Supporting Struggling Students on Placement: A Practical Guide

✍ Scribed by Jo Finch

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 141
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Are you a practitioner, supervisor, practice educator, mentor or university tutor supporting students who are struggling on, or failing, their practice placement? Here is the practical guidance you need. Jo Finch draws on both her own experience training Practice Educators, and international multi-disciplinary research and literature. Chapters examine the signs and symptoms of a struggling student, emotional impact and emotional processes of decision making, and strategies for working effectively with students and academic institutions. Reflective exercises enable you to bring these methods to your own practice. The ideas here will further knowledge and engender confidence for any teachers, assessors and supervisors on courses with a practice learning component.

✦ Table of Contents

SUPPORTING STRUGGLING STUDENTS ON PLACEMENT
Contents
Reflective exercises
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The genesis of the book
Concerns about practice learning
Terminology
Struggling, marginal, borderline or failing?
Aims and scope of the book
1. The context of practice learning and assessment across professions
Introduction
The importance of practice learning
Developments in social work education
Practice education developments
Further social work education developments
Concerns about practice learning
What is practice learning and assessment?
The challenges of assessing practice
A failure to fail?
Chapter summary
Further reading
2. How do we know when a student is failing to achieve the required standards?
Introduction
Learning processes
Temporary blocks to learning
How do we know if a student is at risk of failing?
Limitations of the trait approach
What is it to ‘fail’ the placement?
Failing placements and practice educators?
Chapter summary
Further reading
3. The emotional impact of working with a struggling student
Introduction
Failing
Why am I a practice educator?
Psychodynamic theory
Early experiences of education
Debrief
Failing and feelings
Emotional challenges
Possible impact on the assessment process
Getting in touch with feelings of failure
Emotional processes and models
Chapter summary
Further reading
4. Assessment and strategies for working effectively with struggling students
Introduction
The role of the practice educator
The role of the tutor
The role of the student
‘Saying it as it is’ or having courageous conversations
Using the assessment framework well
Teaching and learning tools
Concerns meetings and action planning
Writing the assessment report
A reluctance to fail?
Strategies for avoiding the drama and pain
Discrimination and oppression
Chapter summary
Further reading
5. Working constructively with key stakeholders in social work education
Introduction
Anger and blame
Practice educators
Tutors
Understanding the dynamics of field–academy relationships
Ten essential building blocks for constructive working relationships
Chapter summary
Further reading
Conclusion
Introduction
The contested nature of professions
The emotions of teaching and learning
Anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice
From struggling to failing?
Unfinished business?
The good fail?
Wider applications?
Fifteen steps to working effectively with (struggling) students on placement
Final words
References
Index