The Field of occupation and competence of a social work mentor

ENA social work mentor supervises student’s practice and takes part in improving practice studies. The mentor is a person who shares his/her knowledge, insights, wisdom and experience that is useful for student’s professional and personal improvement. Mentor’s help is important for integrating theoretical knowledge about social work into practice. This complicated work demands certain competence; however, the occupation of the social work mentor and the needed competence were not fully discussed until now. The problem that one encounters at work is that the work of the social work mentor is not standardized. Thus it is difficult to evaluate its quality and its effect on the implementation and improvement of social work studies program. The goal of the article is to discuss the field of occupation and competence of the social work mentor. An analysis of academic literature, documents and a phenomenological research are presented in order to reach the goal. The analysis of the retrieved data showed different fields of occupation of the social work mentor. Research data states that social work mentors have high didactic competence like informing, communicating, consulting and evaluating. It also shows that in his/her occupation the social work mentor has to have some personal competence. Keywords: competence, functions of the mentor, mentorship, social work mentor. [From the publication]

• Sociologija / Sociology
• Edukologija / Education