Value Integration amongst Students of Social Work: Challenges and Way Forward

Values form an integral component of the social work profession. In fact, values provide the framework within which social work professionals make decisions and create meaningful and inclusive interventions for their client systems. Consequently, facilitating and promoting value integration must comprise the core component of teaching and learning in this profession. In its early stages of progression, a quest for acceptance shifted the primary thrust of professional social work to developing a scientific knowledge base and skills, at the expense of focusing on its values. Over time, factors such as value plurality, limited ‘values’ focus and pedagogical challenges in values training, and the dominance of generic, universal, and Western value sets emerged as significant roadblocks in values-based practice. The authors contend that this has led to an ongoing diminution of values teaching and integration in schools of social work, made more critical in the contemporary neoliberal context of professional practice. Based on a descriptive exploratory research study, the paper focuses on a school of social work in Delhi, India. It assumes a critical view of the value transactions that take place in the classroom and field settings and explores the manner in which values are imbibed and practised by the students; the challenges and ethical dilemmas experienced by them; and the mechanisms deployed by them to resolve such dilemmas. Centred on the perspectives of students and educators, the paper examines the nature and process of value integration. It proposes ways to consolidate the value base of social work education and practice.