Grading individual observations of practice in child welfare contexts: a new assessment approach in social work education

Alison Domakin

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Abstract

Students in the Frontline social work qualifying program undertake seven graded observations of practice in child welfare contexts during their qualifying studies. Before the Frontline program, educators had not attempted to implement graded observations of practice in a qualifying program in the United Kingdom. In this paper, we seek to show how graded practice observations have been undertaken in the Frontline program and provide information about the research base informing its development. A summary of findings from three preliminary research studies are presented. We suggest it is possible to grade practice consistently in child-welfare social work. However, we found considerable variation in marks awarded and evidence of grade inflation in all three studies. Using an interpretive lens, we argue that differences between graders should be anticipated because this is a complex assessment task requiring context-dependent judgment. We recommend developing a “consensus discussion” approach to moderation to improve reliability of grading practices, in which graders are encouraged to make the reasoning behind their grading decisions explicit.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 103-112

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Clinical Social Work Journal (Volume 47, Issue 1)

Publication milestones

Published - 27/10/2018

Publication status

Published - 27/10/2018

ISSN

0091-1674

External Publication IDs

handle.net: 10547/624559
Scopus: 85055951482

Access to documents

10.1007/s10615-018-0691-4

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