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Putting practice at the heart of social work education: can practice skills be reliably graded by different markers in child and family social work contexts?

  • Alison Domakin
    ,
  • Donald Forrester
Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Abstract

The Frontline programme is a social work qualification route, in England, which began in 2014. Students are based in statutory child and family contexts supported by an academic staff member and practice educator. The assessment strategy on the programme includes seven graded observations of students engaging in social work, marked by both staff. This paper investigates reliability of grading of direct practice between different markers on the programme. It reports findings for 30 recordings of direct observations of practice that were graded during the first cohort. These included observations graded by an academic and by a practice educator. Each was independently then graded by an academic, blind to the original score or who marked it. An acceptable level of reliability was found between the independent grader and the first mark (r =.621). In general the level of agreement was higher between the independent grader (a social work academic) and academics. In comparison, practice educators tended to give higher grades to students. Nonetheless, overall the reliability of marking suggests it is possible to agree on marks for students, which points to the potential for grading of practice to be more widely used in social work education.

Publication Information

Output type

Research Output: Contribution to journal Article Peer-review

Original language

English

Pages from-to (Number of pages)

Pages 66-77

Journal (Volume, Issue Number)

Social Work Education (Volume 37, Issue 1)

Publication milestones

  • Accepted/In press - 23/08/2017
  • Published - 08/10/2017

Publication status

Published - 08/10/2017

ISSN

0261-5479

External Publication IDs

  • handle.net: 10547/624560
  • Scopus: 85030861131

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