Social work education in Eastern Europe: can post-communism be followed by diversity?

Abstract

Social work education in Eastern Europe is marked by a historical period of state socialism and its socially constructed understanding of the person and the collective. Since the individual was subsumed by the collective, and social policy served the goals of the communist state, social work education in Eastern Europe has traditionally focused on the theories of collective social justice and equality. Theories of economic and social justice and universal social protection are still more represented than the theories of self-determination and the understanding of human rights from the universalist-particularist perspective. The key epistemological challenges are the understanding of diversity, empowerment and the ethical dilemmas in social work. There is a gap between social work education and social work practice, which opens some concerns about the methodological approaches of teaching, the selection of the students and the large numbers of newly qualified social workers every year. Educators previously came from sociology, psychology and law sciences, while today social work teachers most often come from the social work discipline and social work is taught at universities. Most social work departments have undergraduate and master programs and some have also developed doctoral programs.