Building a mutual-help community: Young social work teachers’ self-rescue action

Abstract

The higher education system has marginalized the young educators. Young educators in the field of social work are in a much worse situation. Research indicates that young social work educators are facing three types of significant challenges: lacking teaching experience and social support; lacking academic research skills and facing great pressure from getting paper published; lacking professional knowledge and practical experience. This paper adopts action research to explore how to build a mutual self-help community among young social work educators who are experiencing similar challenges. Also, the process of the authors’ experience of building a mutual-help community will be elaborated in detail: forming the initial idea of building a mutual-help group based on past experience, upgrading the occasional gatherings to a book club, facilitating mutual-help actions, facilitating collective actions, expanding a small team to a big community. Although the young social work educator mutual-help community has brought about some positive changes and helped mitigate distress temporarily, it doesn’t solve the problem permanently. Building a mutual-help community for self-help is, in fact, our last-ditch move. So, we are looking forward to embracing a bright future when there will be a structural improvement in China’s social work education.