PREPARING PUBLIC AGENCY FIELD INSTRUCTORS.
Item
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Title
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PREPARING PUBLIC AGENCY FIELD INSTRUCTORS.
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Identifier
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AAI8212197
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identifier
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8212197
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Creator
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KATZ, DANIEL.
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Contributor
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Irving Weisman
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Date
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1982
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Social Work
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Abstract
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A seminar, in 1977 prepared twenty public agency social workers to be field instructors in a Title XX funded Master of Social Work program for employees of the same agencies. The field instructor's role as a model for fellow employees was an important component of the masters program emphasizing relevance to the public sector. The seminar's purpose was to minimize the apprenticeship field teaching, deemed likely because of the unusual field arrangement and the conflicting demands of the professional, agency, and educational systems.;Ten meetings of two groups preceded the assignment of students. The goals were to enhance participants' ability to conceptualize practice within agency context and to encourage group development to support members as educators. Content consisted of inducing concepts from case examples. The leader followed principles derived from group work, small group theory, and andragogy.;Data collected systematically from tapes of all meetings were organized into process categories (Orientation/Structuring, Socio/Emotional, Cognitive/Conceptual and Task/Action). Phases of group development and evidence of previously defined practice principles were identified. A judge, assessing changes in the conceptual level of participants' responses to a case vignette, found only minimal improvement in one group. Participants evaluated the seminar highly in respect to both goals on a questionnaire administered in the last meeting. Both groups developed as expected. Principles were evident more in relation to process categories than phases of group development. Some were non-specific. More seminar time devoted to the Cognitive/Conceptual category was related to enhanced conceptual ability.;The seminar's inductive conceptual approach conflicted with participants' practical cognitive style, characteristic of practitioners. Agency affiliation minimized the seminar's influence on conceptual ability but heightened its supportive value.;To be more effective, similar seminars should be concurrent with field work and reduce role conflict by clarifying the school's expectations of field instructors rather than participants' relationships to their agencies. Schools are urged to provide supportive group experiences for new field instructors especially from large public agencies who often experience low professional self-esteem.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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D.S.W.
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Program
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Social Work
