Published October 2024
by Suzanne Sankar, MSW
Executive Editor
We are excited to share that, starting with the Spring 2025 issue, Field Educator will be renamed Applied Learning in Social Work Education. This name change reflects our commitment to ensuring that our title aligns with social work’s dedication to equity, and avoids any unintended racist connotations. In retiring the name Field Educator, we are following the example of several schools of social work that have already transitioned their “field education” programs to “practicum education” programs. Among these institutions are the University of Southern California, New York University, Smith College, Morgan State University, and Simmons University. This change is also in line with the social work profession’s renewed commitment to critically examining and addressing its role in perpetuating discrimination and systemic racism (NASW, 2019). We look forward to continuing our work under this new title, with an ongoing focus on equity and inclusivity in social work education.
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Published April 2024
by Suzanne Sankar, MSW
Executive Editor
The national election scene is in high gear. Election concerns are grabbing our attention and occupying premium space in our conversations and activities. I’m reminded of the recent 2020 and 2022 elections, and remembering the impressive voter mobilization drives implemented in social work schools and agencies.
In 2019, professional social workers and schools of social work created the national social work voter mobilization campaign Voting is Social Work. The campaign is based on the concept that voter accessibility and engagement are key to a healthy democracy. Voting is Social Work recognizes the power of integrating educational activities about nonpartisan voter engagement into social work education and practice. The campaign not only offers extensive classroom resources, but also provides resources for students and faculty to use in field placement sites. Resources address the promotion of civic engagement and voter mobilization at community field placements (https://votingissocialwork.org/field-education-toolkit). The Voting is Social Work campaign reminds us that students, field instructors, and field liaisons can take the lead in such initiatives. Furthermore, activities and learning associated with voting are easily linked to macro curriculum and EPAS competencies.
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Published October 2023
by Suzanne Sankar, MSW
Executive Editor
As we publish Field Educator for fall 2023, I am struck by how deeply the context for social work education is shaped by an urgent and growing concern about the impact of long-standing societal inequalities on individuals, families, and communities. Increasingly, social work educators are grappling with how to meaningfully educate current and future social work students to fully embrace a commitment to dismantling systems of oppression at the micro and macro levels. Indeed, the CSWE 2022 EPAS is a call to action for all educators to examine and reinvigorate their curriculum to more genuinely teach the skills, knowledge, and values associated with antiracist social work practice. Specifically, Competency 3: Engage Anti-Racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (ADEI) in practice, embodies this crucial learning goal. Field education is particularly challenged with effectively teaching Competency 3 because field learning resides not in the classroom but in widely varied agency settings. Within these settings are community social workers who have differing levels of exposure to and experience with ADEI practices, yet who are responsible for creating the learning activities and supervising a student’s work. This model of learning creates a unique set of responsibilities for field education faculty. How do we, as field educators, ensure that a field instructor is prepared to teach the skills needed to practice within an antiracist framework?
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Published April 2023
by Suzanne Sankar, MSW
Executive Editor
This issue marks the launch of Field Educator‘s new podcast, Field Talks. Dr. Katharine Dill, field director at Marist College, will host the podcast and hold in-depth discussions with social work leaders, researchers, and practitioners, focusing on the most pressing issues in field education today. Field Talks will also feature interviews with field directors, field instructors, and social work students, discussing new and innovative approaches to effective field-based learning.
Listen to the inaugural episode of Field Talks here: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/i7l7DFeb8yb.
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Published October 2022
by Suzanne Sankar, MSW
Executive Editor
Social work field education is in a state of change and moving in new directions. What prompts this appraisal?
First, the new, less restrictive 2022 EPAS guidelines for employment-based field placements will allow more students to maintain employment, and thus their financial solvency, while seeking a social work degree. This is a game changer for many current and future students, who will now be able to take advantage of a more equitable path to a social work education. But, as field educators, let’s not underestimate how these guidelines will impact our work. Notably, field departments will have more responsibility in ensuring the integrity of learning in placements that will be fraught with conflicting demands on students, as they strive to meet both educational and employment responsibilities.
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Published April 2022
by Suzanne Sankar, MSW
Executive Editor
This issue is dedicated to noted field education scholar Marion Bogo, who, sadly, died last fall. We remember Marion for her groundbreaking contributions to social work education, especially in the area of assessment of student competence. In this issue, we reprint a 2013 interview of Marion by Trudy Zimmerman. (Trudy is the former director of field education at Boston University.) Although the interview occurred nearly 10 years ago, the editorial team was struck by its profound relevance for today’s learning environment. We also honor Marion’s scholarship by dedicating this issue’s “What We’re Reading” section exclusively to Marion’s publications.
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Published December 2021
by Suzanne Sankar, Executive Editor
Fall 2021 marks a decade of publication for Field Educator. In 2011, the journal’s first editorial focused on common challenges for social work field educators: economic pressures, tensions between the service needs of agencies and the learning needs of students, and the newly added CSWE requirement for competency assessment. Field Educator, the first journal fully devoted to social work field education, pledged to tackle these challenges. Have we carried out our pledge?
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Published May 2021
by Kim Harriman, Editor-in-Chief
It is time to take a breath—albeit a cautious one—in hopes that we can begin to think of the future once again. For all of us, the year behind has shaped all the years ahead. We’ve watched the devastation of a global pandemic and the pulling back of the curtain on the injustices that plague us at so many levels. We are reminded, more than ever, of our commitment to social justice. And we are reminded of the power and productivity of joining together in crisis. Field educators everywhere have been a global team in a way we may never have thought possible.
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Published January 2021
by Kim Harriman
Field Educator Editor-in-Chief
In the grips of a global health crisis, and amidst all the chaos and uncertainty, field educators near and far have come together in the most remarkable of ways. In a world that feels (and is) so divided, the sense of community between us has been balm for these anxiety-filled times. It is in that spirit that we offer kudos to field educators everywhere: for the commitment to students even while distracted by the disruption and loss in our own lives; for the endless days of decision making; for the sleepless nights burdened with worries of life and death for our students; and for the exhaustion of our spirits as students looked to us to make it all whole. Who knew that PPE and CDC would be added to our library of field acronyms, or that we would suddenly feel so closely connected to our institutions’ uncertain financial futures?
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Published May 2020
by Estella C. Williamson, DSW
Seattle University
[Editor’s Note: Estella C. Williamson is the Social Work Field Director at Seattle University. Dr. Williamson also teaches advanced practice and human behavior coursework in the MSW program. She currently serves as chair of the CSWE Council on Field Education. Dr. Williamson earned her DSW from the University of Pennsylvania and her MSW from the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her research interests are in field education, mental health, and HIV prevention among Black women. Dr. Williamson has professional social work practice experience in child welfare, outpatient mental health and addictions, prenatal services, and HIV clinical and preventive care. She has instructional and curriculum development experience. Dr. Williamson has also maintained a private clinical practice in New York State for many years.]
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Published May 2020
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Field Educator Editor-in-Chief
We would be hard-pressed to release an issue of this journal without acknowledging the global pandemic that has all but stopped the world in its tracks, and taken thousands of lives along the way. One day we were all going about our business, and the next (or so it seemed), our work worlds became virtual, our personal stories complicated and pained, and the future uncertain.
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Published October 2019
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Field Educator Editor-in-Chief
Show me a social work field department that is not engaged daily in huddles: making complicated decisions, brokering tailored plans, toiling over ethical quandaries, or determining the readiness of students for placement (a humbling responsibility), and I will assure you that the academic year has not yet begun.
Such is the life and the energy of field education: preparing diverse groups of students to bring their own humanity to the table – all in the name of impacting the humanity of others. I think we call that the “professional use of self.” We know that the process goes better sometimes than it does others.
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Published May 2019
by Suzanne Hecker, MSW
Simmons University
[Editor’s Note: This issue’s editorial is from Assistant Director of Field Education at Simmons University School of Social Work and Field Educator editorial staff member Suzanne Hecker, MSW, LICSW.]
We entered into 2019 with a partial and lengthy government shutdown that forced significant consequences on those furloughed and unpaid federal workers, as well as on the services our communities utilize that are impacted by federal funding, such as housing, food support, legal matters, and health care.
What we learn about in the news or from those clients and agencies we interact with is a daily reminder of the fragility of policy. Working within these precarious spaces between policy and people is at the heart of social work. The interconnectedness of federal, state, and local policy can create ripple effects that are immediate and, at times, catastrophic to our agencies, our profession, and those we serve.
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Published October 2018
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Field Educator Editor-in-Chief
The Field Educator is seven years old! Once a pipedream shared between field educators, it is now a peer-reviewed academic journal where social work field scholars come together to share ideas, research, and concerns – across the globe. And with the growth the journal has experienced, this is an opportunity to make a seven year “pitch.”
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Published May 2018
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Field Educator Editor-in-Chief
We are living in a time of political tumult and moral disgrace. Political leanings aside, there is no way to reconcile our social work values with the behavior of those who lead us. Integrity has yielded to moral brokenness; truth is elusive; and our basic sense of safety is challenged. We ask our students to raise their voices for social justice, and we aspire to be their role models in so doing. In this recent chapter in our history, the task at hand is the proverbial boulder to be pushed up a mountain.
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Published October 2017
by Allison Scobie-Carroll, MSW, MBA
NASW-MA President
[Editor’s Note: This issue’s editorial is from special guest Allison-Scobie Carroll, President of NASW-MA chapter. A version of this editorial was previously published in the July 2017 edition of NASW-MA’s Focus magazine. Archives of Focus articles can be accessed (by NASW members only) here.]
In recent years the disease of opioid addiction has claimed thousands of lives throughout the Commonwealth, with a staggering four-fold increase in opioid overdose deaths since the year 2000. The loss is so brutal and heartbreaking, and the suffering so profound, that we defend ourselves against its truth. The statistics alone provide a distancing mechanism. The numbers of the afflicted, their ages and geographic locations may serve to help us feel safe; to feel that those who suffer are “other” and that “we” can remain insulated from the grave realities of those we keep at arm’s length.
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Published May 2017
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Field Educator Editor-in-Chief
The Emperor’s New Clothes1 by Hans Christian Andersen is a favorite childhood tale that now bears an uncanny resemblance to the world we inhabit. Its wisdom provides a compass for all social workers in these turbulent times, guiding us back to the core values of our profession. It is a parable that transcends politics and gets to the heart of a value (and virtue) that must be central to all we do and all we teach: the truth.
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Published November 2016
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Field Educator, Editor-in-Chief
[Editor’s Note: A version of this article was published in the October 2016 edition of the NASW-MA Chapter’s FOCUS newspaper. FOCUS is only available to NASW members and can be accessed through http://www.naswma.org/?page=195.]
Conversation about the range of foundation year field placements has created a “buzz” in social work education, and it has to do with the range of field placements available for social work students – particularly those in clinical programs. As a clinical social worker and field instructor of many years, and now field director, it has become a topic of much interest, and one around which I hope we can find common ground.
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Published May 2016
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Editor
How apropos it is, and what an honor for the Field Educator, to have Dr. Darla Spence Coffey, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Council on Social Work Education, engaged in an interview by Dr. Bill Fisher, Director of Field Education and professor at Springfield College in Springfield, Massachusetts, and a leader of the task force that developed a first ever-survey of field directors in the United States for the purpose of learning about the state of field education.
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Published October 2015
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Editor
People with mental illness are blamed for misuse of guns and mass shootings; people of color are targeted in countless and violent ways; and those who are poor face overwhelming inequities and lack of access at all turns. Sadly and outrageously, oppression and injustice surround us.
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Published April 2015
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Editor
Another unarmed Black man murdered by police. Shot eight times in the back. His name was Walter Scott. Sickened by this news, I sat down to write. But the words didn’t come. Instead, it was that feeling of sickness that prevailed, along with the haunting question, “Who am I to address this?” I posed the question directly to my colleague, Professor Gary Bailey. His response was simply, “If not you, then who?”
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Published October 2014
by Kim Kelly Harriman, MSW
Editor
I recently sat at a table with colleagues: fellow field directors, training directors, and healthcare administrators – all social workers – reflecting on a project we shared over the period of a year. When we began, some of us knew one another a little, some were quite connected, and others virtual strangers. One year later, we reflected on the connected and collaborative group we had become. We shared a common focus, brought our ideas, watched them evolve, and managed to produce something together that excited us, inspired us, and united us. I always marvel at the power of creative conversation born of a common language and a shared worldview; and of the learning that occurs (as we will eternally teach our students) in relationship with one another.
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Published October 2014
by Nicole Frankel, MSW
Simmons School of Social Work
The Simmons School of Social Work and the Field Educator sponsor an annual award to promote excellence in field education scholarship. A $1,000 prize is awarded for an outstanding paper on social work field education. We are pleased to announce this year’s winners are Paul P. Freddolino, Sheryl Groden, Julie Navarre, Jo Ann McFall, Amanda T. Woodward, and Alison Jahr from Michigan State University School of Social Work.
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Published April 2014
by Emeline Homonoff, PhD
Editor
Welcome to the Spring 2014 issue of the Field Educator! This will be our fifth issue since the journal’s inception in 2011. We are pleased to report that we now have 1316 active subscribers, and the journal’s webpage had almost 25,000 visits last year. Furthermore, we’re broadening the reach of the journal by spreading it in new formats; in response to popular demand for multiple ways to access Field Educator articles, we have created PDFs of all of our Field Educator articles in order to make it easier for you to share individual articles with students and colleagues. Thank you to the Field Educator community of scholars, educators, field instructors, and students.
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Published April 2014
by Emeline Homonoff, PhD
Editor
Armed with their mission—the teaching of social work—
Into this new world go field educators.
Update your syllabus: EPAS[1] are still with us;
Develop more internships—now and not later!
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Published April 2014
by
The Simmons School of Social Work and the Field Educator sponsor an annual award to promote excellence in field education scholarship. A $1,000 prize will be awarded for an outstanding paper on social work field education. The winning paper will be announced at the 2014 Annual Program Meeting (APM) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and will be published in the Fall or Spring issue of the Field Educator. All entries must meet the submission guidelines for the Field Scholar section of the Field Educator.
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Published October 2013
by Emeline Homonoff, PhD
Editor
Welcome to the Fall 2013 issue of the Field Educator! We are entering our third year with a growing list of readers and subscribers. With the launch of this new issue, we are pleased to announce the winner of the 2013 Excellence in Field Scholarship Award: Robin Ringstad of California State University, Stanislaus. Dr. Ringstad’s article, “Competency level versus level of competency: The field evaluation dilemma,” opens the Field Scholar section.
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Published October 2013
by
The Simmons School of Social Work and the Field Educator sponsor an annual award to promote excellence in field education scholarship. A $1,000 prize will be awarded for an outstanding paper on social work field education. The winning paper will be announced at the 2014 Annual Program Meeting (APM) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and will be published in the Fall or Spring issue of the Field Educator. All entries must meet the submission guidelines for the Field Scholar section of the Field Educator.
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Published October 2013
by Emeline Homonoff, PhD
Editor
The Field Scholar is the section of the Field Educator devoted to the publication of formal, scholarly articles on theory and research in field education. Field Scholar is issuing a call for theory and research papers on a variety of subjects. These subjects include best practices in field instruction, measures of competencies in field, school-agency collaborations and innovative approaches to challenges in field education. These articles will be reviewed for rigor and relevance by members of a panel of noted field educators from the US and abroad; the list of consulting editors can be found in About Us.
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Published April 2013
by Emeline Homonoff, PhD
Editor
Welcome to the Spring 2013 issue of the Field Educator! We are pleased to be publishing our fourth issue. The three articles in the Field Scholar section address various aspects of diversity in field education. The lead article, by Lori Messinger, Director of Field Education at UNC Wilmington, offers reflections on LGBT issues in social work field education. Patty Hunter and Caitlin Hollis of CSU Chico School of Social Work explore international internships. Alex Colvin of Prairie View A & M in Texas describes the application to field education of the Campinha-Bacote healthcare model of cultural competence.
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Published April 2013
by
The Simmons School of Social Work and the Field Educator sponsor an annual award to promote excellence in field education scholarship. A $1,000 prize will be awarded for an outstanding paper on social work field education. The winning paper will be announced at the 2013 Annual Program Meeting (APM) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and will be published in the Fall issue of the Field Educator. All entries must meet the submission guidelines for the Field Scholar section of the Field Educator.
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Published April 2013
by Gianna Gifford, MA, MSLIS
Managing Editor
The “Field Scholar” is the section of the Field Educator devoted to the publication of formal, scholarly articles on theory and research in field education. “Field Scholar” is issuing a call for theory and research papers on a variety of subjects. These subjects include best practices in field instruction, measures of competencies in field, school-agency collaborations and innovative approaches to challenges in field education. These articles will be reviewed for rigor and relevance by members of a panel of noted field educators from the US and abroad; the list of consulting editors can be found in About Us.
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