Institutionalizing service-learning as a social work pedagogy: experiences, challenges and contributions to acquisition of competencies

Abstract

Social Work Education (SWE) in the Philippines is a competency-based academic discipline that focuses on the development of student practice behaviors. The goal of SWE is to demonstrate the integration and application of the competencies in practice with various client systems. This is where the SWE of Southern Christian College (SCC) saw the need to adopt service-learning (SL) as a pedagogy that would aid, assess, and enhance students’ readiness for professional practice. Since it is a combination of academic instruction and community service to address identified community needs, SL is viewed to be an effective vehicle to ensure that students apply what they learn from their classes to address real-world problems in communities. This paper will present the process of how SL had been introduced as an academic framework in one of the social work courses in SCC in 2010 and will particularly highlight the experiences, challenges, gains and learning insights. Experiences of students and faculty revolved around their engagements, challenges encountered, personal and professional learning, and social and psychological gains. Based on the data gathered, an SL framework was developed to reflect the practice of SL in the SCC-SWE. In conclusion, SL as a pedagogy in social work education has contributed to the acquisition and development of basic competencies in terms of knowledge, values and attitudes and skills. The gains which service-learners identified superseded the challenges which they encountered along the various phases.