Building resources for pooling pedagogic practice in social policy

This project was developed by the Social Policy and Social Work Subject Centre (SWAPltsn) and received additional funding from the HE funding councils. It aims to support the work of the centre through mapping teaching practices in undergraduate Social Policy courses and the creation of a pool of knowledge around learning and teaching that is specific to the discipline. Preliminary findings were presented by Pat Young (project manager) and Zoë Irving (researcher) at the annual Social Policy Association Conference in Teeside 16-18 July 2002 in both paper and poster format. The paper focuses upon the issue of 'content' in teaching Social Policy which has emerged from the interview data as a key area of contention and an influential factor in lecturers approach to their work. The significance of questions of breadth versus depth; content versus skills; ideas versus facts has been intensified more recently due to external drivers (QAA, benchmarking, employability and widening participation agendas) and also recruitment problems which have led to a questioning of the nature and future of 'Social Policy' by academics, departments and universities . The paper concludes that as a response to the difficulties associated with 'over-teaching', a collective confidence needs to be generated amongst teachers of Social Policy which would allow less to be seen as more.

Funder: SWAPltsn