‘It seems so much is expected of us’: Practice teachers, the diploma in social work and anti-discriminatory practice

Manchester University Social Work Training Partnership has recently completed the first year of a college-based Diploma in Social Work. The issues which arose for practice teachers focused mainly on competency based assessment and anti-discriminatory practice and specifically how the latter would be taught and assessed. Our recognition of the strength of feeling about these issues led us to establish a research project in which we explored practice teachers' attitudes and approaches to anti-discriminatory practice. In general we found a strong commitment to anti-discriminatory practice and DipSW but major difficulties were raised by differing understandings of anti-discriminatory practice and the need to reconcile a ‘traditional’ agenda based on liberal values with a ‘radical’ agenda based on confronting structural issues of oppression.