(Un)common core competencies

Abstract

The School of Social work at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa consists of three programs – BSW, MSW, & PhD with 23 full time Instructional and Specialist faculty. Thirteen of the 23 faculty have 50% or more of their time designated to teaching. Classroom Instruction is also provided by adjunct faculty who are vetted through a review process to assure their credentials meet the requirements to teach a specific course. The BSW and MSW programs are both accredited by the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) that uses the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) to guide curriculum that supports academic excellence towards professional mastery. The curriculum is based on 10 Core Competencies, the student learning outcomes, that are operationalized through practice behaviors (PBs) for both the BSW and MSW foundation curricula, and advance practice behaviors (APBs) for the MSW concentration curriculum in the advanced year. As a mandate of accreditation, a bi-annual assessment summary is posted on our website showing the degree to which our students have progressed toward mastery of the 10 Core Competencies (SLOs). This poster presents these SLOs, a sample of an assessment instrument which was developed to gather evidence from three relevant but different data sources (e.g., classroom instructors, field instructors, and students), and sample assignments for the BSW and MSW programs.