| Summary: | Social work has gone from being a primarily philanthropic issue to becoming an academic discipline at university level. To ensure its legitimacy social work must be founded on, and developed through scientific research and documented experience. The purpose of this essay is to review the various arguments on social work in order to evaluate their impact on education, which in turn affects students. In addition, it will demonstrate how different forms of knowledge are valued depending on the contexts. As a means of reaching this objective, the following questions are addressed: “What are the requirements and recommendations on how the education of social work should be structured, and why are these requirements and recommendations important?”, “How has the education of social work been influenced by the perception of valuable knowledge?” and “How does the education of social work affect students?” The collected material consists of various arguments concerning the development of social work and the education of social work's formation. We also used qualitative, semi-structured interviews with various individuals in the academic field of social work. Using theoretical concepts from Pierre Bourdieu, we analyze how the content of the education is shaped by different agents in the social work field, where certain forms of knowledge dominate over others. Through this we offer a way to illustrate how the contents of social work are created and recreated by actors who possess symbolic capital, and thus have prominent positions, in the academic field. It is also demonstrated how the students' habitus are shaped by the education, creating a collision in the encounter with the professional and the practical field.
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