Navigating Social Work Field Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges, Benefits and Opportunities

In March 2020, the University of Guyana suspended face-to-face activities, requiring academic programmes and social work field education to reconfigure to virtual modalities. This paper revisits the impact of COVID-19 on social work education to examine the challenges, benefits, and opportunities to lecturers and students. Using a qualitative approach, a document analysis was conducted on lecturers’ journal entries and field notes, and 56 reflective reports submitted by students. The findings revealed self-reports of anxiety, loss of support of practice teachers, disappointment, and burnout. In spite of the challenges experienced, the analysis revealed that the peer-substitution practice dyads allowed students to develop their interpersonal and counselling skills. Additional findings suggest that there were opportunities for lecturers and the Social Work Unit to pilot the use of information communication technologies, create a framework for virtual monitoring of students, and demonstrate their commitment to preserving the signature pedagogy of social work education. We conclude that the COVID-19 pandemic has served as an impetus for the national University to continue exploring and implementing new approaches to advance the growth of social work programmes.