Abstract
Our concern in this article is how to transform learning experiences in international field placement into sustainable social work knowledge for future practice. International field placement provides unique experiences that contribute to contextual understanding of social work and prepare students for practice in a multicultural setting. We have used focus group interviews and seen international experiences in light of domestic ones. In analysing the knowledge transformation process of the learning experiences, we use experiential learning theories. We conclude that students’ learning process from experience to theory and from theoretical knowledge to practice would benefit from following a transformation of knowledge cycle through the study programme.
Field placement for students from the North in the Global South
In the Global North, it has been increasingly common for social work educational programmes to offer students field placement abroad. To a large degree, students travel from the Global North to the Global South.
Internationalisation of education is a political aim in our country, in accordance with the Bologna process (White Paper no. 14, 2009). The National Framework for Social Work Education refers to the fact that increased immigration of people with various ethnic, cultural and religious background will influence the development of society. Benefits from international field placement for the social work professions include among others that students should require multicultural competence (Rammeplan for 3-årig sosionomutdanning, 2005).
Our University has since the 1980s had students in field placements in various countries of the Global South. Between 15 and 20 percent of the students choose placement abroad, lasting for 4.5 months.
So far, our students’ learning experiences have not been systematically explored. In this article our concerns are first, whether students in placement abroad have unique experiences that contribute to a contextual understanding of social work and prepare them for practice in multicultural settings; and, second, how to draw on the relationship between theory and practice in order to create transformed knowledge from the Global South to a national setting. Our research questions are, ‘What are the learning experiences in international field placement?’ ‘How could they be transformed into new knowledge applicable for working in a national context?’ ‘What would promote this transformation process?’
We have conducted a qualitative study of experiences from field placement abroad and in the home country. In our analysis we use experiential learning theories of how the students’ experiences might be transformed into sustainable knowledge.
The students abroad had their placements in two African countries and one Asian country. All students have a compulsory preparatory and a follow-up seminar. The students going abroad have an additional 4 days’ seminar both before and after the field placement, related to working and living in a foreign country. All students have a local supervisor and an academic staff member in the home institution following them up during placement. While in placement, the students submit three assignments focusing on their learning processes.
Internationally, there are a few studies exploring learning particularly from international field placement (Greenfield et al., 2012; Klepp, 2010; Kreitzer et al., 2012; Lindsey, 2005; Nuttman-Schwartz and Berger, 2012; Sønneland and Østby, 2011). These studies are to a very small degree concerned with a transformation process of knowledge from an international to a home context.
Comparative studies of social work students studying abroad and travelling abroad find that the former have a significant predicator of multicultural counselling competency, with a transformative experience of emotional, psychological and spiritual growth, which is not found for the latter group (Greenfield et al., 2012; Kim, 2015). For students studying abroad, reflection on their multicultural experiences is an essential element in order to make meaning of their encounters for future practice (Paige and Vande Berg, 2012).
Theoretical basis
Learning in different social contexts
The concept social context has its origin in social constructionism, which is a postmodern theory (Fook, 2011). People create and are formed by their social contexts, which are constantly changing. As social work is considered situated, it may be understood and applied in different ways depending on the social context. Social contextual factors may both cause social problems and influence social work approaches.
In postmodern thinking the process of knowledge creation is of concern, as is how the participants influence the knowledge production (Fook, 2012). The relational aspect of knowledge production thus becomes essential (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). From a postmodern view, knowledge is temporary and may therefore be defined and redefined depending on the social context. Following from this, a postmodern approach may therefore be descriptive and focus on nuances, similarities and differences and paradoxes.
For students in international placement, it is important for their learning to understand the social context. It gives a formative new experience to leave a familiar social context to work in a foreign one, opposite to most students in domestic placement (Askeland and Døhlie, 2015).
Indigenisation would make sure that approaches in social work are culturally relevant and developed from contextual needs and resources (Gray and Fook, 2004; Payne and Askeland, 2008). Beecher et al. (2010) performed a qualitative study with 16 students. They describe the experiences of a group of Asian students studying in the United States, returning to their home countries for field placement. The focus was on whether they discovered indigenous approaches to social work. Some of the students did, but not all of them. It seemed like the Western perspectives of what is social work dominated their comprehension of what the local social workers were doing when they used traditional rituals in their approaches.
Learning theories
The knowledge base in social work is complex, influenced by different theoretical disciplines. Social work is considered a practice-based profession and an academic discipline (Payne, 2014). The dynamic relationship between theory and practice knowledge is essential in social work. There are two classical models for understanding how knowledge is created. The first, oldest and dominant model considers practice knowledge as applied theory. The second model considers theory to be articulated practice knowledge (Grimen, 2008: 74; Payne, 2005). Both models are used as bases for teaching approaches in social work education as well as arguments for including field placement in the programme. This combination of theoretical knowledge and practical approaches is the foundation for certifying students as professional social workers.
Two frequently used concepts by educational researchers today are the transmission metaphor and the participation metaphor (Lahn and Jensen, 2008; Sfard, 1998). The former presupposes passive conveying of established knowledge from an expert to an apprentice, while the latter expects active partaking in one’s own learning processes and in the knowledge creation. The participation metaphor has its parallel in Dewey’s (1933) and Freire’s (1978) thinking.
Experiential learning
Experiential learning is a recognised approach for revealing the variety of students’ learning. It emphasises learning as a process – not only as an intellectual activity, but an activity that also includes emotional and bodily reactions (Grendstad, 1986). Experiential learning has a further intention to link education, work and personal development, as well as the academic learning with the outside world. It also stresses the role of formal education and professional development (Kolb, 1984). Kolb has developed a learning cycle with four stages, based on research (Figure 1). His definition of experiential learning theory is ‘the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. Knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experiences’ (Kolb, 1984: 41).
Structural dimensions underlying the process of experiential learning and the resulting basic knowledge forms (Kolb, 1984: 42).
The experiential learning process starts with identifying a personal experience of concern for the learner: stage one. In the second stage, the learner observes and reflects on the experience from divergent perspectives, meaning former experiences and knowledge. In the third stage, an assimilation of previous accessible knowledge and new knowledge drawn from reflection takes place through a process of abstraction and conceptualisation of the new knowledge of the experience. By this, divergent or fragmented and superficial knowledge is transformed into convergent or coherent knowledge. In the last stage, the accommodation, or integration, takes place by the learner testing and experimenting the coherent knowledge in practice. The learning cycle describes a whole transformation process from experiences to sustainable knowledge.
Reflective learning
Reflection is an aspect of experiential learning. Schön (1983, 1987) has played an important role in emphasising the importance of developing professional knowledge from practice by reflection. He distinguishes between reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action. The former refers to reflection on experiences after the situation has taken place, which is supposed to be part of supervision settings. The latter implies reflecting continuously when in the situation and then having the ability to change one’s thinking accordingly and simultaneously. Additionally, there is a difference between knowing what and knowing how, and between knowledge-in-action and knowing-in-action. The former refers to having general knowledge as knowing what, while the latter refers to the ability to apply knowledge in a specific situation, meaning knowing how. This thinking supplements Kolb’s model.
Schön’s idea is that there is a gap between espoused theories and theories in practice. Developing knowledge by reflecting on practice experiences may contribute to bridging the gap between theory and practice, and to developing a social contextual understanding of a situation and how to approach it.
Reflection might occur at different levels and thus result in different depths of learning. There is a distinction between single-loop and double-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1976; Mezirow and Associates, 2000). The single-loop learning is characterised by accepting transmitted knowledge, procedures and routines without questioning. This may lay the ground for instructions, manuals, control and power exercise. In professional settings, this may cause imitations of role models and activities without a personal and professional integration. The double-loop learning implies a social contextual learning. Following from a double-loop learning, a transformative learning and change of mind or practice should occur. Mezirow maintains that transformative learning takes place when a fundamental new understanding of the basis for practice results in an extensive change.
Professional and personal development
In experiential and reflective learning, personal experiences are the starting point for the development of professional knowledge. The social worker’s professional performance may reveal whether the person’s human qualities and values are integrated. Developing one’s professionalism includes being self-reflexive, which is a process of becoming aware of one’s own values, position and acting in a situation. In this connection, reflexivity focuses on the person, with its prejudices and virtues, as a participating subject, co-creator of the situation and observer at the same time (Askeland, 2011).
From a slightly different and sociological perspective, Beck et al. (1994) emphasise reflexivity as the ability to adapt to innovation, change and redefining issues and challenges that cannot be solved with familiar approaches in a society under constant change. Skau (2011) refers to professionals’ personal competence as the ability to think and act in new ways in new situations, to apply sensitivity and intuition in interactions, and to have social courage and a sense of responsibility. Thus, Skau includes the two different understandings of reflexivity in her comprehension of a social worker’s professionalism.
Inductive, explorative methodology
As little is published about the transformation process of experiences from international field placement into sustainable knowledge, we have chosen an inductive, explorative approach. To highlight the learning experiences of the students from international field placement, we collected data from students with both international and domestic experiences.
We used focus groups to collect information of the students’ experiences. Focus groups interviews are commonly utilised in educational research and in programme development. A benefit of focus groups is to take advantage of the group process to generate new ideas when investigating complex practices. Using the synergy in the groups might contribute to becoming conscious of one’s own experiences as well as clarifying similarities and differences among the participants. Another advantage is that the researchers through their active role may direct the discussion in order to cover relevant issues and facilitate the participants’ own comparisons (Morgan, 1997).
A total of 24 students participated in the study. All the 12 students who had been in the Global South took part and were divided into two focus groups of 6. All the students in domestic placement, about 50, were invited. In total, 12 students signed up and were also divided into two groups of 6.
We did not collect background information about the students. However, all were in their 20s and three were male students, two of whom had been in placements abroad and one in a domestic placement. Several of the students abroad had former experiences of living, studying or travelling in foreign countries.
We developed a semi-structured interview guide, which was tested out in a pilot study on former students with international field placement experience. A few adjustments were made. The main subjects in the interview guide were motivation for field placement, personal and professional learning, relevance of gained knowledge, skills and values, religion and supervision.
The group interviews were conducted by two of the authors with the third one as observer. The group discussions were recorded. All three authors have listened through the tapes, and each one made their own notes. The internal reliability was controlled by comparing notes. Each one identified trends and commonalities in the interviews and on the basis of that abstracted joint codes and main thematic areas.
The analysis resulted in recontextualising (Johannessen et al., 2010) of the material and thus in some concept extractions, which have been used to systematise the presentation of our findings. In order to emphasise the learning experiences abroad, we analysed them in light of the experiences from the domestic field placement.
The focus groups took place approximately 5 months after the students returned from field placement. The interim period between the end of the placement and the focus groups might have given the students an opportunity to reflect on their experiences from a distance perspective. Some details might have been forgotten, and some experiences might at a distance be viewed in either a more positive or negative light than in the actual situation. The focus group approach might in itself have had an awareness-raising effect facilitating a comprehensive understanding of their experiences.
All three authors are experienced in international social work. Two of the authors have been involved in the preparatory and follow-up seminars and as contact staff during placement abroad. On one hand, this could have created a power relation that could influence the students’ responses during the focus groups. On the other hand, this might have contributed to the students feeling comfortable and willing to share their experiences. For the students in domestic placement, none of the authors had been involved in their preparation and follow-up.
Findings
Motivation for field placement
Students’ motivation for going abroad included a curiosity about other cultures and living in a foreign country over time. For some it was a dream and a unique opportunity to work in the Global South, and it fitted well into their life situation. Some saw it as a preparation for working in developmental aid later, and others as a personal challenge to test their coping ability in a totally unfamiliar setting. Some emphasised that experiences abroad might prepare them for better understanding of minorities when working in their home country. None of them were concerned about being placed in a particular field of social work.
To gain a global perspective was a prominent drive. By experiencing cultural differences, and observing the inequalities in the world, they realised how privileged they themselves are. From this they drew the consequence: to learn to know a culture that is totally different might make me a better social worker.
However, the domestic students were more locally oriented in their motivation. It was related to their curiosity about how social work is performed and how to work with clients in specific areas, like child protection, substance abuse, psychiatry and probation. Several of them wanted the challenge of fieldwork, with which they were not familiar.
Learning experiences
Being a foreigner
All the students abroad referred to their experiences of being a newcomer in a foreign country. They felt insecure and powerless when not understanding what was going on in the society. They connected this to not being part of the culture and not understanding the behaviour and the languages. One student summarised that her experience of belonging to a minority made her curious of other people. Several students referred to how their experiences would make them understand better the situation for newcomers in their home country. The students expressed a deeper understanding of how people might struggle to settle into foreign places. I cannot imagine how they survive coming here [to our country]. One student realised the importance of the social work slogan, to start where the client is.
Because of the different social contexts, it took longer than they expected to build relationships and clients’ confidence. As White Westerners, they realised they would never fully understand the social context as their backgrounds were too different.
The students became aware that they interpreted what was going on from their own cultural perspectives and became conscious of their own prejudices. Gradually they stopped comparing with their familiar culture and tried to understand people from the people’s own perspectives. We could not assess the client’s situation from our own perspectives. My reality is really not the client’s reality.
One student pointed out that it is important to understand the differences for people coming from a collective culture into ‘our’ individualistic one. Another one mentioned that it was unfamiliar to see how people in a collective culture were committed to each other.
Several students were taken aback by the amount of poverty. They admitted that in a new environment they discovered poverty as not only lack of financial resources, but also realised the consequences it has for education, health and welfare.
Following from this experience, they recognised that even if they themselves are familiar with the context at home, refugees and immigrants they may be working with in the future might have a parallel experience to their own. Therefore, thorough assessments would be necessary also in their domestic practice.
The domestic students did not refer to culture and context as an issue in social work, neither that the clients’ contexts were different from their own, nor that the context would influence their work. The domestic students’ implicit context was the organisational settings within a welfare state.
Social work, roles and tasks
The students abroad focused on how the contextual setting is forming social work and the role of the local social worker. They had to think through what social work would entail, and whether what they were assigned to do could be considered social work. One student stated, At the moment, one has to be there even if one does not recognise it as being social work.
The students abroad experienced to a large degree that they had to create their own tasks. They had to reflect on what they were set to perform in a broader perspective in order to recognise it as social work.
Even if the students claimed to recognise quite a few of their tasks as social work, like picking up street children and counselling commercial sex workers, several of them found it challenging to define some of their activities within the frame of social work. As an example, it was difficult to understand how drawing with children could be social work, until the student realised it could be used as a tool in relationship building. Another example was, To work in an orphanage was far from what I considered as social work. There were periods where we were care takers, and we tried to make it relevant.
In isolation, changing nappies was not social work, the students claimed, but seeing it as part of the whole adoption process it became meaningful, alongside receiving the children in the orphanage and cooperating with the hospital and the police.
The students abroad had to understand what the social worker role would be like without a welfare system:
For me it was related to understanding how to be a social worker when there is no child protection and no social security.
Contrary to the students abroad, the domestic students were preoccupied with how to function within a specific field, system or bureaucracy, how to perform the social worker role and tasks in a particular field, and to follow rules and regulations. In correspondence with their motivation for their choice of field placement, several emphasised that their experiences had given them the confidence that they would be able to practise as social workers in the future.
Language and communication
While the students abroad had English as their second language, for most of the local staff English was their work language. Most of the clients, however, had no or little English competence. When the parties in an interaction did not have a common language, the students experienced it as difficult to communicate. It was a shared experience that in order to understand their counterpart they had to be tuned in, focused, and observant of the non-verbal language. The students realised the importance of clear, simple and precise language and that they had to ask clients questions about what they otherwise would take for granted at home. Abbreviations and geographical and technical terms gave them a feeling of being excluded.
After a while the students realised they could not work with the local people without translation. Experiences with an interpreter taught them that a word-by-word translation was not enough. They had to check out continuously whether the messages had come across and they had obtained a common understanding.
Altogether, communication was highlighted as a subject where they could build on their formal training. Nevertheless, the students found that they gradually improved their communication skills, becoming more receptive, and listened in a different way.
The domestic students did not mention any concern about not being able to communicate with the clients, even those from other ethnic and language groups. However, what they mentioned was that they had improved their communication skills during placement.
Religion
All students in placement abroad discovered that religion, be it Christianity, Hinduism or Islam, was a more integrated part of peoples’ identity than they were used to at home. It permeated clients’ lives, organisational systems and collegial relationships. It was reflected in rituals, like prayers among the staff and in their work with clients, and for some of the students also in their leisure time interaction with local friends.
The students found it challenging being asked about their personal beliefs and being expected to take part in religious rituals at work. How they handled this varied, and largely depended upon to what extent they had reflected on their own belief system before, whether they saw themselves as Christians or as atheists.
What they had learned in their social work training was that religion should only be an issue if the client brought it up. In the beginning, students were critical towards bringing religion and beliefs into counselling and social work. One student saw this as oppression at first in counselling of former street workers. Talking to the women by means of an interpreter, she realised that religion was not perceived by them as oppression. She then acknowledged that religion could be a useful resource in women’s rehabilitation.
Several students abroad shared the opinion that religion could be a resource in clients’ lives. This experience was the least emphasised by the few students who declared themselves atheists. The students with a Christian belief maintained that it was a relief to include religion in a holistic social work approach. They enjoyed being in a country where they belonged to a majority, contrary to a secular society at home.
Some of the domestic students referred to situations where the clients brought up religion and their beliefs. They shared with the students abroad a feeling of not being prepared for how to handle it. Apart from a couple of supportive supervisors, the domestic students did not get any support from their colleagues. On the contrary, some were met with an attitude of non-acceptance of religion as an issue in social work.
Supervision
Most of the students abroad experienced supervision with the local supervisors as lecturing, practical information or advice on how to perform their tasks. They missed that they were hardly asked about their own reflections on their experiences and performances, and what learning they could draw from it.
An exception was for a few students who had a local supervisor who had for some years lived in a Western society. The students claimed that they felt more on equal terms with her, as she was able to share their feelings and reflect on their cultural and professional experiences.
The domestic students had mixed experiences with supervision. Most of them were satisfied as they had had the opportunity to reflect on their learning, the social worker role, their professional performances and personal development. However, for a few students little time was set aside for supervision, and they also ended up receiving only current advice on daily activities.
Peer group challenges and supervision
Students abroad lived together in groups of four, for convenience and for financial and security reasons. Some were friends in advance, while others hardly knew each other. Some of them were more or less together 24 hours a day. This resulted in unintended personal development and learning, in two areas. First, the students expressed that this was challenging, but also that they got to know themselves better by collaborating on how to solve conflicts, adjust their own habits, and understand when to keep quiet. They claimed that this had been an awareness-raising process that might be useful in future job situations.
Second, living together gave them an opportunity to act as peer supervisors. On equal terms, they shared their daily experiences, reactions and knowledge. By contributing with their different perspectives, knowledge and values on the same situations, the reflection expanded their understanding and learning: She has a community perspective, while I have an individual one. We have learned a lot from each other, as we are different.
The domestic students did not refer to peer groups, as they were mostly placed as the only student in each organisation and had their own living arrangements.
Discussion of our findings
Nuttman-Schwartz and Berger (2012) refer to three main motivating factors for students to choose international field placement. First, it is an opportunity for professional and personal development, which would lay a basis for a global understanding for future work both abroad and locally. Second, the students want to contribute to making a difference by promoting human rights and social justice. This was particularly expressed by students who had family or other ties with the host country and wanted to expand the emotional bonds. Third, students saw this as an adventurous opportunity.
In our study the students’ motivation for going abroad was similar to the factors mentioned above. However, none of our students expressed a wish to contribute to the host country directly. Nevertheless, some saw the placement as a preparation for later work in development agencies. The students’ learning experiences of living and working in a new context corresponded with their primary motivation for going abroad. Motivation influenced what the students reported to have learned, both for the students abroad and for the domestic ones.
Different social contexts lead to different learning. The greater the differences are between the familiar context and that of the field placement, the more challenging it is for personal and professional growth (Das and Anand, 2014; Døhlie and Askeland, 2006). How the challenges are experienced is also dependent on the individual’s adaptability and ability to learn, as maintained in experiential learning theories.
The main finding in our study was that the social work learning arena for students abroad was expanded to include the whole societal setting in which they worked and lived. An expanded learning arena facilitates an opportunity for a deeper understanding of social work as contextual and socially constructed (Payne and Askeland, 2008).
For students from the North going to the Global South, their frame of reference for what is social work and what is not would be based on their introduction to social work from a Western perspective. It might therefore become difficult to discover indigenous social work (Beecher et al., 2010). Indeed, what the local social workers do might not be seen as social work from their point of view. The students abroad experienced the importance of contextualising, even if they did not use the concept itself. The study shows that contextualising is related to how to identify social work and how to frame the activities into a meaningful cultural setting and a more holistic understanding of what could be considered social work.
When grasping the meaning of context, it became clear that clients, local social workers and international students would all belong to different cultures. They realised that as social workers they cannot assume that the clients’ context is similar to their own, not only in an international setting, but also when performing social work at home. Coping in a new setting made the students abroad realise that their experiences were applicable to working with newcomers in their domestic context. By being able to apply this experience to how it would be for people from other cultures coming to our country, the ground is laid for meeting minorities with empathy and cultural sensitivity. This could be considered as a groundbreaking discovery for them that results in a double-loop learning. Thus, international field placement contributes to fulfiling the educational policy of requiring multicultural competence for social workers.
The only reported example of testing out theoretical knowledge in practice was related to communication. This counted for both students abroad and domestic ones, where they maintained that they had been able to develop their communication skills. The students abroad, however, emphasised that communication in itself is not only technique, but has to be understood and performed within a cultural framework. Relying on an interpreter showed that a word-by-word translation was not sufficient; making contextual meaning both ways is necessary. The importance of understanding the difference of high and low contextual communication is transferable to a multicultural setting in the home country (Hall, 1989). In a high context culture the key to interpreting a message is imbedded in the context, while in a low context one the information is stored in the message itself.
Domestic students worked and lived in a familiar society. When the living conditions are known and the placement is in a specific field, the learning arena becomes narrower. Then the opportunity to grasp that social work is contextual is more limited. They were not concerned to the same degree as the students abroad with the challenges of understanding the clients’ contexts and its consequences for communication.
In social work, religion has been given little attention in main text books in international social work (Askeland and Døhlie, 2015). All the students were unprepared for how to relate to religious issues. In a secular society, like ours, religion is a private issue. Being confronted by religion as an integrated aspect of the culture, the organisation and the social work performance made the students abroad aware that religion could be considered a resource in social work, also in the home country. On the contrary, the domestic ones experienced that religion was a less relevant issue. This latter attitude is confirmed in a national study of social workers’ approach to religion (Vetvik, 2014).
For the students abroad, living together strengthened their professional growth and development. This is parallel to what Greenfield et al. (2012) identify as self-rated skills. The students were forced into self-reflexion by focusing on themselves in relation to others. By sharing and reflecting on their experiences, they became reflexive in the meaning of being flexible and adjusting their understanding of the problems and the approaches in the local context (Beck et al., 1994). This process could be identified as building professional competence. In Skau’s (2011) understanding, professional competence includes courage and responsibility, the challenge of which was for some of the students something they wanted to test by going abroad.
Transforming learning experiences into sustainable knowledge
To transform learning from one context to another is not an automatic process. During placement, two main tools for transforming experiences into sustainable knowledge are supervision and written assignments.
We have referred to two learning models: the transmission and the participation ones. Whether the emphasis is on one or the other metaphor will influence the approach used in supervision. The latter will be a precondition for starting a transformation process.
According to the students’ reporting, it seems like the former model was the prevailing one in supervision for the students abroad, and also for some of the domestic ones. The characteristic of supervision is then instruction and transference, which is less challenging for the students and might limit the transformability. Advice and instructions, which have to be followed, are usually connected to single cases and may lead to an unreflected transference to new situations. To learn to follow routines and procedures automatically without students’ own reflection would be a single-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1976; Mezirow and Associates, 2000).
According to an aspect of the educational philosophy of higher education in our country, the students are expected to be responsible for their own learning by taking an active and reflective part in acquiring knowledge. Thus, there seems to be a contrast between the approaches the students expected in supervision and those they experienced, particularly abroad. The main purpose of supervision according to the participative model is to help the students as reflecting subjects to bridge the gap between practice and theory and focus on both professional and personal development. For the students to succeed in this process, supervision becomes paramount. To a very small degree, supervision for the students abroad, and for some of the domestic ones as well, did not contribute to going successfully through the four stages in Kolb’s learning cycle.
The implications of a postmodern understanding of knowledge production, as we have described in this article, are fruitful in our analysis. We consider Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle a relevant tool for assisting students in transforming their concrete experiences into converged and coherent knowledge by going through the four stages. During the field placement, students go through the first stage of Kolb’s learning cycle by being exposed to various experiences. For the students abroad, the peer group reflection became important for their ability to see their experiences from divergent perspectives, stage two. Being back at the university college, our experience is that the academic staff may easily take for granted that the students are able to present convergent or coherent knowledge, stage four, without having gone properly and consciously through stage two, reflective observation and three, abstract conceptualisation. The consequences of not articulating the knowledge as abstract concepts, stage three, by integrating former and new knowledge, the new experimentation, stage four, becomes difficult. Going through all four stages may ensure that learning experiences are transformed into sustainable knowledge.
When reflection in stage two results in abstraction and articulation of concepts in stage three, this may be considered equivalent to knowledge-in-action. In stage four, the accommodated knowledge may be demonstrated as knowing-in-action, according to Schön’s (1983) concepts.
All students, no matter the quality of the supervision, seem to lack training in formulating theoretical frameworks and concepts for making meaning of their experiences. We are therefore uncertain to what extent the experiences have been transformed into sustainable learning that will be recognised as knowledge-in-action and knowing-in-action in their future work. However, in the focus groups the students showed beginnings of the ability to conceptualise their experiences. When the students abroad indicated a comprehensive understanding of social work in relation to context, the complexity of poverty, migration and the significance of religious influence, we consider this as a beginning of a double-loop learning. Whether this is valid will be demonstrated in future practice as significant changes from where they started in their field placement. The focus groups took place after the students had been through follow-up seminars. The process in the seminars and the focus groups has probably strengthened the students’ conceptualising abilities. This makes us more aware of the significance of the follow-up of the placement for all students to assist the students in the transformation process of knowledge.
Conclusion
The learning experiences reported from field placement abroad in this study are core issues in social work. The domestic students have highlighted different learning experiences, also considered core issues. A goal in the National Framework for Social Work Education is to require a multicultural competence, to which international placement has contributed.
Placement abroad will be useful for practising in the home country, particularly when the students have gone through a full learning cycle. This study has made it apparent to us that all students have learning experiences that might not be fully developed into sustainable professional knowledge. As an educational institution, we have to ensure that this takes place both through preparation and during placement and follow-up.
The educational institutions will have to train supervisors to facilitate the students’ reflecting on their experiences by following a transformation model. Both in preparation for placement and when students are back at the university, the model could be followed to conceptualise and theorise assimilated knowledge in preparation for future professional work. This requires that the academic staff be familiar with this approach to learning and then able to involve the students in applying the model.
We have described how the learning cycle could be followed in theorising from experiences. However, the model visualises that learning can benefit from starting from different positions. It is a tool not only for how to transform knowledge from experiences to theory, but also for testing out in practice theory acquired during theoretical studies. This shows that learning is a dynamic process. Therefore, the educational institution should strengthen the students’ focus on also testing acquired theoretical knowledge in their field placement. Thus, following the learning cycle right through the study programme may provide future social workers with a tool for lifelong learning.
Footnotes
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.