Gatekeeping and social work

Abstract

Social work educators have an ethical responsibility to screen out students who are underperforming in a process known as gatekeeping. Gatekeeping is seen as a screening tool to prevent underperforming students from entering the field of social work. Field education represents an area where social work students are able to develop and demonstrate the necessary skills needed to work as professional social workers. When field placements are terminated, the results can be devastating for everyone involved. This qualitative study explored the experiences of nine field supervisors and one faculty consultant who had experienced an underperforming field placement student at some point in their careers. Ten semi-structured interviews were conducted with social workers who supervise placement students from northern and rural regions of Ontario both in person and over the telephone over a five-month period. The resulting data was then analyzed using the six-step approach developed by Tutty, Rothery, and Grinnell (1996). The results indicate that there are a variety of challenges identified by field placement supervisors when acting as gatekeepers of the social work profession. Discussions of the results, the implications for the field of social work, as well as recommendations, are presented.