Educating for quality in social work

Programmes for assuring and improving quality are increasingly being demanded of social workers and social service agencies. Their inclusion in the social work curriculum should also be considered. We explore the background of quality assurance in social work, the principles and philosophy of one major quality assurance model, Total Quality Management (TQM) and selected implications for social work. We then present an innovative strategy for teaching this subject whereby the principles of TQM were applied to the class itself. Students were viewed as staff members of an organisation and the instructor as their manager. Obstacles to achieving organisational and individual goals, for example knowledge development, were identified and strategies for overcoming them developed as part of the ongoing learning process. The interaction between the method of instruction and the subject material are presented, as well as the outcomes of the course and its implications for social work education.