Constructing Supervisory Practices and Knowledge for Social Work Education in India.

Abstract

Social work education has been in India for eight decades, and there are more than 600 registered social work schools. The field practicum section of the curriculum was only formally developed at the national level in 2001 by social work educators from across India. Still, the experiences and the related empirical evidence that formed the basis of the curriculum do not appear to have been documented. New challenges emerge with changing organizational, professional and social environments in current times, while empirical studies and development of field education theory continue to be on the fringes of social work education. Supervision which is considered critical to the development of social work professionals is varied in practice across the country and has a weak theoretical and practical understanding. This article proposes to map the fieldwork education contexts and practices in India as they have evolved historically and, against this backdrop, understand the development of epistemic communities related to field education in India. This would be traced by consolidating and critically reviewing the literature produced over time in the Indian context. The article proposes identifying ways to facilitate the development of supervision theory and thereby strengthen field education and supervision in India.