The aim of social work education is to educate students by equipping them with professional value, attitude, knowledge and skill and to prepare them to become social workers. In fact, most of social work graduates in Macau enter the social work field. Social work education can be regarded as a professional socialisation process. There are many studies examine the learning effectiveness and satisfaction of social work students. However, few of them look into the students’ learning experience from a “trajectory perspective” – how their significant learning experiences accumulate, develop and influence their construction of social work professional identity and knowledge integration during the social work education? This study attempts to shed lights on this question by employing a narrative approach.  A few students from the same batch of graduation class were interviewed at the point when they freshly graduated. Besides the informants’ individual experience, the author will put the findings into Macao social work context as a whole to discuss how the existing social work education in Macao or social work curriculum could be improved.

Author Profile(s)
The author is a lecturer of social work programme from Macau Polytechnic Institute. The subjects he teaches include social group work, social work theories and integrated social work practice.  Moreover, he has been serving as the fieldwork coordinator for the programme for more than 10 years. His professional and research interests include social work education, professional socialisation, field education, Zen and mindfulness practice, group work, family therapy and school social work. The author is a registered social worker in Hong Kong, a hypnotist and certified instructor of Nation Guild of Hypnosis(US), and a doctoral candidate in social work from Hong Kong Polytechnic University.