in provided in the following ways:

• a range of formative exercises will be undertaken and discussed in class;
• feedback from peers;
• written comments on summative assessment work will be provided in addition to assessment rubrics;
• generic comments will be provided to the class via the unit LMS.

Assessment

Overview

There are three pieces of assessment for this unit.

• The first involves identifying and articulating a critical incident from your practice within an organisation. This will then be presented to your tutorial group, who will act as peer mentors to assist you to critically reflect on your critical incident (using Fook’s 2016 model of critical reflection). The first piece of assessment involves working collaboratively with other tutorial members, but is assessed individually.
• The second will be a major critical reflective analysis, involving systematically researching your practice using deconstruction and reconstruction methods to inductively generate new theories from your practice about working in human service organisations. This second piece of assessment is also individually assessed.
• The third (called Discussion forum) relates to your demonstration of participation in the tutorials in relation to crafting critically reflective questions.

Each assessment item is designed to measure your ability to apply the knowledge and skills stated in the unit learning outcomes.

The unit has formative and summative assessment pieces.

Unit Grading Scheme

7- point scale

Assessment Tasks

Assessment: Presentation

Identify and present a critical incident raising ethical issues within the context of your field education placement organisation. Your presentation should include a description of the context and an initial reflective analysis of the incident. Your presentation should aim to elicit feedback and reflection from group members in your tutorial group who will act as peer supervisors, aiding your development of critical and ethical practice within organisations. Detailed assessment item guidelines are provided on the LMS site.

Assessment: Essay

With a focus on critical ethical practice within organisations, prepare an in-depth critically reflective analysis of your critical incident in its relevant context, your experience of this, the learning gained from the analysis, and the subsequent practices attempted and proposed future practices. The analysis should account for the ethical dimensions of professional practice and contemporary factors influencing organisational contexts. It should be linked with relevant critical theories covered in the unit, and should include the identification of assumptions and values, critical reflection on these, deconstruction and reconstruction of your practice along critical lines, and conclude with a description of the critical practice framework for working ethically within challenging organisational settings.

This assignment is eligible for the 48-hour late submission period and assignment extensions.

Assessment: Discussion forum

 This assessment task requires you to demonstrate your capacity to formulate and articulate appropriate critical reflection (i.e deconstruction and reconstruction) questions when you act in a peer supervisory capacity for fellow students in your tutorial group during their critical incident presentations.

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)

Fook, J. 2023. Social Work: A Critical Approach to Practice (4th ed.). Sage: London.

Gardner, F. 2016. Working with Human Service Organisations (2nd ed.). South Melbourne: Oxford University Press.

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, Essay
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, Essay
3. 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: Presentation, Discussion forum
4. 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: Essay, Discussion forum