Cautionary Tales From Beginning Practitioners: The Fate of Personal Models of Social Work in Beginning Practice

Abstract

Summary: The relationship between professional education and beginning practice is examined by considering whether the personal models of social work developed and reviewed by the individual during social work education survived the transition from student to autonomous practitioner. Fifteen University of Queensland social work graduates were engaged in a task of making explicit their personal models of social work, by way of repertory grid technique, in their first eight months of employment. The repertory grid was used as a conversational tool to monitor the development of and changes in their personal models of social work. The social workers were thus engaged in a process consciously reflecting on the meaning of, and the reasons for, these developments and changes. Whilst the study found that personal models do survive the transition to social work practice, it also highlighted areas of concern. On the whole graduates did not feel prepared for work, and the initial period of practice was one of considerable difficulty. Many experienced considerable difficulty in subsuming the organizational context within their personal model of social work.