Building a Framework for Student Learning: Helping Others to Benefit from Your Experience

1. Doreen Klee, LCSW, MAJCSUCLA Field Faculty Specializing in Macro Practice in Health and Aging dklee@luskin.ucla.edu Building a Framework for Student Learning: Helping Others to Benefit from Your Experience

2. www.socialworkleadership.org Erecting the Scaffold* Essential Elements of Good Supervision *Scaffolding is the process that makes it possible for a novice to solve a problem, carry out a task or achieve a goal which would be beyond his/her unassisted efforts. Scaffolding is usually conceived as the ‘teacher’s actions’ as a kind of social architecture and as a temporary support that is removed when no longer necessary. (Newman, Griffin & Cole, 1989) ((Newman, Griffin & CNewman, Griffin & Cole, 1989)

3. www.socialworkleadership.org Opening the Door • Prior to the Student’s Arrival be Aware of Your Role in Relation to: • Your Student • Student’s university • Your agency • Student’s clients and families • Social Work Community • Agency Introduction: • Explain the organizational context and the student’s social work role • Provide information about the agency, expectations, policies and procedures • Introduce the student to all the “players” • Make sure that the student has adequate work space and access to whatever will be needed to insure success • Student-Field Instructor Orientation: • Set the stage for the field experience • Learn about, and respect, the cultural differences between you and your student • Explore your student’s learning style • Compare and acknowledge your style differences

4. www.socialworkleadership.org Building a Learning Environment: Become your student’s architect and create a learning environment together • Establish Your Role as Both Supervisor and • Teacher Early in the Relationship: • Adhere to regularly scheduled field instruction conferences, provide assignments, and utilize process recordings early in the relationship • Focus on process, not content • Balance performance monitoring with positive supportive feedback and genuine praise • Build in opportunities for self-assessment and “reflecting in action” • Deal with the student’s feelings through cases; if personal therapy is needed, refer out • Help the student focus on the learning cycle, modeling the problem-solving cycle in work with clients; errors are opportunities to learn • Most importantly, create a supportive environment in a climate of mutual respect

5. Fostering Student-Field Instructor Affectional Bonds • Attachment is: • Biological process that describes bonding between infant and caregiver • Types: secure, avoidant, ambivalent, and disorganized • Secure attachment forms a secure base for exploration, creativity and successfully regulating emotions • Quality of early interpersonal experience is a template for later relationship formation • Affectional Bonds: • Are attachment-type behaviors that are to a specific person who has emotional significance and creates a sense of security and comfort • Supervisor who is dependable, available, supportive, open and trusting activates affectional bonds and creates a secure base • A Secure Base is: • Freeing, fosters creativity, allows exploration, and promotes professional identity formation • Promoted by agreed upon goals, tasks and regular meeting times • When a student has a secure base with his/her supervisor, it increases the likelihood of creating a secure base for the client • “A supervisory relationship is a relationship about a relationship about other relationships.”

6. www.socialworkleadership.org Watch Out for Bumps in the Road • Your Self-Awareness: • Examine the impact of your own student experiences • Acknowledge Parallel Process between you and your student • Be aware that you are the model for your student’s interactions and relationship-building with his/her clients “It’s tough to learn from mistakes you never made.” Listen and Reflect: • Good reflection is NOT a mirror (a mirror gives only what it gets) ; it is getting our own experience back through another set of lenses • “A good listener is not only popular everywhere, but after a while he gets to know something.”—Wilson Mizner • Feedback: • Good feedback is concrete, specific, detailed • “I love feedback. I just don’t want to get any of it on me.” –Woody Allen

7. www.socialworkleadership.org AA Supervisor Asks for Feedback. . . A Supervisor Asks for Feedback. . .AA

8. www.socialworkleadership.org Building a Bridge Understanding Learning Styles to Help Your Student Move from Beginner to Competent Practitioner

9. www.socialworkleadership.org Adult Learning Needs & Learning Styles Conditions Needed for Lasting Learning Learning Styles • Goals that clarify the knowledge, skills and attitudes one needs • Ownership of one’s goals and tasks • Access to information and resources • Repeated sequential practice • Opportunities to reflect • Constructive feedback • Trust-based environment with field instructors who are advocates “The enemy of learning is thinking that you already know.” Concrete: Experience and feeling based; people oriented Active: Doing based; involved with activities that test abilities Reflective: Tentative, impartial, observer Abstract: Analytic; logical; rational Active and Concrete(Accommodator): Action oriented; likes new experiences; risk-taker Concrete and Reflective (Diverger): brainstormer; imaginative; can see many perspectives Reflective and Abstract (Assimilator): able to create theoretical models; Inductive reasoner Abstract and Active (Converger): Practical application of ideas; does well when there is one correct answer to a problem Determining your student’s learning style…

10. www.socialworkleadership.org Learning Styles Profile

13. Examining the Adult Learner Stages of Learning for Student and Field Instructor: Acquiring information: Student acutely conscious of self—Field instructor’s role is “security giving” and providing learning tools Practicing new skills: Student in “sink-or-swim” adaptation—Field instructor links past experiences with new learning Reconfiguring and expanding on what is already known: Student attains some knowledge and skill, but mastery lags—Field instructor pushes to link current experiences with new intellectual knowledge and skill development Stimulating learning in new areas: Student achieves relative mastery—Field instructor acts as consultant and guide Supporting colleague: Student achieves mastery and begins to teach others—Field instructor mentors and consults, as requested Learning can be: ○ Intentional ○ Incidental ○ Serendipitous ○ Step-by-step progression ○ Trial and error ○ Spontaneous ○ By accident ○ By mistakes “To know without doing is not to know. To do without knowing is not to do. The future belongs to the learners, not the doers.”

14. www.socialworkleadership.org Stages in the Building of an Internship

15. Field Instructor’s Blue Prints Issues and Feelings Tasks • Define goals clearly and specifically • Develop realistic set of expectations • Explicate, examine, critique assumptions • Feel the impact of presenting issues • Identify feelings and their results • Work through issues • Re-examine expectations, goals and skills • Keep working through issues • Focus on excellence, not perfection • Manage surfacing conflicts between home, school, internship, job, friends • Focus on feelings and express them • Find satisfying ways to say good-bye Anticipation: Hope mixed with anxiety about role, responsibilities and competence Disillusionment: Gap between anticipation and reality causes frustration, discourage- ment, dip in morale Confrontation: Resolving issues raised in previous stage increases self-empowerment, independence, effectiveness Competence: Transition from apprentice to professional stimulates morale, sense of accomplishment, and investment Culmination: Endings marked by sadness, pride, guilt, anxiety and avoidance

16. www.socialworkleadership.org Assembling the Edifice Infusing Knowledge about Aging Skills and Competencies into Practice

17. www.socialworkleadership.org Laying a Good Foundation Suggestions at the Placement Site for Helping the Student to Gain Knowledge about the Agency and Community Resources for Older Adults • Agency/Community Scavenger Hunt • Create questionnaire that must be completed by student to introduce him/her to staff and their responsibilities • Arrange visits to nearby resources that are peopled by older adults • Interview staff and volunteers to understand why they choose to work with older adults • Allow student to spend time at the front desk to experience how older adults are welcomed and processed • Student can call Area Agency on Aging and/or Dept. of Aging and study the Agency’s Resource Directory to become familiar with resources in the community that offer similar or related services • Have student interview older adult consumers to learn about the services received and their satisfaction levels • Offer shadowing opportunities with other members of the staff • Give student intake responsibilities early in his/her field experience • In lieu of one process recording, have student interview and journal about the life experience of one consumer/client

18. The Right Tools: Competency Driven Field Education • A competency-driven field education program for geriatric social work is one where field experiences are based on standards, or competencies, that are informed by values and knowledge, specifically related to geriatrics and social work. It requires the following elements: • Adoption of a defined set of specific skill competencies for geriatric social work • Identification of student learning goals based on the competencies • Use of competencies to plan student learning, including selection of site, rotations and assignments • Integration of class and field work through a competency-based curriculum and didactic seminars that integrate classroom learning with learning in the field • Assessment of student progress by measuring skills at the beginning of field and upon completion of field • Consideration of rotations, either within an agency or between agencies • to enhance student learning and experiences • Provision of interdisciplinary opportunities, when possible

19. Field Instructor as Contractor: Competency Skills Supported by the Field Experience Competency Domain I. Values and Ethics II. Assessment • Individual and Family • Programs and Policies III. Practice and Intervention Theory and Knowledge • Individual and Family • Programs and Policies IV. Interdisciplinary Collaboration V. Evaluation and Research Skill Example Assess personal bias/values regarding aging Respect diversity among older adult clients Adapt interviewing methods to older adult needs Assess functional needs of family/caregiver Assess organization effectiveness Identify gaps/barriers in service delivery systems Apply bio-psycho-social theories in practice with clients Understand laws and policies related to clients Set realistic/mutual goals sensitive to individual capacity Develop clear, timely appropriate service plans Incorporate a full continuum of services Use strategies that empower older adult, family, community Collaborate with other health/allied professions Advocate on behalf of client Evaluate practice/programs for effective outcomes Incorporate evaluation outcomes into programs/policies

20. Establishing a Partnership Between the University as Architect and the Agency as Contractor www.socialworkleadership.org • University-Community Partnerships: • Reduce “disconnect” between practice and education communities Universities bring expertise in theory, educational methods, and research to the agency Agencies contribute knowledge about realities of practice, skills needed, and educational opportunities and methods at the school • Field instructor and student share student’s curriculum, searching for opportunities to connect classroom learning with field experience • Field instructors serve as adjunct instructors and/or guest speakers in the classroom, sharing real scenarios that bring theories to life • Field instructors participate in integrative seminars, give talks at brown bag lunches and provide consultation and training at allied field agencies • Consortiums of community institutions, field agencies, and university faculty meet around a common goal of educating future practitioners, resulting in: • Curricular improvements • Greater faculty understanding of service delivery systems, resources, and needs • Increased agency practitioner knowledge of aging and assessment and intervention skills • Heightened awareness of service gaps and strengthening of services across agency boundaries through increased collaboration among agencies

21. www.socialworkleadership.org Ensuring a Structure that Lasts An Example of an Aging Partnership: Geriatric Social Work Education Consortium (The GSWEC Model)

22. GSWEC: Conceptual Framework for Geriatric Social Work Practice Required Best Practices: Functional Geriatric Assessment, Interdisciplinary Teamwork, Case Management, End of Life Care

23. www.socialworkleadership.org GSWEC Examples of Didactic Learning Seminars Group Opportunities for Integrating Theory and Practice Clinical Seminars • Biological/Physical Perspectives on Aging • Psychological Considerations in Work with Older Adults • Social Issues when Working with Aging Adults and their Families • Understanding Diverse Populations • End of Life Issues Macro Seminars • Program Planning, Development and Evaluation • Organization Administration • Community Organization GSWEC Graduation Celebration • Poster Presentations Highlighting Student Macro Capstone Projects