Reflective Practices: Challenges to Social Work Education in Hong Kong

Abstract

This paper discusses the views of three Hong Kong social work practitioners on how they make sense of what they learned at university and how they reconstruct that social work knowledge through reflection on their practice. It suggests that unreflective and uncritical discretion results in social workers making assumptions or imposing their own beliefs, which inhibits their practice. Three issues that are commonly faced by fresh graduates are highlighted in the critical reflections of the three social work practitioners: (1) value conflict; (2) unawareness of the self; and (3) abuse of power in practice. In 2007, the competency‐based approach is still the mainstream approach to social work education in Hong Kong, but as social work educators we should aim to help students to engage in a process of continuous professional reflection whereby they explore multiple ways of framing and understanding a practice situation and hence find alternative ways of knowing and acting in practice.

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