Abstract
Field education is lauded as the signature pedagogy of social work education. However it is unclear how new field directors, charged with administering this aspect of social work education, are prepared for leadership of field education. This banded dissertation examines how new field directors assuming field administrative responsibilities, are trained and mentored for the position within the academy.
Three distinct scholarly products make up the banded dissertation. A conceptual paper highlighting the writer’s own experience through a scholarly personal narrative is the first product. A scholarly personal narrative is valuable because it provides perspective drawn from a non-traditional but scholarly approach to traditional research content (Nash, 2004).
The second product is a national quantitative research study of field directors, examining respondent’s experiences with mentoring and training when first starting as a field administrator. The study looked at the experiences of training and mentoring field directors had when first beginning within the academy, using the lens of two ethical standards of the NASW Code of Ethics, standards 104(b) and 3.08.
The final product is a scholarly presentation of the research findings at the Council on Social Work Educations Annual Program Meeting. Another purpose of this scholarly presentation was to present the preliminary research finding utilizing quantitative descriptive analysis of the dependent and independent variables of the study. Recommendations included the use of a training framework to consistency in training all new field directors.