Assessing the Implicit Curriculum in Social Work Education: Heterogeneity of Students’ Experiences and Impact on Professional Empowerment

The implicit curriculum, which refers to a student’s learning environment, has been described as an essential feature of an integrated professional social work curriculum. Very little is known, however, about the heterogeneity of students’ experiences with the implicit curriculum, how this heterogeneity may be distributed across groups of students, and how it may impact students’ professional empowerment. This study used latent profile analysis to identify groups of students based on their experiences with the implicit curriculum in school and field contexts, and it examined differences between profile groups on measures of professional empowerment. Study participants (n = 534) were undergraduate and graduate students of a large school of social work in the northeast. Results revealed that four groups of students could be identified based on their experiences with the implicit curriculum: students who experienced (a) positive school and field environments, (b) positive school but negative field environments, (c) negative school but positive field environments, and (d) negative school and field environments. Profile groups differed significantly on measures of professional empowerment. Implications and directions for future work are discussed

Who cares? Tensions and conflicts from the field of teacher education

In Australia, teacher education is characterised by ever-increasing regulation, from teacher registration bodies, government policy directives, and university administration and procedures (Grossman and McDonald, 2008). Teacher educators' responsibilities to these stakeholders, as well as to their students (pre-service teachers) and the mentor teachers and schools that act as hosts for field placements, create a complex working environment with, at times, conflicting interests. Teacher educators are experiencing a decreasing level of professional autonomy, whilst simultaneously being required to take on an ever-increasing number of roles (Hargreaves, 1994), resulting in work intensification