THE BOLOGNA PROCESS - 中欧社会论坛 - China Europa Forum

THE BOLOGNA PROCESS

CHINA-EUROPE FORUM SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION WORKSHOP SUMMARY PAPER FROM EUROPEAN PARTICIPANTS

Susan Lawrence

INTRODUCTION -‘EUROPE UNITED IN DIVERSITY’

“United in diversity” is the European Union slogan. We are united by certain values that are shared by those within the profession, but as Europeans from different countries, we are all different too - in our qualifications, routes into education and in our idea of the skills and knowledge that we believe are essential to the profession. Social work education in Europe began in different countries from the early 20th century, but had a new impetus in the last two decades which saw the creation or re-opening of social work education in Eastern European countries. Many initiatives have been taken during the last two decades in social work education, and our intention here is to offer our impressionistic overview of the current situation of social work education in Europe.

THE BOLOGNA PROCESS

Since the 1980s, the European Commission has defined a series of measures with the objective of developing and improving the European component within education, alongside enabling the geographical mobility of students. One of the needs identified has been the need to prepare younger generations for life in a society increasingly characterized by cultural and linguistic diversity, so that they may identify concrete actions with which to fight racism and xenophobia. The EU Socrates Erasmus programme has enhanced student and staff mobility enabling academic credit transfer between universities, the development of Joint Programmes to encourage academic exchange of experiences and innovation, thus enhancing the quality of teaching.

The Bologna declaration (1999), an initiative of 29 European Governments, established a process with the objective of creating a European Higher Education Area by 2010. The aim is to increase both the employment prospects and geographical mobility of European citizens, and enhance the concept of European higher education at a global level. This requires a concrete shift towards:

  • Easily readable and comparable systems of degrees

  • The creation of a structure founded upon two cycles (BA & MA), using the European credits system (ECTS)

  • Promotion of geographical mobility for students, teachers, researchers and administrative staff, and recognition of experiences within a European context

  • European co-operation in quality assurance with a view to develop comparable criteria and methodologies.

In parallel, at the end of 2000, the EU project ‘Tuning Educational Structures in Europe’ has the objective of implementing discussion and reflection upon the changes Bologna is bringing to educational structures and study content. The process of reforming, requires a ‘tuning’ of curricula, in terms of structures, programmes, and actual teaching. Although is important to protect the rich diversity within European education, it is necessary to identify competences and learning outcomes, and to design, construct and assess the qualifications provided. Four lines of approach have so far been developed:

  • Generic competences

  • Subject-specific competence (skills, knowledge and content)

  • The role of ECTS as a transfer and accumulation system

  • Approaches to learning, teaching, assessment and performance in relation to quality assurance and control

IMPACT ON SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION: SKILLS, KNOWLEDGE AND VALUES/ATTITUDES

In Europe today we face some major societal challenges - the ageing of our populations;

the effects of globalization; and the impacts of neo-liberalism - a general shift from state to civil society, from welfare to workfare logic, with an increased presence of third sector and not-for-profit social services and a service delivery market. In this scenario there is a great need for a committed social work in communities to support personal and social responsibility and to contribute to social cohesion. The key questions this raises, then, are: how to teach students to face this complexity; how to improve their own consciousness and ability to respond to the social work mission to enhance human rights and social justice; how to help students to acquire a non bureaucratic attitude and to develop a ‘political’ role in the most useful sense of the term?

The use of competences and a modularization structure in social work curricula can be helpful tools. Putting aside the logic of a teacher oriented process and shifting the paradigm to a student learning process is very important. This can improve the social work student’s reflective and critical attitudes and their ability to connect theory and practice in a knowledge spiral. Work on competences is something very different to simply teaching skills; it involves knowledge, insights, skills and values, which can be used in a professional social work setting to handle different situations. Modularisation requires the integration of different disciplines in relation to research, methodology and practice, not only a mixture of a variety of discourses related to the subject. Again, this is very appropriate to the social work education context.

COUNTRY BASED PRIORITIES AND INTERPRETATIONS

In social work education in Europe today, meaningful differences between European countries persist in a number of ways:

  • In the kind of institutions which provide social work education

  • In the duration of the training/education period

  • In the disciplinary components of the curricula

  • In professional practice preparation – variously referred to as ‘placement’, ‘fieldwork’ or ‘practice education’

  • In relation to teaching methodologies

  • In research and theory production

  • In European orientation

However, within the Bologna Process, we are ever hopeful that our education systems can be structured and organized in a way that makes it possible for students and professionals to be mobile European citizens. As educators we hope to interpret these structures and processes in a way that will benefit social work students as future professionals.

This summary, I hope, gives an overview of the papers from the European delegates. The papers (in English or French) give a more rich and detailed account of the social work education structure in some European countries and insights into how and why we teach certain topics in our curricula.

Summary compiled and edited by Susan Lawrence on behalf of the European Delegates

17 June 2009.