Building a Competency-Based Curriculum in Social Work Education

The focus on competency in social work education makes the development of a competency-based curriculum critical. This article describes an approach to curriculum building taking into account the integration, coherency, and integrity of such a curriculum. A presentation of how performance outcomes are fundamental to the relationship between the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standard competencies and the assignments designed to assess their attainment is presented. A demonstration of how the alignment of the components of a course reveals integrity in the curriculum is portrayed. How these aspects coalesce to build a competency-based curriculum is illustrated, and how this curriculum fulfills accreditation requirements is presented. The article concludes with the benefits and a cautionary note on this approach to curriculum building in social work education.