Do All roads Lead to Rome? Teaching Social Work Transnationally

Authors

  • Stefan Koengeter University of Trier, Germany
  • Itzhak Lander Sapir College, Israel

Keywords:

transnationalism, internationalization, teaching, transformation, forgiveness,

Abstract

This story describes the journey of two social work educators who experienced transformation through co-teaching a course transnationally. Video conference technology was used to deliver a course on child and youth migration, simultaneously to four different groups of students located in four different classrooms in three countries. Our story sheds light on the significance of the teacher as a person and its effect on learning processes, within the context of the internationalization of social work education. The establishment of a community of learning was facilitated when teachers, along with students, were able to together venture beyond their accustomed paths of instructing and learning social work. For this to occur, substantial space was devoted – beyond that dedicated to the delivery of course content – to an exploration of commonalities and differences in personal and communal histories, cultures of learning, preferences with respect to discussion and questioning, as well as conceptualizations of the social work profession. Our reflections capture various aspects of the ongoing transformation process and highlight the complexity of social work education which involves the person of students and teachers alike.

Author Biographies

Stefan Koengeter, University of Trier, Germany

Professor for Social Pedagogy at the Department of Education, University of Trier, Germany

Itzhak Lander, Sapir College, Israel

Lecturer, Sapir College, Israel

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Published

2017-05-16

How to Cite

Koengeter, S., & Lander, I. (2017). Do All roads Lead to Rome? Teaching Social Work Transnationally. Reflections: Narratives of Professional Helping, 22(2), 57–66. Retrieved from https://reflectionsnarrativesofprofessionalhelping.org/index.php/Reflections/article/view/1476