An Encounter with Augusto Boal in Social Work Critical Field Education

Field Education Placements (FEPs) form a central component of Social Work education. They form the connective tissue between social work theory and professional practice. Over the last four decades, FEP contexts have become increasingly dominated by neoliberal managerialism, opening a fundamental contradiction between the social critical, emancipatory theoretical content of social work education and the practice context. As a result, students’ FEP experience is often a journey from enthusiastic, aspirational fervour to achieve social change to one of disillusionment, disappointment, and adaptation, reproducing the status quo. This raises the question of how this transition into the workplace can be supported to foster the necessary resilience in emerging social workers. In this chapter, we propose a reconceptualisation of FEPs using Augusto Boal’s Invisible Theatre—an approach that transforms everyday life into a stage and that turns people (without their knowledge) into ‘spect-actors’. We argue that reconceptualising FEPs as a stage and organisational life as a play may help to bridge the chasm between academy and the service sector, giving students tools that may assist them in finding ways to develop a character/protagonist who is able to negotiate organisational constraints while identifying opportunities to work towards outcomes that enhance social justice.