Writing about social work education: A content analysis of Australian Journal articles 1983–1993

Journals are a prime means of documenting and disseminating the knowledge base and scholarly output of a profession, with social work educators having a particular responsibility to add to their profession's accumulated knowledge. As with any field, social work education can benefit from review and assessment of its journal output. With this aim, the authors analysed articles with social work education as their prime focus published in Australian Social Work and Advances in Social Welfare Education in the period 1983–93. This article reports on and discusses the findings of this content analysis which examined the numbers of articles written; the authors and their academic affiliations; the content of the articles and the methodological approaches used. It was found that 141 authors were represented across 100 articles. Significant omissions in content are discussed including the lack of research on social work education and dearth of writing on postgraduate and continuing education.