COLLABORATION IN SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK: TEACHERS' PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

In recent years, interprofessional collaboration between teachers and school social workers has been accentuated as a desirable goal by both the education and social work profession. This concern is prevalent in local reports and literature and recently highlighted during a professional seminar on working with students. Thus this study, in an attempt to address this concern, seeks to explore the collaborative relationship in school social work from the secondary school teachers' perspective. The first three chapters of this paper give an introduction and background to the research problem and explanation of how the research is conceptualised. Chapter One traces the literature review to school social work's history and development in both the local and overseas context and emerging themes are delineated. Chapter Two covers the theoretical component of the research, while Chapter Three presents the methodology of the study. The findings in Chapter Four highlight five major themes, covering the roles of teachers in school social, issues in collaborating with the school social worker, views and concerns of teachers, trends in secondary school's youths and tips shared by teachers to engage the youths. Though no definitive answers were gathered, the findings highlight the many areas that the collaborative alliance school social work can be improved. These five themes are discussed in Chapter Five in detail, exploring possible alternatives and suggestions to address the concerns and issues raised. The feasibility of counselling services for teachers is considered. A unifying solution advocating full time school social workers in every school is presented as a summary of the findings and discussion. The difficulties and limitations of the study are also discussed in this chapter. In Chapter Six, the researcher recommends future researchers to further explore and verify the findings generated in this study. The implications for both the social work and education practices are discussed. Thereafter, the researcher's reflections conclude this academic exercise.