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Call for papers

Social Work: People, Place and Politics

The 10th Joint Social Work Education Conference is pleased to host the 2nd UK Social Work Research Conference for 2008. The Planning Group invites submissions of abstracts on the following themes for the two conferences.

Download the call for papers flyer (89kb, PDF)

Joint Social Work Education Conference: People, Place and Politics

Themes:

1. Impact of the social work degree on: e.g.
   • Admissions, suitability, fitness for practice
   • Assessment methodologies
   • Practice learning
   • Service user educator involvement
   • Evaluating the student experience
2. Interprofessional education and employer engagement
   • Forming and sustaining identities
   • New ways of learning
   • New frameworks and standards
   • Negotiating partnerships
3. Innovation and creativity in social work learning, e.g.
   • Technology enhanced learning
   • Creative spaces
4. Managing transitions: identity and place, e.g.
   • FE to HE
   • Pre qualifying to post qualifying
   • Physical to virtual
   • Student to professional
   • Evolving service user identities: asylum seekers and refugees
5. Growing the academic workforce, e.g.
   • The taught doctorate
   • The PGR journey
   • Supporting new academic staff
6. Politics and place of social work education, e.g.
   • Difference, commonalities and implications across the four countries of the UK
   • Inter-country and intra-country learning
   • Governance and organisational structures of learning
   • APEL, Bologna and internationalisation
   • Quality enhancement and regulation

2nd UK Social Work Research Conference: Social Work research: People, Place and Politics

Themes:

1. Generating knowledge for practice; the place of research in practice, e.g.
   • The relationship between researchers, practitioners and the ways in which new knowledge or perspectives can become new practices
2. Innovations in social work research methods, e.g.
   • New approaches to qualitative and/or quantitative research and evaluation in social work and social care
3. The politics of social work research - capacity, culture and context, e.g.
   • The organisational and professional contexts for social work research;
   • The challenge to build research capacity and to develop a research-minded culture
4. User involvement and user-led social work research and evaluation, e.g.
   • The impact of service user and carer participation in social work research;
   • Examples of user-led research
5. Virtual places: social work research in the information age
   • Use of new technologies in social work research
   • Researching the use of the new technologies
6. Evidence-based practice or practice-based evidence? The politics of perspective
   • Critical research perspectives on evidence-based practice;
   • New perspectives on practice-driven evidence.

Research in progress is very welcome within any of these themes. Please feel free to submit proposals where the research is not yet complete and where you might wish to present dilemmas, issues, concerns, arising from or through the research.

Who should consider submitting an abstract?

• Social work educators in HEIs, including service user educators
• Social work educators in practice settings
• Social work practitioners
• Practice learning providers
• Social work academic researchers
• Social work practice researchers
• Doctoral students
• Social work learners / students
• Social work policy makers
• Educators, researchers and policy makers engaged in interprofessional learning from cognate disciplines

How and what to submit

All abstracts should be linked to one or more of the conference themes by title and content and you will be asked to specify on the online form whether the abstract is for inclusion in the Social Work Education Conference or the Social Work Research Conference. All abstracts should draw upon a strong evidence or experiential base.

Proposals should be submitted electronically using the official pro-forma; this is located at: http://www.jswec.co.uk/abstract.asp

Where electronic submission is not possible please contact Jules Thompson, Conference Administrator (j.e.thompson@soton.ac.uk)

Other enquiries should be directed to Lee Reynolds, Conference Organiser (l.m.reynolds@soton.ac.uk)

Session formats include papers, workshops (including e-learning), symposia, special interest groups, posters and e-posters. Brief guidelines are included below for the different formats and detailed guidance will be available post acceptance. We welcome proposals for other formats - e.g. round tables, open space sessions, creative or performing arts presentations, but they must fit a 75 minute timeframe per session. Abstracts for formats other than paper presentations should clearly indicate how they will involve conference participants.

Please aim to make your contribution as accessible as possible but as an experiment this year you will see on the submission form that we ask whether the presentation will be accessible to all or requires some prior knowledge of the topic.

Review process

There will be an integrated abstract submission process for the two conferences. The web form will provide a separate space for names and affiliations which will be excluded from the abstract sent on to the reviewers.

All abstracts will be peer reviewed anonymously so please do not indicate author/s names through referencing or other ways in the text of the abstract. There will be two panels of reviewers, a panel for abstract submissions to the Social Work Education Conference, and a panel for abstract submissions to the Research Conference. In 2007 144 abstracts were submitted and 96 accepted. We expect more this year and therefore the planning group have agreed to have a second stage non-blind process to review the accepted abstracts to ensure balance in themes and topics. Authors should only submit one abstract where they are lead author and not be involved with more than two others.

You will be informed of the outcome of the process by Lee Reynolds (l.m.reynolds@soton.ac.uk) by 21st March 2008.

N.B. All presenters whose abstracts are accepted for presentation must register for the conference

All presenters/facilitators will be asked to provide a short written synopsis of their session's key points as an aide memoire for those attending their session; and for post-conference use on the SWAP website, together with permission to do so.

Format Guidance

Brief descriptions of the different formats are provided below. Full guidelines for presenters and facilitators will be provided after abstract acceptance.

The online submission form will ask you to:

• Indicate the presentation format: a paper, symposia, workshop, special interest group, poster / e-poster, or other, and;
• Link your abstract to the conference themes.

Papers that aim to present and disseminate research and information - 15 minutes.

Generally, paper sessions are not interactive. Delegates expect to receive information from the presenter(s); and then to have an opportunity to ask questions, and perhaps, if time allows, to engage in some discussion arising out of the paper.

Workshops are intended to share experience and develop practice - 75 minutes.

They should be structured to engage participants in dialogue or activities and presenter input should be kept to a minimum.

Symposia allow for an informed in-depth discussion of themes - 75 minutes.

The lead presenter submits an abstract for at least three short presentations on a theme with at least 50 per cent of the time used for a facilitated group discussion.

Special Interest Groups provide the opportunity for individuals or organisations to arrange a discussion forum allied to the themes of the conference - 75 minutes.

Posters and E-posters.

A poster session allows participants to explore your displayed research or information and discuss it with you one-on-one. E-posters work in a similar way to traditional posters, except that you will demonstrate your work in real-time via a laptop computer. A third option is an e-version of a traditional poster displayed with others through a rolling screenshow format.

The Planning Group

The conference is organised by the Social Policy and Social Work Subject Centre, Higher Education Academy (SWAP) on behalf of the Planning Group which has representation from:

• Association of Teachers in Social Work Education
• Association of Professors of Social Work Education
• Scottish Voices
• Undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral students
• British Association of Social Workers
• Joint University Council Social Work Education Committee
• National Organisation for Practice Teaching
• UK Standing Conference of Stakeholders in Social Work Education
• UK Care Councils

The Planning Group is chaired by Professor Mark Doel, Research Professor of Social Work in the Centre for Health and Social Care Research, Sheffield Hallam University and the Vice Chair is Jane McLenachan, Subject Leader for Social Work, Faculty of Health and Wellbeing, Sheffield Hallam University.