RHODEISLANDCOLLEGE

SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK

LEARNING CONTRACT:

SECOND YEAR MSW MACRO CONCENTRATION STUDENTS

This is your personal plan that will structure this year’s field placement. It guides you and the agency and helps assure that your learning needs are addressed. You and your field instructor should use it weekly to assess your progress together.

Student’s name:

Phone(s):

E-mail(s):

Field placement agency’s name:

Phone:

Address:

Primary MSW field instructor’s name and degree:

Phone(s):

E-mail(s):

Secondary field instructor’s name and degree:

Phone(s):

E-mail(s):

Is this placement in the student’s employing agency: ___yes ___no

If yes, please attach the written plan describing how the field placement and the job are separated (e.g., the hours for each, where the student sits for each, who supervises each)

Every second year MSW student must spend 300 hours each semester in the placement.

Date on which the placement begins:

Date on which the placement ends:

Days and hours each week for the student to be in placement:

Every student must receive two hours per week of field instruction supervision. One hour must be uninterrupted one-on-one with the primary MSW field instructor. The second hour may be either group or individual with either the primary or secondary field instructor. Please specify the days of the week, times and with whom field instruction supervision occurs:

First hour:

Second hour:

Every student must complete a minimum of two process recordings each semester. Please specify the dates when these are due:

Fall semester: first ______second ______

Spring semester: first ______second ______

Please specify the agency’s expectations of the student regarding holidays,illness, personal leave requests, make-up time for time lost, coverage during absences:

Skills all 2nd year MSW students will work on regardless of track and concentration (clinical or macro):

Relationship, engagement and contracting skills

  1. Engage clients
  2. Explain my role clearly
  3. Interact well with co-workers and collaterals

Skills for responding to diversity and oppression

  1. Intervene with people from different ethnic groups
  2. Intervene with people from different oppressed groups

Skills for analyzing and changing agency and social policies

  1. Clearly state how agency policies affect clients
  2. Clearly state how social policies affect clients
  3. Advocate within the agency for clients
  4. Advocate with other organizations on behalf of clients

Skills for integrating research and practice

  1. Use research findings to guide practice decisions
  2. Use research methods to assess client progress

Skills for managing social work values and ethics

  1. Identify my own values
  2. Know what is in the NASW Code of Ethics
  3. Compare agency practices with the NASW Codeof Ethics
  4. Adhere to the NASW Code of Ethics
  5. Identify ethical dilemmas
  6. Use ethical decision making protocols to analyzeethical dilemmas logically
  7. Follow confidentiality guidelines
  8. Obtain informed consent
  9. Maintain ethical boundaries with clients and colleagues
  10. Avoid dual relationships
  11. Avoid conflicts of interest

Skills for integrating theory and practice

  1. Clearly state what theories guide my assessments
  2. Clearly state what theories guide my interventions

Skills for using supervision

  1. Recognize my own feelings
  2. See how those feelings affect mybehavior with colleagues
  3. See how those feelings affect mybehavior with clients

28. Complete at least 2 process recordings each semester

Skills for integrating theory and practice

  1. Clearly state what theories underpin myassessments
  2. Clearly state what theories underpin my interventions

Professional work habit skills

  1. Bewell organized
  2. Complete tasks on time
  3. Complete documentation thoroughlyand accurately
  4. Write grammatically, clearly, logically
  5. Speak clearly, grammatically, logically
  6. Seek supervisory input
  7. Respond to feedback non-defensively
  8. Use feedback
  9. Assert opinions respectfully and clearly

Skills for social work macro practice

(This section is for students who are doing macro work in their field placements)

Use different theories in organizational assessment:

  1. Use organizational life cycle theory
  2. Use political perspectives
  3. Use a structural perspective

Understand the human resource management function in the organization:

  1. Document the organizational structure
  2. Describe/critique the organization’s human resource/personnel policies
  3. Review and assess the organization’s position descriptions
  4. Describe the overall strategies for managing the organization’s staff
  5. Explore the mechanisms used to evaluate employee performance
  6. Recognize staff development opportunities
  7. Understand the role of diversity in staffing

Develop a program or intervention for implementation in the organization:

  1. Define the problem to be addressed
  2. Examine the need for the intervention
  3. Develop a program strategy, goals and objectives
  4. Develop a logic model
  5. Plan a budget
  6. Plan an evaluation strategy

Understand the strategies forfund development in the organization:

  1. Participate in a fund raising activity
  2. Develop a grant for submission to a funder

Understand budgeting and finance strategies in the organization:

  1. Use spreadsheets for budgeting and financial planning
  2. Understand the organization’s budget and operations reports
  3. Recognize how the organization manages liability and risk

Describe the organization’s strategies for implementing change:

  1. Become familiar with the organization’s strategic plan
  2. Observe and/or participate in activities associated with a change intervention in the organization
  3. Critique the activity and overall change efforts in the organization

Assessthe community being served and/or organization in which you are placed:

  1. Develop an asset map to determine where the strengths lie
  2. Identify community and/or organizational goals
  3. Identify barriers or roadblocks to goal achievement
  4. Identify and/or develop strategies for reducing or overcoming the barriers
  5. Involve others in strategy development

Plan for evaluating an existing policy or program:

  1. Determine expected outcomes
  2. Use a logic model to explore the power of planned interventions
  3. Examine or monitor the policy or program’s implementation
  4. Look for evidence of outcome achievement
  5. Make recommendations for change

Recognize leadership stylesthat would contribute to social and economic justice:

  1. Examine leadership styles and skills in the organization
  2. Determine their contribution to achieving social and economic justice
  3. Determine the contribution of your own leadership style and skills
  4. Identify how leadership contributes to or resists needed change
  5. Identify strategies for strengthening leadership commitment to justice

Recognize the organization or community’s culture:

  1. Identify aspects of culture that relate to achieving social and economic justice
  2. Determine how diversity is handled (i.e., how people in the community or organization respond to difference)
  3. Determine the relationships between leadership and culture

Develop a plan for change to achieve a social or economic justice goal:

  1. State the goal to be achieved
  2. Determine who will be involved
  3. Indicate strategies for including individuals and groups in the change effort
  4. Indicate strategies for overcoming resistance

Instructions for writing your learning contract:

Above is the list of skills you will work on this year in field. You may add to that list, based on your unique learning needs. By each skill, specify (a) the learning activity you will engage in to work on that skill and (b) the concrete, observable evidence of your progress in developing that skill.

You may use either an outline or table format. Both are illustrated below.

***

An Example of a Learning Contract That Uses an Outline Format

For example, using the outline format, for the first skill set (“Relationship, Engagement and Contracting”), your personal learning contract might look something like this:

Relationship, Engagement and Contracting Skills

Skill: Engage organizational staff in preparation for job satisfaction survey

Activity: I will contact staff members who are identified by their supervisors to determine their interest in examining staff morale in the organization

Evidence of progress: (1) I will form a team to participate in the survey design and implementation. Names of members will serve as evidence. The team will meet at least bi-weekly and I will maintain notes of our meetings; our progress will be documented in meeting minutes and progress notes. I will write a bi-weekly process recording that addresses issues in my relationships with staff in this group. I will discuss in weekly supervision my relationships and progress with this group and with the survey design and implementation. I will write in a bi-weekly personal journal about how my relationships with the group are going, and share this with my field instructor. [The words in italics are highlighted here to draw your attention to the concrete, observable behaviors that will be used to evaluate the activity]

Skill: Explain my role clearly

Activity: I will record in my progress notes how I have described my role, how often the group will meet, and what tasks we need to accomplish when we meet.

Evidence of progress: My field instructor and I will review my progress notes bi-weekly. I will also do at least one process recording discussing the agreements made for task accomplishment in the group. In my weekly written supervision agenda and log I will record when I discussed relationship, engagement and contracting issues.

Skill: Interact well with colleagues and collaterals

Activity: I will introduce myself to each agency staff member, offer comments in staff meetings, ask questions of agency staff, politely tell people what I need, accept feedback non-defensively

Evidence of progress: In my weekly written supervisory agenda and log I will record seeking feedback from my field instructor about my relationships with colleagues and collaterals. I will write in my weekly journal about issues that emerge in my relationships with other professionals, and discuss this in supervision.

***

An Example of a Learning Contract That Uses a Grid Format

Note: You are welcome, instead of using the above outline format, to use the following grid format if that works better for you:

The skill I will work on / The learning activity I will engage in to work on that skill / The concrete, observable evidence of my progress in developing that skill
Relationship, Contracting and Engagement
Engage staff members in a job satisfaction task force
Explain my role clearly
Interact well with colleagues and collaterals
(and so on….) / >Recruit members for the task force
>Meet at a time that is convenient with staff participants
With each staff member on the task force I will explicitly describe what my role is; I will negotiate how often and where we will meet; we will discuss the agenda for what we will do when we meet
>I will introduce myself to each agency staff member
>I will speak up in staff meetings to ask questions and offer my views
>I will approach staff with my questions
>I will politely tell staff what I need
>I will respond non-defensively to feedback from staff / >Written progress notes for meetings with staff after each contact
>One process recording for each of our meetings regarding an interaction of my choice
>Written supervision agenda and written supervision log will document what I have discussed with my field instructor
>Written weekly task sheets will document what I planned to do and what I accomplished each week in the placement
>Weekly written entry in a personal journal reflecting on my feelings about the work with these residents and the way I have used myself and my skills with them
>Written assessment of the group’s progress in minutes
>Written implementation plan in the file for achieving our goals
>Written progress note
> Process recording
>Discussion of this in supervision, as recorded in supervisory agenda and log
>My weekly written task sheets will keep track of who I’ve talked with
>My weekly written journal will record what I’ve learned from speaking up at meetings and individually with staff, what it’s like to receive feedback

Your approved learning contract must be signed by the following people:

Primary Field Instructor’s signature:Date:

Secondary Field Instructor’s signature (if applicable):Date:

Student’s signature:Date:

Field liaison/academic advisor’s signature:Date:

1

Macro

Edited 9/14