A Generic or Specialist Social Work Education

In a time of rising specialisation within almost all professions there is the danger of losing sight of the unity and connectedness that exists in the real world. Social work, as with other professions, is under pressure to be increasingly specialised both in its education curricula and in practice. At the same time there are many supporters of the generic approach in social work education. There is a need to challenge both the advantages and disadvantages in each of these approaches.

• Should social work follow the mainstream with specialisation in its professional education?
• How are we to ensure the quality of generic education when we are presented with an increasing array of new specialist knowledge and information?
• What kind of comparative European knowledge is available about the Bologna-process-based undergraduate (BA) and postgraduate (MA) phases to enable combinations of generic and specializing education of social work? Is there a model and good practice of combining both approaches?