Teaching note: personal attack or the personal touch? Evaluating the use of video feedback methods with qualifying social workers

Social work skills such as the ability to reflect on self and to recognize and manage emotions are fostered in part through using and receiving feedback, however there is limited research about feedback methods that effectively enable social work students and post-qualifying workers to engage with the emotional aspects of learning and feedback. This teaching note reports on a pilot project in which video feedback on academic assignments was provided to first year undergraduate social work students studying at a university in England. The project findings underscore the importance of engaging with the emotional dimensions of feedback processes and recognizing how feedback experiences can shape emerging learner and professional identities. The findings also underline the psychological and social skills required to engage in more performative aspects of contemporary education and practice. We argue that social work students are likely to benefit from support to develop meta-cognition (the process of thinking about one’s thinking processes) and self-regulation (regulation of emotion and behavior) skills before they can make sense of academic and practice-orientated feedback. Video feedback on academic assignments is therefore best utilized when it is underpinned by a dialogical approach to teaching and learning in the ‘classroom’ and the ‘field’.