Chinese Students' Learning Experiences and Understanding of Social Work in China and Australia

Abstract

The Chinese Central Government has focused significant attention on the social work profession as a pivotal solution to address social issues and tensions resulting from rapid social and economic development. In 2006, the Chinese Government announced an ambitious target of educating a workforce of three million social workers by 2020. Even when, subsequently, this number was halved, it continues to remain an ambitious goal. To achieve the new target of 1.5 million social workers, graduates from associated disciplines are allowed to become social workers by taking the Professional Level Examination. Despite these measures, and although social work in China is advancing rapidly, the social work profession remains relatively underdeveloped. China faces many challenges in developing both social work education and the profession itself. This thesis argues that to meet these challenges, Chinese social work needs to experience an indigenisation and a professionalisation process to adapt Western values, theories, and knowledge into the Chinese cultural, social, and political contexts. Three main issues relate to this process of indigenisation and professionalization: social work’s low status, a lack of knowledge about the profession, and its blurred professional roles in China. These factors have led to reluctance by many Chinese students to study and practise social work. Little is known about the experiences of Chinese social work students who have straddled both Western and Chinese education boundaries, with their different learning styles and practices. This study investigated Chinese undergraduate students’ experiences of learning social work in both a China-based program and in a joint China-Australia program, by asking two research questions. Why and how do Chinese students learn social work in China and in Australia? What is Chinese students’ understanding of the social work profession both in China and in a cross-cultural context? This research draws on participants within a joint social work program between GU and CCNU, the first collaborative initiative at the undergraduate level (CCNU, 2019) and established in 2011 with a collaborative Bachelor of Social Work program to deliver a 2 plus 2.5-year joint degree program between China and Australia. This study recruited participants from two cohorts of Chinese students. One cohort studied exclusively in China, while the other studied first in China and then in Australia. From 2014 to 2015, a qualitative study with an insider approach was adopted. Data were collected from several stages of semi-structured interviews with two cohorts of participants over 1.5 years of learning in China and in Australia. Data were first transcribed in Chinese, then translated into English, and converted into NVivo for analysis. Six steps of thematic analysis were applied, from familiarisation with the data, coding, searching for themes, reviewing (including translating)) and refining. The study concludes that participants reported five different reasons for studying social work, with only one student who studied social work because of an interest in the profession. In regard to how they learned social work, five components emerged that were used to compare and contrast between Chinese and Australian universities, namely classroom learning experiences, experiences of undertaking assessment, teacher and student relationships, support systems, and challenges in learning. In terms of how participants learned social work in practice, the application of learning emerged with two themes including the ability to use theory in practice and learning influenced values. In relation to the second research question regarding students’ understanding of the profession, the study found three perspectives and the results on professional identity. The first perspective reported participants’ perceptions of social work with two themes. The second perspective was the influence of the government on the role of social work, and two themes were reported. The third perspective related to incongruities in values and ethics, and two themes emerged. The study has concluded that the weak professional identity that both cohorts developed led to their reluctance to choose social work as a future career. Although a relatively small study in terms of number of participants, this research has some implications for social work education in both China and Australia. It concludes that Chinese universities would benefit from improved promotion of social work to assist Chinese students to understand the profession and that Chinese social work education could adopt five possible changes to provide students with practiceoriented learning in the Chinese context. It also concludes that Australian universities could provide more specific and tailored assistance to Chinese students to enable them to participate fully in their education.