Competency-Based Education and Shared Academic Freedom for Transformational Education

Overview & Synopsis

Curricular revision consistent with program mission and goals and that also fulfils accreditation requirements is essential for social work programs. In this article transformational education, shared academic freedom, and competency-based evaluation are described as central to effective preparation of students in social work education. The authors provide an overview of the transformational education literature and one school of social work's curricular revision process that demonstrates facultywide ownership of the revision process. The paper concludes with a discussion of how the faculty ownership and student evaluation process helped the school avoid the reductionist pitfalls in competency-based education in their pursuit of transformational education for programmatic impact.