Framing Doctoral Education for a Science of Social Work

Social work education grounded in social work practice has been recently challenged to examine the role of science in its history, core constructs and domains, philosophical underpinnings, and graduate curriculum. Doctoral education has been added to the scrutiny at the recent Science in Social Work Roundtable in Doctoral Education. Based on Lev Vygotsky’s scaffolding approach to facilitate learning, this article discusses doctoral student education with the four stages of (1) positioning doctoral students for a scientific career, (2) promoting doctoral students as scholars of the academy, (3) promulgating doctoral students as scientists of the profession, and (4) preparing doctoral student to be stewards of the discipline.