Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Here-And-Now Learning In The Social Work Practice Classroom, Raquel Willerman

Theses, Dissertations, and Projects

Here-and-now learning, also called experiential learning, holds a tenuous place in the curricula of graduate level social work programs. Students are not required to participate in experiential training groups and have few elective opportunities to do so. Though conscious awareness about things such as socio-location and environment is emphasized throughout social work academic programs, increasing one's awareness of unconscious aspects of self and other is not explicitly encouraged. However, recent trends in contemporary psychoanalytic theory point to the processing of the therapeutic relationship as the main mechanism of client change and to the therapist's subjectivity as having an importance equal …