ABSTRACT
Social work education and training furnishes students with knowledge, skills, and requisite tools for practice. However, studies in Africa have indicated that there are gaps in social work curricula due to over-reliance on didactic teaching methods. Studies have argued the need to have practice courses that can equip students with knowledge and skills for competent and elective practice. This chapter promotes the use of a family genogram as an experiential teaching tool in social work practice courses in Botswana to impart knowledge, skills, and techniques in working with families. The experiential method is proposed as a ‘bridge between knowing what and applying how, connecting the doing with theoretical knowledge’. The benefits are that it helps students to understand and conceptualise concepts, enhances communication between lecturer and student; and promotes student self-understanding and self-introspection. Due to its benefits, it is recommended that social work educators in Africa adopt experiential teaching methods for practice courses to allow for self-understanding, introspection, and reflection. Also, educators should adopt student-centred and participatory learning to allow for collaboration instead of students being passive learners.
