Raising the profile of social work field education- the opportunity of maintaining a field education audit

[Extract] Field education is marginalized in social work education, an area of academic practice which social work educators can be reluctant to continue. Field education academics generally experience a lack of resources, power, status, promotion opportunities and a lack of authority (Lyter, 2012). The high demands of “teaching, advising, curriculum development and field liaison duties” and coordination roles (Lager & Robbins, 2014, p. 7) are difficult to reconcile with the pressure on staff to take on scholarly activities in the context of decreasing university budgets and funding priorities. Thus, field education is often seen as a stepping stone in ‘real academia’. As part of my time in field education, senior academics have told me ‘you have done your time’, indicating that I have done my due and can now move on