| Abstrakt: |
This small-scale, qualitative, case study, conducted in a Scottish university's department of Education and Social Work, explored the role of professional values in children's services qualifying courses in Community Education, Social Work, and Teacher Education. The courses form the three principal undergraduate courses in the department, with students undertaking several shared modules. In addition, the study aimed to explore the extent to which students and lecturers had a shared understanding of the professional values, encouraged within university teaching and modelled in professional environments during placement. Data were gathered via online questionnaires from students and lecturers. These comprised Likert-scale-type quantitative questions along with questions which required a yes or no response, with a follow-up open text question where participants could explain their views. The open-text responses were analysed using content analysis and these are reported in this paper. Key findings were that participants recognised the importance of professional values as a central tenet of the courses and that most could identify where these were addressed in teaching and learning opportunities. Key tensions were reported by participants between professional and personal values; dilemmas of values in practice; and scope for enhancement of alignment between university values, professional learning and praxis. An overarching theme was identified around the impact of neoliberal politics in higher education and the extent to which institutional values have caused the erosion of professionalism, integrity and autonomy with the imposition of increased workload within a culture of performativity. Recommendations for academic practice include the development of more explicit links between the university and professional contexts and the development of the teaching about values on qualifying courses, regarding how personal values are formed and the role of external influencers in this process, which would be of benefit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
