Social Work in China

Social Work in China
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Social Work in China
Social workers across the globe play a vital role in society especially in helping the vulnerable and disadvantaged members. Hence there is need for building and deploying knowledge that is contextualized in order to achieve the ultimate goal of social work education. China is among countries whose social work education is currently in its early stages of development as it seeks to meet needs of the growing economy and the large number of citizens. However, it is important to note that despite the fact that social work was not being taught in schools and colleges, the Chinese people practiced it all along. The only challenge was the contextualization and the building up of the social work knowledge so as to have it as a career that is being taught in schools and colleges. To better pass the knowledge to the next generation, there is need for the Chinese education system to enhance growth in the area for it to be valued as a career.
Ling and Chan (2018) postulate that the Chinese society is one that emphasizes more on practical knowledge than the theoretical knowledge. This has made it difficult to build up a knowledge bank for social workers. Instead, the Chinese society is structured in such a way that knowledge is shared and passed on from one generation to the other through elders and teachers who are considered to be the ultimate source of knowledge. The learning process is based on respect to the elders and educators who are believed to be wiser than the learners. Learners are not expected to question the elders and this is well reflected in the classroom environment as students rely on the educator to gain knowledge. However, one of the limitations with this system of knowledge is that it limits creativity and innovation among learners. This makes it difficult to advance in terms of knowledge as the same learning process is used from one generation to the other.
Through the above-mentioned learning process, theoretical and research knowledge in the social work field is very limited. This has prompted the Chinese to borrow from other literature such as from the western countries such as the United States of America in order for them to build the necessary theoretical knowledge they need for their learners (Yan & Tsui, 2007). However, one of the challenges with such approach is the difficult in contextualization of the knowledge. Also, as earlier mentioned, the Chinese have been practicing social work through the authoritative nature of their systems of government which emp...