International Journal of Social Research and Development

authors
NS Ramesh Chandran

abstract
Two parameters of occupational competitiveness in any profession are academic merits and a penchant for involving in specialized tasks. Social work education, as such, ought to give due importance to the likes and dislikes of students while opting for specializations, which is now missing in institutions. Often social work practitioners are not properly equipped with practical ingenuity, genial attitude and adequate skills for working out issues. As such tangible outcome still remains a pipe dream. But social work education has undergone a lot of transformation over the last few years. Methodology which leads to logical denouement is the vision of contemporary social work practice. It insinuates that (1) proven technicalities should be incorporated in practice, (2) pursuits to strengthen adroitness should be taken up vehemently, and (3) efforts should be taken up to bolster genuine attitude in practitioners, failing which the profession may fall in the doldrums. Keeping this in view, current social work practice has largely started making use of capacity-building, empirical evidence and expertise which are generated from in-depth study of more and more special and specific domains, called specializations. On the basis of resourceful inputs from BSW students studying in various Colleges in Kerala, a scrutiny scale comprising twelve components has been devised for assessing their bona fide interests. The twelve components structured for the purpose consists of Rating card, Appraisal indicator, Assessment charts, Score grading and Terminal evaluative comments. The context for framing such a research scale is to assist students in the process of goal setting in social work education. Goal setting is an exercise which identifies the real strength, affinity and bent of mind of students for social work practice. It would be instrumental in giving direction, professional clarity and true allegiance to students whereby their ethical values also would get stepped up. Selection of specialization involves professional dedication, conviction, hope and confidence. The scale, to all intents and purposes, would be a benchmarking tool to analyze the connoisseur of contemporary social work practice which is sure to add value to evidence based practice. Quality education is something which ensures students’ receptivity of right perspectives and appropriate skills besides whipping up their enthusiasm and motivation.