Graduate school in the social work field prepares people for clinical work, ethical practice, and professional interactions. There are classes in theories, interventions, and case management techniques. What it does not prepare people for is the narrowly defined task of passing a standardised test in order to convert all that learning into an actual job.
Most MSW students expect that their graduate program will prepare them for the ASWB licensure exam. The logic is clear. If the graduate program is training students in social work, and the licensure exam tests social work, then as long as a student passes their program, they should be ready to pass the test. Every year, thousands of capable social workers discover that this is not the case.
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The Knowledge Structure Problem
Graduate school programs typically structure knowledge around areas of practice, populations served, and theoretical frameworks. Students gain exposure to trauma-informed practice, treating specific populations, family systems, crisis intervention, substance use practice and prevention, and so much more in their classes and field experiences. Knowledge accumulates over the two years of graduate school.
Licensure exams do not structure knowledge that way. They pull from a broad array of knowledge about social work practice without regard for how that knowledge was presented at the graduate school level. One question might test the range of information a test taker could use to give licensed social work services all over the place. Another question might immediately follow it, testing something completely unrelated.
The content is different in another way as well. Graduate school programs spend a good deal of time on what is current best practice and current interventions. Licensure exams focus on the basic knowledge of what constitutes legitimate, legal, and ethical social work practice. The material that took weeks of graduate programming to cover is not nearly as relevant on licensure exams. The content that was covered and taught for a two-week period could translate into about 15% of a licensure exam.
Test-Taking Skills That Are Not Practised
Testing in MSW programs rewards nuanced understanding of material. Essay questions require students to respond with analysis and justification of their views about complicated questions. Students can expect academic exams to require that they think critically about the material and concepts involved.
Licensure exams are different kinds of tests. They involve particular types of questions designed to evaluate basic competency across a broad area of content. Licensure exam questions might present multiple possible answers that could apply in real life, but only one “textbook” answer that was intended by the people who created the exam.
Other skills that are not nurtured by graduate school include coping with time limits on test taking. Graduate school exams usually allow plenty of time for thinking through any answer. The ASWB exam allows only about one and a half minutes per question. Test takers need to find ways to quickly read and process a question, eliminate wrong answers, and choose or take action toward an answer without overthinking it or carefully crafting an answer.
Prep Tools That Are Effective
The awareness of gaps in preparation has led many thriving social workers to supplement what their graduate programs provided in preparation for their social work positions and careers. Test prep resources specifically focused on Social Work Exam Strategies address the structure of knowledge on licensure exams, content emphasis, test-taking strategies, and other areas where graduate school does not prepare students.
Many typical prep strategies focus on teasing out the true nature of a question in terms of what the question really entails versus what it appears to ask at face value. The aim is to discover the hidden system that licensure exams prefer when formulating an answer to what might otherwise be perceived as a complicated question.
Practice under test conditions has more value than many soon-to-be social workers realize. Graduate school may expose students to hundreds of hours of reading and discussion, but it does not really prepare students to answer fast-paced multiple-choice questions under strict time constraints. This type of practice is needed to be comfortable with the exam format, pacing, and stamina needed to survive a four-hour exam.
Where Field Education Falls Short
Field placements in clinical programs teach students how to do the job. Students are mentored into becoming effective practitioners who can connect with clients, assess their situations, and intervene clinically and crisis in a manner that is effective and acceptable within the context of their agency systems. Much is learned through the ongoing process of doing this, and dedicated supervisors have filled students’ heads with information about functioning effectively as a clinical practitioner.
Licensure exams do not evaluate whether a person is capable of doing the work. They assess the knowledge of the work and related concepts. A graduate student might successfully navigate the intricacies of an acute crisis intervention in the field, but may struggle with identifying content related to licensure exam knowledge in the area of levels or stages of crisis intervention.
Field education supervisors aren’t reviewing ethics or DSM content while they meet with students. The time and effort that goes into these meetings is dedicated to mentoring students in field practice, supervision strategies, casework strategies, agency practices and policies, and all the other things it takes to be successful as a field placement practitioner, rather than a licensure exam preparation practitioner. These are essential mentoring tasks, but they still leave a knowledge gap when it comes to passing licensure exams.
The Curriculum Gap That Can Be Identified
The bottom line is that licensure exams are different from MSW programs in several important ways—and they have different standards for success. An MSW program’s goal is to produce thoughtful practitioners who can think deeply about clinical content. A licensure exam’s goal is to ensure basic knowledge of an established area of content.
Both goals are worthy—and they differ in important ways.
Most graduate schools recognize this gap in an informal way by encouraging students to take an exam prep course or obtain prep resources on their own. What they often do not do is remind or inform students (often for the first time) that passing a licensure exam is a task unrelated to completing an MSW program.
The assumption that a graduate program’s curriculum automatically prepares a student for licensure exams sets many new graduates up for failure when they attempt those tests for the first time.
This information helps clinicians who will soon be test takers enter this crucial phase of their careers prepared with effective strategies instead of being lulled into false expectations about what their academic studies will allow them to accomplish on exam day.
The MSW program coursework is relevant—but it will take another level of preparation to turn all this learning into actual success on the licensure exams.
interesting read -so much to learn as you progress through your careet
I am glad I am not starting out it was so much easier when we were starting out
What an interesting read,i would never of thought about this
Something I never thought about either
very helpful for the trainees out there – was that your profession?
No that was not my profession, but I do know about the graduate scheme
I think what ever job you have trained for there always seems to be a big gap beween what you have learnt and what you need to know
I agree, and I am one of those people who supports learning on the job rather than text books
interesting read ‘ – hopefully over next few years the issue will balance out
Hopefully it will