Methodology

Methodology

Research Question

What is the level of dissatisfaction that many have had with internee experiences within the clinical training program at the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice during the 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 academic years?

Population

The population consists of adult adult learners that were involved in a graduate social work internship program at the University of South Carolina at Columbia. Interns at the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice participate in the clinical treatment program on a voluntary basis to fulfill the academic requirement of completing a clinical field practicum.

Methods

The goal for this research study is to gather data concerning the perceptions of graduated social work students of their experiences while in the clinical field education program at the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice. The purpose of this study is to utilize the analyzed data to better understand the strengths and weaknesses of a clinical field education program, according to the perceptions of graduates of the program. This study will utilize grounded theory as the methodology, so the direction of the study is to obtain comprehensive commentary related to the perceptions of student dissatisfaction amongst previous clinical MSW field students.

Historically juvenile justice have been predominantly focusing teaching instead of enabling a culture of learning, the process of providing mass juvenile justice has been criticized by many as similar to mass production in factories. Interns have been regarded as raw materials to be efficiently processed by technical workers (the supervisors of juvenile justice departments) who are the only source of filling knowledge in “empty” minds of the interns!

Thinkers of radical pedagogy seek to identify, understand, and critically evaluate the effects, consequences, and power relations implicated by particular methods, modes, and environments of teaching and learning in formal/institutional contexts teaching and juvenile justice. In 20th century thinkers such as Paolo Freire, Ivan Illich and others have highlighted the negative contribution of many formal juvenile justice strategies and practices. Freire's book pedagogy of oppressed and Ivan Illich's “juvenile justice society” explain how some formal juvenile justice practices create the relations of domination and oppression. Some thinkers of juvenile justice are of the views that juvenile justice should be reformed, others argue that it should be transformed and still others call for de-juvenile justice—they too have very strong reasons for their “call” and they logically answer the question that “ if not schools then what…!??

On the other hand, during last two decades, basis researches on process of learning has a lot of new implications for classroom environments and practices within classroom. In developed countries these implications tried to be bridged with classrooms and a more “adult learner- centered”, “knowledge centered” and “community centered” setup is emphasized.

To enhance the fieldwork experience for both students and educators, social work programs have experimented with and implemented a variety of initiatives to address these gaps in training. For example, recognizing the increasingly diverse composition of the student population, characterized by age, sexual orientation, part-time enrollment, or foreign background, for example, alternative field placement opportunities have been established, ...