Professional Ideologies and Preferences in Social Work

Weiss, Gal, Dixon, and their contributors provide the first large-scale cross-national and cross-cultural examination of the views and the perceptions of social workers through this analysis of graduating social worker students on the threshold of their careers in social work. They identify and analyze the graduating social work students' attitudes towards the sources of social distress, the preferred ways to deal with social problems, the goals of social work, and their professional preferences with regard to client groups, types of professional activity, and place of work. Since first being practiced more than a century ago, social work has become an international profession and is today an integral part of the social services in many different countries. However, as Weiss, Gal, Dixon, and their contributors make clear, there is a distinct lack of ideological consensus over the goals, tasks, desired technologies, major client groups, the preferred sector in which to operate, and a variety of other issues. Throughout its history, social work has undergone a constant process of change; nonetheless, despite the existence of a common professional core, social work is quite clearly socially constructed and takes very different forms in the various national settings throughout the world. This book provides the first large-scale cross-national and cross-cultural examination of the views and perceptions of social workers through an analysis of graduating social worker students at the threshold of their careers in social work. The country chapters identify and analyze the graduating social work students' attitudes towards the sources of social distress, the preferred ways to deal with social problems, the goals of social work, and their professional preferences with regard to client groups, types of professional activity, and place of work. Experts on social work provide analyses on Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Zimbabawe.

IDIT WEISS is a Lecturer in the Bob Shapell School of Social Work at Tel Aviv University. JOHN GAL is a Senior Lecturer in the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work at the Hebrew University. JOHN DIXON is Professor of International Social Work at the University of Plymouth.