An ethnographic inquiry regarding the integrative field seminar experience.

Abstract

This qualitative ethnographic study examined the field seminar experiences of fourstudent participants and one instructor participant from a field seminar class. This field seminarclass was a field education component within the professional social services program of a smallOntario university. While the program is not a social work program, I chose to situate myresearch within the social work education literature because the program is very similar to asocial work program in its curriculum and philosophy. As such, the study’s findings inform andare informed by the existing body of social work education research.Field education has long been a staple in professional education. Regarding preparationfor a career in social work and the social services, field education enables students to learn inauthentic, real-world settings, serving real clients with real issues under the careful mentoring ofa senior social service professional. Typically, a social work student’s field placementexperience is supported by their participation in their program’s integrative field seminar—asmall class of student placement peers facilitated by an instructor.While field seminar use is ubiquitous across post-secondary social work programs, itsfoundational identity, nature, and function have yet to be fully explored. This study provides thefield seminar’s missing “first map”—a primary sketch that describes its defining features andcreates an outline of its terrain. From my analysis of the student and instructor participantinterview data, and my own classroom observations a first map emerged that portrayed fieldeducation as a riverboat journey. In this explanatory metaphor, the field seminar boat journeysdown the river of experience to the clear destination of professional preparedness.A successful riverboat journey for the field seminar class under examination required: aneffective boat (educational apparatus) with elements of student engagement, knowledge transfer,learning consolidation, flexibility, interactional learning, peer learning, struggle-based learning, and praxis; an effective captain (instructor) with elements of attunement, enabling peer learning,creating a safe space, being flexible, facilitating praxis, facilitating struggle-based learning,facilitating learning consolidation, facilitating interactional learning, and enabling knowledgetransfer; an effective boat culture with elements of egalitarianism, respect, support, curiosity,attunement, and trust; and the clear destination of professional preparedness which includesbeneficial qualities (confidence, initiative, interpersonal engagement, and openness), abilities(leadership, clinical intervention, and cognitive complexity), professional identity development(opportunity to “try on” or rehearse professional roles, opportunity to address real/substantialeffects of professional work, and evolve from learner” to “practitioner), and lifelong learningstrategies (self-learning, peer-learning, and struggle-based learning).This riverboat journey model can be practically incorporated into field seminarclassrooms using a series of associated guidelines: embrace complexity and nuance, be flexible,be grounded in experience, be facilitative, be interactive, and be preparative. Beyond theirpotential practical usefulness, the study’s findings were also determined to be in close agreementwith the academic literature at all three levels of relevant educational scholarship—thefoundational theories of education, the post-secondary theories of education, and the social workteaching and learning theories.