Measuring Competence in Social Work: A Tribute to the Contributions of Marion Bogo

Abstract

ABSTRACT Professor Marion Bogo’s stellar academic career was distinguished by her long-standing advocacy for high quality assessment of social work students. Her work was a driving force behind the development of meaningful, authentic and relevant field assessment that incorporates specific, definable, observable skills with higher-order thinking. This article briefly describes assessment of competencies and two conceptual issues identified as limitations in assessing social work students in the field: 1) effective clinical performance involves not merely a set of isolated skills but also broader conceptualizations of practice (meta-competencies); and 2) field instructors’ relationships with students introduce limitations on the use of available assessment tools. We then describe efforts to develop authentic tools intended to capture field instructors’ observations of their students.