Challenging Realities Facing Social Work Education in Palestine

Abstract

This chapter discusses challenges facing the social work education in Palestine. Social work education in Palestine is challenged by westernized curriculum, low competencies of social work cadre, weak field training, very limited level of coordination between social work programs in the five universities, inadequate admission policies to social work programs, out-dated text books, low scientific research production in the field of social work, and poor linkages to labour market demands and requirements.

Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to shed some light on the challenging realities facing social work education in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip as perceived by 213 social work graduates through structured survey field research conducted between January and March 2018. It was an exploratory study that applied the non-purposive random sampling method. The convenience sampling technique was applied due to the absence of any central databases about social work graduates in Palestine and to the fact that none of the universities in Palestine were prepared to provide data for security and privacy reasons. This chapter also includes some of the findings from other research conducted by Faraj (2018) as part of his PhD dissertation at the University of Birmingham about the challenges facing development of the social work profession in Palestine. The principal researcher (Ziad Faraj) designed the data collection tools used for both research studies for triangulation purposes. Survey findings were analysed by the SPSS package and PhD research findings were analysed by thematic analysis.

The significance of this research rests in the fact that it is the first time the views of social work graduates from all governorates of the West Bank and Gaza Strip have been systematically researched and heard. Incorporation in a book such as this gives Palestine equal treatment with countries throughout the world. The findings of this research are fully consistent with the findings of research Ibrahim (2017) conducted about the same topic but with a smaller sample size in the West Bank only. Moreover, they are consistent with the research conducted by Faraj in 2012 about the views of 210 service providers in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip who solicited the views of service providers in social work education at the time. Jane et al. (2007) and Abu Ras et al. (2013) confirmed that the social work profession has been playing a substantial role in helping hundreds of thousands of disadvantaged and oppressed Palestinians, particularly as a result of Israeli colonial occupation, to cope with many life challenges since the emergence of the social work profession in 1971. According to Faraj (2017) social work education became part of the curriculum of an academic institution for the first time in 1971 at Hind Al-Husseini College for Girls in Jerusalem. Throughout the 1970s and the following decades some other undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in social work emerged and are still offering BA and MA degrees in social work.

The gap in knowledge about the social work profession in Palestine due to lack of research has been a stumbling block to development of the profession in the country according to the findings of Faraj (2018). Moreover, many other challenges to development of the profession, in general, and social work education, in particular, were identified. The findings from Faraj’s PhD research and those from the survey demonstrated a surprising level of consistency regarding the challenges facing the development of this profession and the impacts they have had on social work education and on academics, professionals, employers, and social work graduates. The latter research study was carried out by completely voluntary efforts from the three key researchers (the authors of this chapter) and social work instructors of Al-Quds Open University in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. This highlights their awareness of the dire need for this and other research and their commitment to the development of this profession in Palestine.

The findings of the two research studies have a great deal in common. They reflect the considerable level of concern about different elements of the social work education process in Palestinian universities such as field training, the competencies of social work academics and the teaching methods they apply, the mismatch between the theoretical curriculum and Palestinian realities such as the cultural context, the dearth of research in the field of social work, the disconnect between education and the labor market, and the absence of a shared national vision and strategies for social work education in Palestine.

This chapter presents a brief account of the socioeconomic and political context, the developmental history of social work education in Palestine, and findings relating to the challenges facing social work education in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The chapter ends with a conclusion and recommendation section.

Palestine: Zone of Conflict

The quality of life of all Palestinians over the last 500 years including the period of Ottoman Empire domination (1516–2018) has been dictated by occupiers as a result of the absence of a Palestinian national independent state.¹ The Zionist colonial project in historic Palestine was established by the colonial British under the mandate given to the United Kingdom by the League of Nations at the end of World War I. The project started on the date of the Balfour Declaration on 2 November 1917 and resulted in devastating effects on Palestinian society. The period between 1917 and 1948 witnessed intensive popular resistance to the British Mandate and its role in facilitating the immigration of Jewish settlers from all over the world (mainly Europe) to Palestine using the capitulation system agreed with the Ottoman Empire (Angel, 1901; Khalidi, 2004; Kialy, 1990). However, the Palestinian National Authority (PNA) was established in 1994 and was given control over about 3% of historic Palestine that fell within the 22% that constituted the total area of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The PNA² was established as a result of peace negotiations between the PLO³ and Israel under the auspices of the United States,⁴ which embodied a neoliberal capitalist agenda being set up in Palestine in the post-colonial era that started in the aftermath of World War II.

Palestine has been subject to Israeli colonial occupation since 1948 when the nation was handed over to the Zionist movement by the British Mandate that had administered the country since the end of World War I. This reality deeply influenced and profoundly shaped many of the socioeconomic characteristics of today’s Palestinian society. This political reality put paid to the establishment of a Palestinian national state that should have taken responsibility for the welfare of its citizens. On the contrary, it created a community of Palestinian refugees who comprised two-thirds of the total population of Palestine (PCBC, 2007). They were subject to ethnic-cleansing and removed from 531 villages, towns, and cities in 1948. At the time about 800,000 Palestinians were forced to leave their homes to settle in the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon which are defined as the five fields of operations of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) (2018).

As a result of security measures restricting the mobility of all Palestinians resident in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip since 1967 (refugees and non-refugees), the majority of the workforce became labourers in the Israeli labour market (mainly the construction sector). Ever since, what was left of the Palestinian economy was totally confiscated, annexed, and became part of the occupier’s colonial economy. Over the last 110 years the welfare of Palestinian families has been subject to policies and practices of occupying powers that were often brutal. Even the unbalanced peace negotiations with the PLO, which resulted in the establishment of the PNA in 1994 as part of the Oslo Accords, exacerbated economic annexation through the Paris Economic Treaty that was signed in 1996 as part of the Oslo Accords. Palestinian national resistance to occupying powers started at the beginning of the last century, particularly resistance to the Zionist project of establishing a homeland for Jews in Palestine, a decision taken at the First Zionist Conference in Basel (Switzerland) in 1897. The immigration of Jewish individuals and families to Palestine started prior to that conference and increased steeply after World War I and imposition of the British Mandate on Palestine. The Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 brought about the open and unconditional support of the United Kingdom to the fulfillment of Zionist dreams in Palestine (Machover, 2006; Trueman, 2015).

That entire period witnessed continuous clashes between the Palestinians and the forces of the occupiers (mainly the British and the Zionists). The 1929 uprising, the 1936–1939 civil disobedience, the war of 1948, the armed resistance movement launched in 1965, the war of 1967, the First Intifada (1987–1994), the Second Intifada (2000–2005), wars in the Gaza Strip in 2008, 2012, and 2014 are salient events in the history of the Palestinian national liberation movement. However, those events were accompanied by another movement that emerged and evolved to support the national struggle of the Palestinian community and enhance its steadfastness. This was a grassroots movement comprising initiatives locally organized by women and formal and informal youth charities. Volunteerism constituted solely the spirit of that movement, which was rooted in Islam, Christianity, and nationalism (Abu Ras et al., 2013).

Confiscation of all the natural resources of Palestinian society (land and underground water) coupled with continuous confrontation between the national liberation movement and the occupiers resulted in severely deteriorating economic conditions (poverty and unemployment), imprisonment of and injuries to hundreds of thousands, the demolition of tens of thousands of houses, the deportation of millions from their home towns, the destruction of hundreds of towns, villages, and cities, and psychological trauma of the vast majority of the population. All these conditions necessitated the emergence of institutionalised interventions through local grassroots and other civil society organisations, international aid agencies (mainly after 1948) (BISAN, 2007), and the establishment of the first social work education programme in 1971 (Faraj, 2017).

Emergence and Evolution of the Social Work Profession

The establishment of the UNRWA⁵ in the Middle East on 8 December 1950 provided a robust example of the need for organised social work intervention through its relief and social services programme. What distinguished the UNRWA in its relation to social work history is that it became the largest employer of social workers between the mid-1970s and the establishment of the PNA in 1994 when it grew even larger under the aegis of the Ministries of Social Affairs and Education. In fact, prior to the mid-1970s the UNRWA used to provide relief services to Palestine refugees by employing Palestinians educated in different humanity fields except social work or social sciences because no social work or social sciences academic programmes existed in Palestine. According to UNRWA relief instructions the job title given to relief services employees until 1992 was welfare worker (UNRWA Relief Instructions No. 1/95). In October 1992 the title was changed to social worker when a proposal to upgrade this position from grade 7 to grade 9 was approved by the agency. Approval was based on reviewing and modifying the job description and bringing it in line with similar positions in the country and other Arab countries, particularly in the five fields of operations where governmental welfare services were in place (UNRWA Relief Instructions No. 1/95).

Extensive review of many publications and references as to when social work first started revealed there had been no research let alone documentation about it (Faraj, 2017). However, through a series of 10 in-depth interviews with Palestinian social work professionals Faraj (2017) succeeded in tracking down the date. The first step to institutionalise the social work profession within the Palestinian educational system took place in 1971. The step was taken by the Palestinian woman Hind Al-Husseiny who pioneered the social work profession (Faraj, 2017; Hind Al-Husseiny College, 1994). However, it should be kept in mind that the political context between 1967 and 1971 helped greatly in bringing this about. In 1971 Hind Al-Husseiny contacted Prof. Abdul-Razeq (a well-known professional at the time, at least in Jerusalem) and consulted him about establishing a 3-year programme aimed at getting some of the female students of the Dar Ettifil El-Arabi School qualified for social services as well as paraprofessionals capable of helping other women cope with life challenges (Faraj, 2017; Hind Al-Husseiny College, 1994). He liked Al-Husseiny’s request and proposed the programme be focussed on social work. In 1974 the first undergraduate 4-year social work programme was established in Bethlehem University (West Bank), followed by another in 1991 at Al-Quds Open University, another in 1998 at the Islamic University (Gaza Strip), and yet another in 2008 at Al-Ummah University (Gaza Strip) (Faraj, 2017).

Evolution of Governmental Social Welfare Services

During the period 1948–1967 the West Bank had been under the control of the Hashemite Jordanian government since 24 April 1950 (Cavendish, 2000; Milton, 2009) while the Gaza Strip had been under the control of the Egyptian government since 24 February 1949 (Birzeit University, 2006). During these 20 years social services were provided to Palestinian citizens through three main service providers: the government (through the Jordanian Ministry of Social Affairs in the West Bank), international agencies such as the UNRWA that mainly provided services to Palestine refugees inside and outside camps (West Bank and Gaza Strip), and Palestinian civil society organisations including Palestinian charitable societies under the aegis of the Jordanian Association of Charitable Societies in the West Bank and Egyptian Law in the Gaza Strip (Faraj, 2017). In October 1967 the Jerusalem Welfare Office fell under the formal administration of the Israeli occupation and was assigned to the Israeli Municipality of Jerusalem (Faraj, 2017). In 1994 governmental social welfare services were transferred to the PNA, as was the entire education system (Faraj, 2017). As a result of needed reforms in these two ministries (the Ministry of Social Affairs and the Ministry of Education and Higher Education) the number of social work positions increased markedly and job descriptions were reviewed and modified. This stimulated interest in the social work profession and its status (education and practice) (Abu Ras et al., 2013; Faraj, 2017).

Challenges Facing Social Work Education in Palestine

Purpose

The purpose behind conducting this research was to explore how social workers in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip perceived the key challenges facing social work education and what actions they recommended to improve it.

Methodology

Exploratory quantitative research design using the social survey research method was applied for the purpose of this research. It targeted 213 participants from the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip who completed their first university degree at one of the five universities teaching social work. The main selection criteria of participants were that they should be working as social workers at the time of the research. The data collection tool was a structured survey questionnaire that covered 57 items distributed across 6 areas related to social work (education, labour market, representation, professional development, social status, and other challenges facing development of the social work profession in Palestine). The survey included 13 items about social work education (Table 25.1). A five-point Likert scale was applied. Social work instructors from Al-Quds Open University who taught the targeted areas volunteered to collect the data from fourth-year social work students after steering them in the requisite direction and providing them with instructions. The convenience sampling technique was applied to data collection. Data were collected between 1 February and 31 March 2018.

Table 25.1 How social work graduates perceived the challenges facing social work education in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip

Findings and Arguments

Some of the key general findings of the study were that 148 (69.6%) of the participants were holders of a BSW compared with 65 (30.4%) who were hired to social work positions but had qualifications in other fields (i.e., sociology, psychology, and organisational management); 86 (40.4%) were male and 127 (59.6%) were female; and 131 (61.5%) were from the West Bank and Jerusalem while 82 (38.5%) were from the Gaza Strip. About 54.0% of the participants were graduates of Al-Quds Open University while the other 46.0% were graduates from the other four universities (Bethlehem University, Al-Quds University, Islamic University, and Al-Ummah University for Open Learning).

Responses to the 13 questions about social work education are summarised in Table 25.1.

Table 25.1 provides an overview of the levels of satisfaction of the social work graduates to 13 aspects of the social work education programmes in Palestine (without any comparison between the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip). The two aspects of the social work education programmes that received the highest levels of satisfaction were the content of the theoretical curriculum and the total number of credit hours. Both were identified as convenient to some extent. Remaining aspects of the social work programmes were identified as less satisfactory.

Table 25.1 illustrates that the main challenges facing the social work education programmes in the five universities as perceived by the graduates were in the competencies of academics teaching social work theoretical courses, the competencies of academics teaching social work field-training courses, the level of coordination between universities and field placement institutions, the content of field-training courses, the competencies of field supervisors in field placement institutions, institutional supervision strategies, total credit hours of field-training courses, the service programmes in which students receive their field training inside institutions, Westernized social work curricula, and the inadequate admission policies of universities toward social work programmes. Accordingly, the majority of participants believe that weaknesses in social work education are mainly in admission policies, which are perceived as inadequate at selecting applicants who clearly have the potential and interest to study social work and become competent social workers (mean = 2.54), social work field training (means varied between 2.71 and 2.89), and Westernised and irrelevant curricula to the Palestinian context (mean = 2.71). Figure 25.1 shows that the levels of satisfaction start to drop as we move from theoretical aspects of the curricula to field training. However, the participants found the content of the curricula was poorly relevant to the Palestinian context. This implies that there could be a high level of satisfaction if the structures of theoretical courses were adjusted to chime with the fields they cover.

Fig. 25.1

Levels of satisfaction

Abu Ras et al. (2013) reviewed the syllabi describing the courses in the five universities and found a high similarity between title and course descriptions. In this regard universities seem to copy the structure of programme design from universities in Western countries. This would explain the high level of satisfaction about this aspect of courses and does not contradict the low level of satisfaction about just how relevant the content of courses were to the local context. In fact, two other interrelated elements can be brought to bear to explain the findings about the issue of poor relevance: the limited number of specialised academics and the extreme weakness in research-based knowledge about the Palestinian context to make the curricula more relevant. Hanafi (2010) highlighted the concern about the dearth of research-based literature in social sciences in Arab countries including Palestine, while Abu Ras et al. (2013) highlighted the serious shortfall in the availability of qualified academics to teach social work education. Ibrahim (2017) confirmed not only the existence of such challenges but also those in the field-training element.

Inconsistencies in the design and the way in which field-training courses are applied among the five universities were confirmed by Abu Ras et al. (2013), Ibrahim (2017), and Faraj (2017). Each university developed and implemented its own modules, applied them with little or no attention to designing academic and field supervision in an appropriate way, poorly focussed on the qualifications of supervisors in the university and the field placement institution, and did so in the absence of a proper evaluation process. Faraj’s (2017) notion that ties between social workers and psychologists in Palestine left much to be desired, weak coordination between universities, absence of a regulatory law, and the weak role played by the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education in ensuring social work programmes reached a certain level of national quality assurance are all key factors contributing to weaknesses in social work education programmes in the country. Yet, there is a significant difference in the quality of outcomes of social work education programmes between the West Bank and Jerusalem, on the one hand, and the Gaza Strip on the other.

The mean of all responses to the social work education question of participants from the West Bank was 3.04% compared with 2.64% in the Gaza Strip, which reflects the lower level or satisfaction of graduates from the Gaza Strip on different elements of the social work education system in the Gaza Strip compared with the level of satisfaction of graduates from the West Bank. Findings from qualitative research conducted by Faraj (2018) for his PhD thesis on the challenges facing development of the social work profession in Palestine confirmed that challenges facing social work education in Palestine outweighed those facing it in another five domains: community attitude, employability and labour market, policy and legal environment, professional representation, and the security and political environment. Findings from quantitative research in this sense were fully consistent with Faraj’s (2018) qualitative research findings. Qualitative and quantitative research thus clearly confirm that the challenges facing social work education in the Gaza Strip are the same as those in the West Bank but more severe. This difference can be attributed to a variety of factors.

Universities in the West Bank started their social work programmes in the 1970s and 1980s while in the Gaza Strip they started in the late 1990s and early 2000s. The geographic proximity of Bethlehem and Al-Quds (Jerusalem), home to the two oldest social work programmes,⁶ allowed them to benefit from qualified Palestinian staff from the Green Line area of historic Palestine (Israel), who had better chances to resume their postgraduate studies in social work in Israeli universities and abroad. Although access to universities in the West Bank remained open, it became stricter in the Gaza Strip due to the siege/blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip by the Israeli occupiers and ongoing wars there. Security restrictions imposed on the Gaza Strip made it very difficult for the two universities there, their graduates, and social service organisations to interact with the rest of the Arab world or internationally to exchange expertise, resume postgraduate education, and access other resources to develop their social work programmes. However, universities and social service organisations in the West Bank were able to interact with the rest of the world. This is the reason the number of qualified staff associated with social work programmes in the West Bank are higher than in the Gaza Strip, the quality of the social work programmes in West Bank universities is higher, and the number of specialised institutions providing social work services in the West Bank is much higher than in the Gaza Strip enabling them to provide better quality field training (Faraj, 2018, work in progress).

Not until 2008 were there postgraduate (PG) programmes in social work in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. Before then the number of Palestinians with PG, MSW, and PhD degrees did not exceed 35 (30 with MSWs and 5 with PhDs) (Abu Ras et al., 2013; Faraj, 2017). They were able to resume their education in European or North American universities through scholarships. In 2008 the Al-Quds University in Jerusalem established its Master of Social Action degree and in 2013 the University of Bethlehem launched its Master of social work degree. As yet there are no PG programmes in social work in the Gaza Strip mainly due to the shortage of qualified personnel. In 2005 Al-Quds Open University (QOU) supported 25 Palestinians to get their Master of social work from Helwan University in Egypt through a partnership programme (18 were from the West Bank and 7 from the Gaza Strip). Ten of the 25 successfully completed their PhD in social work in Egyptian universities (Faraj, 2018, work in progress). The shortage is more acute in PhD degrees, which can only be acquired through scholarships and take much longer to complete than Master’s degrees.

When it comes to continuing education there are no programmes in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that provide social work graduates with any professional diplomas in specific fields in social work such as supervision, programme management, monitoring and evaluation, school social work, youth development, and advanced research. Such programmes would effectively contribute to enhancing the quality of existing social services and would provide better employment opportunities for thousands of graduates. At the very least they would enhance the number and skillsets of staff in temporary or short-term jobs in consultancies and in a research market that is desperately looking for social work graduates with specialised skills in specific fields such as local government development, market research, youth and child development programmes, and supervision.

At a more strategic level the social work profession in Palestine is seriously challenged by lack of vision, extremely weak professional leadership, and lack of a regulatory law (Faraj, 2018, work in progress). These and other factors are extremely important for the smooth running of social work education programmes. Lacking a clear definition of social work, its functions and clear roles coupled with a lack of standards as to who can practise social work and who cannot and a lack of standards for field-training programmes, as well as many other conditions contribute to making social work education in Palestine less responsive. A relevant finding from responses to questions relating to the labour market and social work education is that 58.7% of the graduates evaluated the content of social work curricula as responsive to demands of the labour market and 50.2% believed that universities invested sufficient efforts and resources to prepare students to integrate in the labour market. This reflects poor coordination between social work education programmes and the labour market and the absence of research in social work about issues that could contribute to the development of social work education that is more indigenised.

Conclusions and Recommendations

Findings from the two studies illustrate that the main challenges facing social work education in Palestine are concentrated in the areas of field training, irrelevant and Westernized curricula, inadequate admission policies, poor research production, limited competencies of social work academics, and poor coordination between social work programmes and other external actors such as employers and professional representatives.

Based on these findings and the arguments presented in the chapter key recommended actions to improve the quality of social work education can be summarized as:

• establishing a Palestinian council of schools of social work that can take the lead in putting together a social work education development plan at the national level;

• establishing specialised training and further education centres that can provide professional development education opportunities for the vast majority of social work graduates;

• establishing specialised research centres in social work in universities that offer first degrees in social work (at least in the two that offer MSW degrees);

• establishing a Master’s of social work degree programme and a professional development programme in the Gaza Strip; and

• allocating more resources and increasing university budgets for social work research, especially since such research was underbudgeted in existing universities and research centres when international donors guided by neoliberal policies and priorities neglected the need to increase budgets.

Notes

• 1. Palestine was under the control of the Ottoman Empire between 1516 and 1917, the British Mandate between 1918 and 1948, Jordanian and Egyptian rule between 1948 and 1967, and Israeli colonial occupation between 1948 and 2018 (78% of historic Palestine) and between 1967 and 2018 (the remaining 22% of historic Palestine comprising the West Bank, Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip).

• 2. Palestinian National Authority.

• 3. Palestinian Liberation Organisation.

• 4. United States of America.

• 5. The UNRWA was established by the UN General Assembly under Resolution 302 (IV) and tasked with taking responsibility for providing humanitarian relief, basic health, and education services to Palestine refugees who were forced to flee their homes and towns as a result of military action taken against them during the 1948 war when they lost their homes and livelihoods between 1 June 1946 and 15 May 1948 (unrwa.org).

• 6. At University of Bethlehem and Al-Quds University.