Challenges for Field Instructors: Do More with Less, or Less with Less?

Background and Purpose: Social work education relies on agencies to voluntarily provide learning opportunities and supervision that will prepare students for the grand challenges of social work.  However, in the current environment, it is getting more difficult to recruit and retain qualified field sites that support a pipeline of future workforce to meet these challenges.  For example, at our school, between the 2013-2014 academic year and the fall of 2014, more than 70 agencies (23.85% of participating field sites) decided against hosting a student, thus spurring our objective to examine the factors contributing to field instructor retention and attrition. What differences in attitudes about field instruction exist between current and former field instructors? What factors predict field instructor retention and attrition? How do former field instructors rate reasons for declining a student?

Methods: A questionnaire was developed to rate contributing factors in maintaining University and agency partnerships for field instruction. Content validity was established by consulting the literature, previous feedback from field instructors, and a committee of students, faculty, and field office staff. After IRB approval was sought and waived, quantitative and qualitative data were collected from current and former field instructors.  Questionnaires were emailed to 430 field instructors affiliated with a large research university that yielded 151 respondents, 30% of former and 43% of current field instructors responded, with a >35% response rate overall. A t-test was performed to compare differences between current and former field instructors.  A logistic regression was used to analyze predictors for deciding to host an intern.  Qualitative data were coded and inter-rater reliability was established between the first and second reviewer.

Results: Overall results showed no differences between current and former field instructors’ attitudes toward field instruction. However, student availability (e.g. not available for staff meetings, etc.) was consistently significant (p≤ .05) and a distinguishing factor between groups.  The primary reasons former field instructors gave for not continuing to provide supervision to students were resource deficiencies (such as staff and time) and the demands of student evaluation paperwork; interestingly, having a bad experience with a student or with the field office was an important factor to half of the respondents, indicating an even split; the least important reasons cited were having a key person to coordinate interns, lack of reimbursement for services provided by interns, agency commitment to supervision, support from funding source, part-time interns, and availability of qualified MSW supervisors.

Conclusions and Implications: Both groups held similar ideals about the value of hosting an intern, but former field instructors’ decisions were based on pragmatics. Social workers in both university and agency settings share core values that join us in a common mission.  There exists a mismatch, however, between these ideals and the infrastructure to support our capacity to meet them.  University incentive systems and limited resources in the civic sector undermine partnerships for field instruction.  Innovative solutions are needed to defray the burden on field instructors such as a flexible scheduling models and capacity building initiatives.