What is Practicum (Field Education)?

Practicum, also called field education or field placement, is the supervised hands-on training component of your social work education and the primary means of socializing students to the social work profession. Practicum and classroom learning are interrelated and of equal importance in developing the competence required for professional social work practice. This dual approach is central of social work education.

Throughout your program, you will take complementary classroom and practicum-based courses concurrently. This allows you to bridge the knowledge, values, and skills taught in the classroom into your practice setting, and to share experiences from practicum back to the classroom. Both are required courses for which you will receive credits and grades, and both must be passed to graduate.

What You’ll Learn in Practicum

Core Competencies

You will develop the nine core social work competencies established by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE). Each competency includes specific practice behaviors, the knowledge, skills, values, and cognitive and affective processes that effective social workers demonstrate. Working with your Field Instructor, you will identify learning opportunities at your placement site that allow you to demonstrate growth in each competency.

Diverse Practice Experience

You will gain experience working with a diverse range of people and systems, learning to understand how clients’ intersecting and social identities shape their experiences, strengths, and needs.

Equity and Inclusion

All practicum work centers on social justice, equity-centered, inclusive, and non-discriminatory practices, values, and action. You will learn to understand social welfare and social work practice within larger community contexts.

Professional Values and Ethics

Your Field Instructor models social work values and ethics and provides instruction about their implications for practice. Through critical thinking and self-reflective learning, you will actively question theory and practice as part of your professional growth.

The Learning Partnership

A Shared Commitment

The UW School of Social, community agencies, and you as a student share a common commitment to practicum. Through your involvement, you provide meaningful service to the agency and the community while developing as a social work professional.

A Teaching Partnership

We emphasize a teacher-student learning partnership through your practicum. You and your Field Instructor work together in educational assessment, creating your Learning Agreement, and completing Quarterly Evaluations. Professional growth requires both students and Field Instructors to actively question theory and practice through critical thinking and self-reflective learning.

For more information about practicum, please refer to Section 1, page 5 of the UW SSW Practicum Manual.