This paper explores the application of a 'signature pedagogy' in the teaching of critical social work theory and practice on a social work undergraduate course at a Swedish university. Feedback from students over four terms, together with a one-off reflection focus group, provided relevant information that suggests that a signature pedagogical framework has value within the discussion of teaching critical theory practice and methods. The key arguments and findings found in this paper center on the interconnection between a pedagogical framework, the course in question, and the feedback from the students. The conclusion points to the argument that using a signature pedagogical framework can provide a guide to teaching critical social work and practice on a social work undergraduate course.

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This research seeks to explore the experiences of social work educators and students working and learning from home. The findings, from an international survey sample of 166 educators and students, showed that the respondents faced issues with private and personal boundaries, felt the impact of working and learning from home on both physical and emotional levels, and experienced challenges to what was expected of them. The respondents primarily used two types of coping mechanisms to manage these challenges. These findings contribute to a broader discussion of the impact of working and learning from home and are relevant for education administrators responsible for their employees’ and students’ well-being.

INTRODUCTION: Course evaluations play a significant part in the facilitating of educational programmes at a university. Along with course evaluations, students are often asked for their reflections on teachers’ pedagogical methods and approaches. These types of questions canbe referred to as student evaluations of teaching, or SETs. Separately, there is growing, yet underdeveloped, interest in understanding the emotional impact the role of being a university lecturer has on the individual teacher. This piece of work is interested in combining the areasof teacher development, SET and emotional impact. Therefore, this research is seeking to understand how teachers in a department of social work engage with student feedback, manage this feedback and understand pedagogical self-development.METHODS: A mixed approach (an online survey and semi-structured interviews), was taken to gather the experiences of the teachers.FINDINGS: The results show that all the teachers engaged with student feedback. It also showed that some teachers experienced negative emotions regarding feedback that were unpleasant but had strategies to deal with the feedback.CONCLUSION: The results also pointed towards individual-directed solutions as the drivers behind creating good practices around pedagogical self-development, and for managing any emotional impact of SETs.

This paper explores power relations in the classroom and subsequently seeks to re-work empowerment as a theory for practice. The discussion is located in a practice setting where an intervention for school children with behaviour and concentration difficulties, delivered by the author, was researched as part of his doctoral thesis. The works of Michel Foucault, seen in this paper as a post-structuralist, are tied together with those of the pragmatist John Dewey in an effort to re-work an understanding of empowerment that can withstand current social work practice tensions of power and control. This theoretical argument is illustrated by referring to qualitative data gathered from vignette interviews conducted with the students at two time points in the research. The concluding position in this paper is one of seeing empowerment in a more robust manner that can incorporate a post-structuralist understanding of power relations and yet allow space for the possibility and development of human agency.