The role of the social worker and developing professional identity

Name educator: Hervör Alma Árnadóttir

Name partner organisation: University of Iceland

Description of the course: One day workshop (10 hours) that consists of 30 masters students in social work. This workshop is on their first day, this is a start of a 2 years journey. The title of the course is “The role of teh social worker and developing professional identity”.

Overall aim: team building and start a reflective diary

Aim of testing project: Connect to yourself and the group. Start to look inwards, reflect on the attitudes, strangeness and weakness.

By the end of the day students:

•    Know the names of the students in the team

•    Have starting initiative to identify their own strengths in a team/group.

•    Start to learn to utilise feedback in personal and professional development.

•    Create a personal goals for future learning in social work practice.

Date(s) of the testing project: 1 day (10 hours) in September.

Target group: students in Social Work            

Number of participants: 30 MA students in Social Work

Nationality of the participants: Icelandic

Sex of the participants: xfemales26 x man 4

Age of the participants:_23 to 51

Amount of meetings with the learners: 1

(< 20 people)

(> 20 people)

  drawings

How did you organize your testing project (or to put it differently: as this is a testing project for experimenting, what will be different comparing to the same course you run the previous time)?

We offered one day outdoors workshop to start the semester. Emotional awareness is important part of SW and we think reflection is therefore an important tool. Our aim was to built up teams, start reflective process/work. We will come to this reflective work again during the next two years so it will be a process. We used outdoors activity for 5 hours and then we used the rest of the day to explore the experience and connect to our life by offering solo-reflection, reflection in pairs and small group’s reflection.

As a teacher I put more effort to the reflection, how and why, during the project than in my teaching before.

In the program we tried to connect to the outcomes by using exercise and by using reflection to understand our behavior, thoughts and feelings in the group.

1.      Know the names of the students in the team

2.      Have starts to identify their own strengths in a team/group.

3.      Start to learn to utilise feedback in personal and professional development.

4.      Create a personal goals for future learning in social work practice

1- 2. Know the names of the students in the team and starts to identify their own strengths in a team/group.

• We starts with a warm up exercixe
• Participants name and years of bachelor degree.
• Exercise (working in two groups, going through gap in 2 sec.)- Reflection (did everyone have a voice) in two groups.
• They made teams (6 working teams) in silence.
• Reflection in teams (how did I like how we where divided in the team)

3. Start to learn to utilise feedback in personal and professional development.

• Trust, for examp. blind and leader and spider web, exercise in pars and groups.
• Reflection: What was this exercise about? How was it for you/for the group? How did you feel? What position was better for you to be in, blind or leading?

4. Create a personal goals for future learning in social work practice

Solo

1. Choose a place and watch in one direction in 10 minutes or until you hear the bell and write down what you have seen.

Share in your group.

2. Go to the same place and do the same except that you put a mirror in front of you, 10 min. Again. Write what do you seen

Share in your group

Reflect in the two groups.

Write a letter to myself, my goal this winter. The letter were send to the students in end of January 2016.

In general, how do you look at the results of your testing project?

I have been developing this programs for the last four years. It is alway a bit stressful to meet a new group of students, you never know about the weather inside them or outside in Iceland. This time I was more aware about the reflection than before, how and what.  I was satisfied with the outcome, we (the trainer) were less controling, we tried to give space for thinking and silence.  There was continuity in the programs process. I had good feeling about the outcome during the day and it was close to that I expected..

Participants feedback was positive. They were happy afterwards.

A few comments from the participants:

“The whole course was important, the trainers, where it took place”

“Now we know each other a little and our self”

“Get the group to work together and build up trust within the group”

“ I could be myself, the trust is the most important”

“The most important thing was the empowerment that the group went through together”

“Trust ecercises were important and useful”

One positive factor in the process was the enviroment/the nature we could offer the group. It gave the students freedom to been creative and supportive at the same time. One positive factor in the process was the environment/the nature we could offer the group. It gave the students freedom to been creative and supportive at the same time.