Critical Reflection: A Response to Neoliberal Challenges to Field Education?

This paper explores the ways in which neoliberal thinking and practices have impacted upon Australian social work, with a particular emphasis on field education programmes. We outline a number of challenges that neoliberalism presents for maintaining quality field education programmes in social work and, within this context, explore the opportunities for social work educators to respond creatively by using practices informed by critical pedagogy and critical social work approaches. We do this by reporting preliminary findings from original research that examined the possibilities for critical pedagogy and critical reflection to deconstruct myths and counteract some of the consequences of neoliberalism. We position such critical practices as forms of resistance within critical social work programmes, to maintain and protect the integrity and quality of field education in contemporary social work programmes.