Failing a social work practice placement: Differences between male and female students across Ireland

Abstract

This paper reports findings of a secondary analysis of quantitative and qualitative data gathered during a larger study of social work students who failed a practice placement during the years 2015-2019 in four Irish Universities. The study highlighted an over-representation of males in the sample (Authors’ Own, 2021) but did not examine gender differences in detail. This paper sets out to address this deficit by exploring differences between male and female students who failed a practice placement.
 
 The findings are limited in explaining the disproportionately high rate of fail outcomes for male students but do highlight some differences between males and females in terms of reasons for failure. Firstly, males had significantly fewer recorded reasons for failure than females. Secondly, different combinations of reasons for a fail recommendation were found between males and females. Moderately significant associations, for example, were found between being female and having poor written work and poor reflection cited as reasons for failure and males were more likely to fail due to poor professional conduct.
 
 These findings are discussed with reference to previous studies, concluding that further research is required to better understand why males are more likely to fail practice placements than their female counterparts.