SS2105 Introduction to Social Work

Part I

Course Duration: One semester
Credit Units: 3
Level: B2
Medium of Instruction: English
Medium of Assessment: English
Prerequisites: Nil
Precursors: Nil
Equivalent Courses: Nil
Exclusive Courses: Nil


Part II

Course Aims
As the first introduction course to social work students, this course will introduce to students the core components of social work as a profession, its professional value and ethics, its main theoretical orientation of looking at people’s needs and problem in a person-in-environment or ecological perspective, its practice in a process model, its goal of training beginning social workers as generalist social workers and the need for social workers to be cultural sensitive.
This course introduces students to:

1. The generic and generalist base of social work including its value, ethnics, goals and methods of  Social Work practice;
2. The eco-systems perspectives in analyzing and assessing the needs and problems of individuals, families, groups and communities;
3. The process model of social work helping in social work practice;
4. The cultural dimension in social work practice.

Course Intended Learning Outcomes (CILOs)
Upon successful completion of this course, students should be able to:

Teaching and Learning Activities (TLAs)
(Indicative of likely activities and tasks designed to facilitate students’ achievement of the CILOs. Final details will be provided to students in their first week of attendance in this course)

TLA1: Lectures
This is an introduction course to social work as a profession as well as a theoretical perspective to human problems and social services. Students have to understand the core components which contribute to make social work a professional as well as an academic subject. From individual values to the construct of social problems, students need to reveal their own personal values and have to understand the macro theories which contribute perspectives to understand social problems. Lectures will be used as the major media to introduce these personal and social perspectives.

TLA2: Tutorials and small group discussions
Tutorials are designed to facilitate students to discuss in smaller groups and in a personal participatory way about social work values, ethics, ecological perspectives and cultural awareness. All topics are run in the way that students will learn these concepts from a personal stance to a societal level, finally making a connection which is similar to the social work perspective, that all individual and social problems are interrelated in an ecological and systematic way.

TLA3, 4: Audio visual materials and case demonstrations
To stimulate students’ interest to further understanding the link between person and environment in a ecological way, audio visual materials including television series and movie scripts are used in lectures to demonstrate some unique features of social work values, ethnics and other theoretical concepts. Case demonstrations and stories are also used to stimulate students’ interest in lectures.

Assessment Tasks/Activities
(Indicative of likely activities and tasks designed to assess how well the students achieve the CILOs. Final details will be provided to students in their first week of attendance in this course)

AT1: Quiz
A quiz is designed to test students’ knowledge and understanding of the core common base of social work including its professional values and ethics and major theoretical concepts which are essential for them to be able to work towards a registration to the profession.

AT2: Short papers
Two short papers will be either on social work values, ecological orientation of social work or social work process model will be designed for students to deepen their understanding on those core elements through paper writing and to encourage them to develop interest to a wider spectrum of topics.

Grading of Student Achievement
Standards (A+AA-…F). Grading is based on student performance in assessment tasks/activities.


Part III

Keyword Syllabus
Values and ethnics; values and ethnics in dilemma; social system; ecological; ecosystem; person-in-environment practice and adaptation; generic and generalist bases of social work practice; social work process models; social work as a response to social problems; cultural dimensions of social work practice.