Bridging Digitalization and Digitality in Social Work Practice Education: A Post-pandemic View Through the Kaleidoscope from Germany

This chapter engages with the practices of digitalization and using digital things in social work courses during the pandemic. Using the metaphors of the burning glass effect and the straw man, this chapter aims to illustrate that a certain conceptual framing was imposed on the digitalization of internship supervision during the pandemic that obscured its possibilities and potential. Within the conceptual framework of the “doing digitality” idea, this chapter aims to create an adapted broader framework that illuminates the possibilities and derivation of new practices in social work education. For this purpose, a theoretical framework is created that distinguishes between the concepts of digitalization and digitality and aims at a systematic implementation of digitality. We conclude that an understanding beyond the pandemic crisis and that a broader knowledge base on digitality is needed for further development of the field.