Fieldwork is a key component of social work education and so a book that introduces students, practitioners, and academics to fieldwork with a global lens is timely and extremely welcomed. Introducing the readers to current practices and concerns from Europe, North and South America, Australia, and Oceania this handbook gathers key issues shared by the international community to provide effective and innovative fieldwork. As an international profession it is crucial that social work students receive up to date, relevant and innovative information that will inform their training and their future practice and to make connections with the global community of social workers and link its practice with current thinking and debates. As this book includes voices from many countries and perspectives it invites readers to think both locally and globally about undertaking the linkage of practice with theory as a crucial element of fieldwork. Informed by theory and evidence-based practice this timely and much need book identifies the challenges and its future directions. In pursuit of social justice practice this book makes an important contribution to 21st-century fieldwork for the education of social workers across the globe. I thoroughly recommend its inclusion into the global and national social work curricula.
Carolyn Noble, Professor of Social Work, Australian College of Applied Psychology, Sydney, Australia
This Handbook is an impressive and important contribution to promote sustainable futures of field work education. It actualises the complexity of becoming social worker across entangled local, national, and global contexts. The reading awakened memories and questions from my own field placement as a student and teacher for international field work education. How had textbooks prepared me to work towards anti-oppression, capacity building, hope and creativity? What did I know about the geopolitical history of my place(ment)? How could I practice critical reflexivity to un-learn privilege and change oppressive structures? This book demonstrates the richness and multiple forms of social work, where structural privilege and marginalization, but also resistance and innovation, shapes spaces for field work education. As a contribution to global social work education, I warmly recommend it to be read through the lens of glocality, a fusion of local and global, that promotes seeing the many contributions as interlinked across communities and regions in the world.
Mona B. Livholts, Professor of Social Work, University of Helsinki, Finland; Executive Board Member European Association of Schools of Social Work, EASSW
