ABSTRACT
Social work education has increasingly reflected the tensions between the professional aspirations of social work and a variety of direct and indirect attempts to control and regulate the production of new social workers (Howe, 1991; Webb, 1996). The focus of this chapter is more on the factors which have had a significant bearing on the structure, purpose and control of modern social work education than its detailed content. The establishment of social work education can be traced directly to the work of the nineteenth century pioneers. The early social workers did not think of themselves as professionals, nor were they perceived as such: rather, they tended to be well-to-do people charitably helping the poor (Heraud, 1981). However, as systems of social intervention became developed there was an increasing sense that education and training were needed.
