When Europe’s East, West, North and South Meet: Learning from Cross-Country Collaboration in Creating an International Social Work Master Programme

Abstract

This chapter considers the shared learning about international social work gained through participation in a multi-country collaborative project to develop a joint Master programme. The Master programme ‘Advanced Development in Social Work’ is delivered by partner universities from five different EU countries: Denmark, United Kingdom, Portugal, France and Poland. The chapter considers the learning gained by both the University of Warsaw as a Central European partner and the wider team. It emphasises that discussing and comparing national systems were a vital part of reflexivity and critical thinking about innovation in social work. We recommend that understanding of differences in social work between countries should be incorporated into an overall concept of international social work that values local context and diversity. We argue that international collaboration should not start from ‘preconceptions’ that partners represent distinctive national systems of social work or contribute ‘national perspectives’ to international projects. Differences between countries are more complex and nuanced than implied by labels like ‘post-socialist’ or dichotomies like East/West and North/South.