Corona crisis has tremendously impacted ‘normal’ functioning of all our social system, including (higher) education. Virtually overnight, schools and universities were asked to digitalize, distance learning became a new magic word, but the problem is that it does not always work. Unlike ‘hard’ sciences which exclusively engage in transmission of theoretical knowledge, in professional education, such as social work, field (practice) education has traditionally been a crucial part of social work training. Its task was to facilitate smooth integration of social work’s knowledge, skills, and values, and to mediate adaption of social work’s professional culture among future practitioners. Following Shulman’s conception of ‘signature pedagogy’, many social work scholars embraced the conception of field education as a ‘signature pedagogy’ for professional development in social work. However, the current crisis (and social responses to it) imposed drastic changes to both contexts of learning, to universities (schools of social work) and to institutions of professional practice. Causally, the space for meaningful integration of ‘theoretical’ and ‘practice’ knowledge as well as key professional values has been limited. Read more…