What’s Happening at Council?
The ACHSWE Meeting was held at Southern Cross University 3/4th February. Key discussion items included:
Advancing Leadership in Social Work Education:
Over the past two years, the Australian Council of Heads of Schools of Social Work (the Council) has focused its activities on leadership in social work education. A key initiative in this strategic agenda was to host an international colloquium at the Monash Prato Centre (September 2016) where leaders in social work education came together to consider solutions to contemporary challenges and to advance social work education across global contexts. The aims of the colloquium were to: progress cutting-edge pedagogy; spearhead international research and collaboration; advance social work within the academy; and equip schools of social work for 21st century practice. Along with international speakers, a number of Australian Council members presented at the colloquium, touching on themes of political leadership, research and development, educating global citizens, and capacity building in the academic workforce.
Council commissioned project:
A major new capacity building initiative is being launched with Council support: ‘The Studio: new generation leadership in Australian Social Work Education’ . The project will consider the state of play of the academic workforce within the discipline, exploring with key stakeholders the constraints and enablers that affect career trajectories. Through a phased approach the project will provide an in-depth consideration of the available literature on academic workforce development at home and away, conduct deep consultation with key stakeholders and review the tried and tested strategies for change in order to develop a multi-tier, multi- level development strategy. The objectives of the Project are:
- To identify current strengths and deficits in the social work research capacity nationally
- To identify mechanisms to strengthen research capacity in the discipline
- To build the infrastructure and processes to facilitate new generation leadership
On behalf of the Council the project will be led by Amanda Howard (the University of Newcastle) and Charlotte Williams (RMIT), both of whom presented at the international colloquium. Updates on progress will be posted on the Council’s website.
New Hot topics series:
The Council have introduced a new series of commissioned presentations focussing on hot topics in social work education. At the February meeting there were presentations on Placement Provision and funding (Flinders University), on ‘Readiness for Placement’ (Griffith University) and on a newly funded ARC Discovery project ‘Advancing the production, utilisation and impact of social work research to generate innovation in human services’ (Griffith University – contact c.tilbury@girffith.edu.au)
Council received reports from:
Australian Journal of Social Work
ANZSWWER (see newsletter on http://www.anzswwer.org/)
National Field Education Network
AASW
The Council next meets on 6th September at Auckland University, New Zealand as part of the ANZSWWER Conference see: http://www.anzswwer.org/
Friday 19th June 2-4pm Online
Leading Social Work Education for local, national and global impact. Contact us for more information.
