Gatekeeping in Social Work Education: Roles and Responsibilities

Introduction to Gatekeeping in Social Work Education

Part of the responsibilities of the social work educator is to evaluate student performance — a function better known as "gatekeeping." Educators must assess whether each student enrolled in their courses acquires the instruction necessary to function as a knowledgeable and ethical social work professional. Based on criteria established by the college or university, students are then passed or failed. Those who are unable to adequately complete the requirements for the degree, and those terminated from the program, may be considered unsuitable for the field. Although educators may differ on how wide the gate should be, every institution with a social work program is concerned that its graduates acquire the minimum competencies — given the expectations of agencies and their clients, state licensing boards, and the communities they serve.

The process of gatekeeping affects untenured or new counselor-faculty in a number of ways. In order to perform their job as well as possible, they need to learn gatekeeping best practices from those who have been in their position before them.

Gatekeeping has long been of special concern to social work field educators and students. It has become even more crucial as social work interns increasingly interface with seriously troubled clients whose challenges require significant skill and sensitivity from service providers. Research suggests that interns are being placed in field settings involving more serious, unresolved life issues, and therefore present additional concerns for field educators (Koerin & Miller, 1995; Regehr, Stalker, Jacobs, & Pelech, 2001).

Admission Standards and Legal Foundations

Colleges and universities have gatekeeping procedures in place even before an individual becomes a student. It is common for BSW programs to have admission standards — a minimum grade point average of 2.0, for example, is often required. Schools decide who to admit as well as whom to exclude from enrollment. Selection is not based purely on academic performance. A range of desirable nonacademic criteria — such as personal alignment with the social work profession's values, interpersonal competence, and ethical and diversity considerations — may all be evaluated at admission through vehicles such as individual and group interviews, reference letters, written statements, life experience, and volunteer and paid work experience (Cleak, McCormack, & Ryan, 2006, p. 67). On the other hand, it would be entirely reasonable, for example, to refuse admission to convicted felons — and perhaps an even stronger case could be made against admitting a convicted child molester (Blakely, 2000, p. 24).

The National Association of Social Workers (NASW, 1996) established professional mandates in order to "discourage, prevent, expose, and correct the unethical conduct of colleagues" (p. 18) and to "prevent the unauthorized and unqualified practice of social work" (p. 25). Thus, the NASW Code of Ethics requires gatekeeping before enrollment, during coursework, and whenever there is a violation of an ethical standard. Most educators, unfortunately, have had experience with a student who is not fit for graduation in a social work program. If such individuals were allowed to assume positions as counselors, considerable harm may be done to the most vulnerable clients.

However, the role of gatekeeper is precarious due to changing legal precedent. The landmark case Dixon v. Alabama State Board of Education (1961) tightened the rules by which an institution may suspend a student. In Dixon, a college dismissed five students involved in civil rights demonstrations. The court overturned the dismissals, finding that the public institution was required to have adequate procedures to protect student rights. Since that ruling, courts have continued to acknowledge and extend due process safeguards to students facing disciplinary action.

Students who are dismissed from social work programs because of poor field performance are more likely to initiate lawsuits against their college or university than in the past. This change in attitudes results from two factors: rising tuition costs and the reality that, in today's marketplace, a graduate degree is often a crucial ingredient for a student's economic success. These factors have heightened the student's stake in completing a degree (Schweitzer, 1992). The subjective nature of educational field evaluations, combined with the consequences of academic failure, leaves field educators particularly vulnerable to student-initiated legal actions. Nevertheless, there is a "widely accepted assumption in social work education" that field placement offers the best opportunity to assess the relative fit of students with the profession, and it therefore continues to be used to identify unsuitable students (Gibbs, 1994, p. 71).

Gatekeepers must also be attentive to students who are physically or mentally challenged. With a long tradition of supporting individuals with special needs, social workers are at the forefront of advocacy movements (Lynch & Mitchell, 1995) and must lead in ensuring true access to the profession for persons with disabilities. "Social work programs that are committed to developing opportunities for all students model the type of inclusiveness and support that is the very essence of the profession" (Blakely, 2000, p. 210).

Ethics, Conduct, and the NASW Code

The most recent case law demonstrates that professional behavior, as well as scholastic performance, needs to be a criterion for whether or not a student remains in a social work program. However, "most social work faculty have failed to keep pace with these newer legal requirements and often continue to think of academic standards as including only grade point average, skill acquisition, course completion, and other more cognitive aspects of performance" (Blakely, 2000, p. 259). Conduct that conforms with the profession's ethical standards is frequently seen as a "softer characteristic" and is inaccurately viewed by faculty and students as falling into a "nonacademic" category. There is also no consistency from school to school, or from one faculty member to another, regarding what should be included under academic standards. Schools need to develop relevant and up-to-date gatekeeping practices.

The NASW Code of Ethics states that the social worker's primary responsibility is to clients' interests rather than to competing claims arising from societal or personal needs and desires. However, clients' interests may conflict with those of workers, agencies, and the community, and choices among interests are inevitable. Even when the goal is to serve the public interest, not all interests can be satisfied simultaneously, and there may be situations in which supporting the interests of workers or agencies may ultimately enhance responsiveness to clients. Similarly, clients' interests are often difficult to identify, and it is sometimes difficult to know exactly who the client is — particularly when a practice involves families, groups, and intergroups (Reisch, 2003, p. 15).

There are also a host of other questions that must be addressed by agencies: What are the obligations and duties of an agency to both worker and client? What factors must be considered when societal and clients' interests may conflict? What is the profession's responsibility to its members in difficult situations? These are the kinds of questions that schools must clarify.

According to Strom-Gottfried (2000, p. 241), "social work education is rife with the potential for ethical conflicts. As faculty carry out their instructional, evaluative, and gatekeeping responsibilities, challenges can arise around fairness, clear expectations, confidentiality, faculty-student boundaries, and overlapping relationships." Field instructors may experience similar issues and carry the additional responsibility for students' behavior as practitioners, along with the many concerns that arise when supervising and evaluating client-worker interactions. Furthermore, schools of social work can themselves be sites of ethics challenges relating to faculty competence, impairment, and fair supervisory and employment practices.

When ethical standards are breached, involved parties have several resources for redress, including institutional grievance processes, licensing or regulatory boards, litigation, and peer-reviewed adjudication by professional bodies such as the NASW. Research to date has examined the prevalence of ethics violations (Berliner, 1989; McCann & Cutler, 1979; "Study cites," 1995) as well as malpractice violations (Reamer, 1995), but has not reviewed the data as they apply specifically to social work schools.

Strom-Gottfried (2000) argues that social work ethics intersect with gatekeeping responsibilities in two major ways. First, social work programs are encouraged to consider broader issues than academic fitness when deciding to admit, place, or graduate students. Second, ethics shapes the process by which gatekeeping is enacted. Ethical gatekeeping means the application of fair, nondiscriminatory, legitimate, and publicized standards in keeping with due process procedures. Literature on screening, evaluating, and terminating students provides an essential resource for identifying and acting on troubling behaviors, as well as for guiding faculty and administrators through this function in an ethically and legally defensible manner. The problem may be that guidance capable of preventing difficulties is not sought until after problematic situations arise — by which point it may be too late.

Gaubatz and Vera (2002) investigated whether formalized gatekeeping procedures and program-level characteristics actually influence the rates at which deficient trainees graduate from counseling programs. One hundred eighteen faculty members reported that counselor educators face a variety of pressures to avoid investigating potentially deficient students, including concerns about being sued and receiving poor teaching evaluations. However, faculty in programs accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs, and those in programs with more formalized gatekeeping procedures, appeared to more effectively follow through on concerns about specific students. These findings support the implementation of both broad, program-wide training standards and specific, formalized procedures to more effectively screen deficient trainees.