The Post-Modern Student: Piloting Through Uncertainty

The differences between present-day post-modern students and educators from older generations require changes in educational approach, but also challenge post-modern trends. Students' postmodern experiences may lead them to seek individuality among diverse sources of identity, seeing knowledge as a throwaway consumption good, and education promotes flexibility and "edutainment." However, professional education trains people for structured managerialist organisations and the accumulation of shared professional knowledge. Social work education needs to be reframed as a process of emergence in which educators and students work jointly to create knowledge and identity in their professional area. To operate in an increasingly complex and changing society, students need to create a strong professional identity and learn how to transfer knowledge and values from one situation to an other. In this way, social work education connects with the Danish managerial concept of "chaos pilots" in which students are prepared to deal with cultural and social change.