Students’ writing and issues of suitability:Assessing and managing suitability issues during the student life-cycle

Dr Lucy Rai and Dr Theresa Lillis

Our research• Student writing in social work education (doctoral

research 2008)• Getting it right / write: exploring professional writing in

social work (2009/10)• Case recording in adult services: an ethnographic study

(2010/11)• Professional writing in statutory children’s services

(2011/12)

Focus and interests• The nature and demands of academic writing

undertaken on social work courses• The nature, demands and suitability for purpose of

writing in social work practice• Where and how professional writing is taught and learnt• Connections between social work writing in education

and in practice

Research perspective• Recognises writing as a ‘social’ practice, or an activity

embedded in social and interpersonal ways of being• Attaches particular importance to the social,

institutional and inter- personal contexts within which writing acts take place

• Approaches individual ‘deficit models’ of writing with caution

The nature and demands of academic

social work writing?

involvement of the self

Challenging conflation or theory and reflection

diverse text

types

shifting voices,

tenses and readers

contradictory

conventions

Interpersonal process of

writingemotive

texts

Tutors reflections on social work writing

It is a particular style of the social work essay…and it is hard for students to get the message especially when they have been undergraduates or have done other courses …now we are coming on and saying well it is not like that.

I tend to find that students who write a very academic and technical piece have great difficulty in getting into the kind of introspective, reflective approach. And some students can be very anecdotal and be quite reflective but don’t make the links between professional practice, course materials and underpinning concepts. You have the two extremes and you are looking for something in the middle.

What is the nature of

professional social work

writing?

multi-tasking

scattere

d

driven by KPI Key

performance indicators)

diverse text

types

chaotic

time pressures

‘orchestrating’ texts

multiple audiences

‘emotive’

Some graduates reflections on the challenges of practice writing

Its so intrusive the work that we do …its done in a sensitive way but perhaps when its presented in a black and white document … it doesn’t capture the wider context. You know like, is there domestic violence and its almost like a tick box yes, and that doesn’t actually reflect the difficult relationship or the physical violence they were subjected to

These are reports that are shared with the children and families we work with… its not helpful to be given a 40 page document, and that’s more to do with the organisation and the information they need to capture

While discreet writing skills can be taught (e.g. report writing) there is no way to teach the reality of writing in practice in advance

The limitations of transferable knowledge

Because I was doing the job I’d gone from Children’s to Mental Health… I had an idea of how to write up case notes…and what neither Children’s service or the course prepared me for was that I went into an integrated team… so for example …when you did your assessment a social worker will obviously write completely differently to a nurse and for some reason you were expected to know and encompass all of that

I’ve done a degree before so when I was writing and I’ve always written in the third person that’s how to me how you write a kind of an academic type of say an essay so I found it quite uncomfortable in for the sort of practice learning courses writing in the first person so to begin with I didn’t do that so obviously the feedback I got was that I needed to take ownership for some of my comments.

Scholarship and professional practice

• The nature of social work writing presents challenges beyond surface features

• Clearer thinking is needed about the relationship between scholarly and professional capabilities

• Academic writing can develop broader capabilities relevant to practice and to practice writing

• Academic and practice writing in social work have some shared features which could provide a helpful focus in teaching

Implications for suitability

• Consideration is needed of scholarly and practice capabilities and how these connect

• Our research suggests that both academic and practice writing could be re-examined for fitness for purpose

• Writing in both contexts involves a sensitivity and use of self uncommon in academic and professional writing contexts

• Writing in both contexts demands the ability to move between genres, audiences and styles

References

• Rai, L (Forthcoming) ‘Responding to emotion in practice based writing’ Higher Education

• Rai, L. (2010) ‘Reflective writing in social work education and practice’ in Professional Development in Social Work: Complex Issues in Practice, Seden, J et al (Eds). Routledge,

• Rai, L ‘Owning (up to) reflective writing in social work education’ Journal of Social Work Education 25 (8) (October 2006)

• Rai, L. ‘Exploring literacy in social work education: a Social Practices Social to student writing’ Journal of Social Work Education 23 (2)

(April 2004)