Tension and Conflicts in Social Work Education Across the United Kingdom

Abstract

Social work education in the United Kingdom has been undergoing a period of major change since the start of the new millennium in 2000. A series of tensions or forces have been pulling and pushing social work as a professional discipline towards a new professional paradigm both for practice and also in respect of the education for practice. This paper explores a series of tensions which are being played out between pressures that incline towards decentralisation and fragmentation which are in opposition to those which tend to centralise - especially in relation to curriculum, standards and modes of regulation.