Abstract

This chapter describes a study conducted to identify and highlight the character strengths and virtues of social work students, considered as important for competent fieldwork education. The data was collected from undergraduate students (N=196) of two Greek university departments of social work, who were in their first placement in different field agencies. The study was descriptive in nature and used a questionnaire, the configuration of which was based on Peterson and Seligman’s (2004) list of 24 character strengths, grouped within six core virtues. The results of the study revealed six main character strengths as important for competent fieldwork education i.e., honesty, fairness/justice, love, humour, kindness and perseverance while minimal differences have been shown between the two university departments. Also, the results identified four factors of character strengths contained under different virtues and associated with effective fieldwork education: emotional strengths (honesty and perseverance) under the virtue of courage, interpersonal strengths (love and kindness) under the virtue of humanity, civic strengths (fairness/justice) under the virtue of justice and connection strengths (humour) under the virtue of transcendence. The study highlights the interrelated and interconnected nature of character strengths as predictors of fieldwork performance for our undergraduate students. But at the same time, it recognizes the unique nature of each character strength as a professional virtue skill for meeting requirements of fieldwork education. The chapter draws conclusions about the importance of establishing strengths-based approaches rather than problem-focused, in fieldwork as the heart of social work education.