“3-D” challenges of social work knowledge application encountered by the social workers in Mainland China – Implication to social work education.

Abstract

The helping relationship is a core component of social work practice. The difficulties encountered during the practice closely relate to the helping relationship. Many scholars realized the difficulties raised on how the classroom knowledge could be used in actual context through a process of transfer and practice in reality (Tsang, 2014; Bogo, 2010). Since social work is a newly emerged profession in Mainland China, the social work knowledge is mainly adopted from Western social work. Many local scholars realized not only the difficulties of theory and practice application, but also the incompatibility of this Western knowledge and skills. Yet, the discussion was focused on the theoretical one without exploring the views of the frontline social workers. This study aims to identify the challenges faced by the Mainland social workers and how they can handle them. Individual in-depth interviews had been conducted for a group of frontline practitioners. All the respondents acknowledged there were huge gaps between what they learned and what they had to apply the reality. The social work knowledge could not entirely help the respondents to overcome the challenges they faced in the real encounters. 3-D challenges namely “decontextualized, dehumanized, depersonalized” on both knowledge and skills were found. However, the local social workers developed the practice wisdom to tackle these difficulties through assimilation and accommodation. They demonstrated a conscious or unconscious awareness of the Western social work principles but had adapted them to local cultural understanding. Cognitive integration with flexible strategies of merging contextualized knowledge to facilitate the relationship building or ease tensions was adopted. The implication to the indigenization of social work knowledge in social work education in response to the local needs and cultural context would be recommended.