book

Supporting struggling students on placementA new book by Jo Finch is published next month: Supporting struggling students on placement, a practical guide.

Social Work Practice Placements book, published by Sage, will help to develop student's critical thinking, analytic and reflective skills as they progress through their placements. It will help them build a successful practice portfolio and understand exactly how they fit into the myriad of other professionals and services that make up day to day reality of practice. Crucially, the book also features chapter on developing these skills into the workplace.

A substantial toolkit with activities, information and references, published online by the Northern Ireland Degree in Social Work Partnership. Be aware that, although most of the resources are transferable, some may specifically relate to the Northern Ireland context,

Introduction for a Handbook 'written for busy social workers involved in supporting, enabling and assessing learners in the workplace. It is aimed primarily at people with responsibility for either qualifying social worker students or newly-qualified social workers (NQSWs) during their first year of professional practice, but it will also be of interest to those with responsibility for other professional learners such as students from other professions, people undertaking post-qualifying awards and those undertaking other forms of continuous professional development.'

Critical reflection, when used specifically to improve professional practice, is reflective practice that focuses on the power dimensions of assumptive thinking, and therefore on how practice might change in order to bring about change in the social situations in which professionals work.

This chapter outlines general reflective processes and thinking, and discusses some of the issues involved with critical reflection specifically.