A Closer Look at Social Work Field Education in Germany : (Reconstructing the "Field Education-Arc of Work")

Social work education includes one central element outside the university: field ed- ucation, often described as the “signature pedagogy” of social work. Despite the central position in the course there is a research desideratum concerning to the forms and conditions of field education guidance in the heterogeneous fields of social work. The project “ALFOSA” (“Anleitungsforschung in der Sozialen Arbeit” / “Research on field supervision in Social Work”) addresses these questions. The theo- retical framework includes interactional learning theory according to Wenger/Lave (1991), the formation of professional knowledge according to Dewe/Otto (2015) and the “arc of work”, an empirically conceptualized theory by Anselm Strauss for the analysis of professional work (1985). The research design was based on Grounded Theory Methodology (Corbin/Strauss 1996). Ten in-depth interviews with instructors were conducted and analysed using coding methods. In this article empirical recon- struction of the arc of work of field