EU - Canada Social Work Practicum Exchange: An EU Perspective of Opportunities and Challenges

This article is based on the evaluation of “The Displaced Person Project: An EU-Canada Social Work Practicum Exchange” from 2004-2009 that involved 4 EU universities and 4 Canadian universities and consisted of a student practicum exchange, of 64 students and the exchange of eight faculty members from the partner institutions. The project brought together students, educators and social workers in Canada and the European Union in a collaborative teaching and learning endeavor designed to enhance the capacities of social workers to address the realities of the human impacts of global economic migration, in particular, displaced persons that include marginalized, excluded and dislocated populations. This article contributes to the literature on social work field education in that reports on the nature of EU practicum exchange student in Canada and attends to the experiences of both the EU students and the international field co-coordinators. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, in the first section of the paper affirms the value of the exchange experience, documents what students learned and addresses the applicability of the international practicum to a student’s local practice. The second section focuses on the perspectives of the EU international field co- while the final section outlines some practice guidelines that are applicable to student exchanges beyond the EU and Canada.




Keywords: social work, international practicum, student exchange, EU and Canada