Social Work Education during the COVID-19 Pandemic—Challenges and Future Developments to Enhance Students’ Wellbeing

Alexandru-Cosmin Apostol (), Gabriela Irimescu and Mihaela Radoi
Additional contact information
Alexandru-Cosmin Apostol: Department of Sociology and Social Work, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, 700506 Iaşi, Romania
Gabriela Irimescu: Department of Sociology and Social Work, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, 700506 Iaşi, Romania
Mihaela Radoi: Department of Sociology and Social Work, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iași, 700506 Iaşi, Romania

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 11, 1-28

Abstract: As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, educational systems were forced to adapt to the new reality of online learning, causing practical academic specializations, such as social work (SW), to be severely affected. To highlight the perspectives of SW students during the pandemic, we used a mixed sociological approach that combined exploratory qualitative research (using the focus-group technique) with cross-sectional quantitative research. Participants who had both on-site and online SW studies before and after the COVID-19 outbreak were included in the study. The study was conducted during a period when almost all educational activities were held online. We aimed to investigate students’ perceptions of the educational process during the pandemic, how their wellbeing was affected, and their perspectives on educational and professional development. Students identified advantages of online learning, such as discovering online learning tools, and disadvantages, mainly marked by concerns about their career path once practical activities were heavily limited by institutional measures and policies. Our conclusions suggest that in a post-pandemic context, universities should provide continuous feedback, integrate students’ opinions into policies, offer material and technical support, facilitate access to high-quality resources, enrich the SW curricula with resilience programs, and organize peer-to-peer mentoring activities.

Keywords: education; learning; wellbeing; social work practice; COVID-19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/9009/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/9009/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:11:p:9009-:d:1162739

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().