Introduction

This chapter discusses findings obtained from interviews with 19 foreign-educated social workers who took part in a larger qualitative study aimed at understanding professional adaptation to social work practice in Canada. One of the research questions, explored in the context of the larger-scale project, was to investigate how social work experience and education in one country affects perspectives on social work practice in Canada – specifically, the assessment of client issues, social work intervention processes and interactions within the work environment. Following an iterative process whereby data were collected and then analysed in order to inform subsequent phases of data collection, we developed vignettes drawn from clinical cases. During this stage of data collection, we asked the participants to draw upon their knowledge, skills and values, and to reflect on their interpretations of each case's needs relative to the material and discursive conditions of their practice context, both in their country of origin and in Canada. This chapter analyses these data with a focus on knowledge transfer to internationally educated social workers who now work in Canada.

Transferability of social work

The profession of social work exists in a state of tension at the crux of several compelling forces: the familiar adage that practice is context-specific, referring to the need to understand the lived conditions of the people with whom we work, geopolitically and socioculturally; the substantive area of practice; and the notion of basic human needs that transcend time and space.

The capacity for social workers to transfer knowledge from one context to another is an important aspect of negotiating this tension, and is known to be an important aspect of professional adaptation overall (Remennick, 2003). Capacity to transfer knowledge may be facilitated by the fact that social work has access to ‘Global standards’ for practice (IFSW, 2012) and ‘Global standards for social work education and training’ (IASSW, 2004), which, for countries like Canada, might ensure a certain consistency in education and practice with other countries that adhere to these same principles through their professional associations and regulatory bodies. That said, not all countries adhere to these principles, and when they do so, they might have different standards of accreditation for social work practice and education. With regard to education, differences between countries at the level of standards or programme curricula are highly possible.