14The Transition From School to Work, From One Work Setting to Another: Guided by Curiosity

Karen Lok Yi Wong

In this chapter, I share my experiences of how curiosity guided my transitions from school to work and from one work setting to another. I am sharing my experiences because I expect that many readers of this book are social work students, and they will experience the transition to practitioners in the future. To support my personal experiences of transitioning to professional social work practice, I first review literature on the topic of transitions. It helped me know what work has already been done on this topic and how my experience could add to the work already done. I then explain the curiosity approach and refer to my experiences as examples to explain how curiosity guided my transitions. I explain how I applied curiosity to overcome challenges during transitions by searching for answers, asking questions, observation, and reflection. Because of curiosity, I reached a deeper understanding of the challenges I faced and issues I encountered during my transitions. With this approach, I was able to turn stress and fear of transitions into interest to explore the unknown. This chapter can be used as a support for social work students and social workers who experience challenges during transitions.

Literature on Transitions

Glassburn (2020) interviewed recent Master of Social Work graduates about their transition from school to work. The main challenges these graduates faced during the transition were pressure to get a job as soon as possible, lack of knowledge about how to negotiate for their salary, lack of orientation at workplaces, realization of the gap between expectation and reality, overwhelmedness about things they did not know, lack of workplace supervision, emotions management, and compassion fatigue or burnout (Glassburn, 2020). The author suggested that more opportunities for orientation and supervision support graduates transitioning from school to work.

Tham and Lynch (2019) interviewed recent social work graduates. According to these graduates, the main challenges of transitioning from school to work included lack of workplace training and having an unorganized or even chaotic introduction to the workplace (Tham & Lynch, 2019). The authors recommended revisiting social work education curriculum to improve student preparation for the transition to work.

Richards-Schuster et al. (2016) conducted a survey to understand the challenges of recent social work graduates’ transition to work. The main challenges was the discrepancy between what they imagined at school and what they can do in reality to practice social justice (Richards-Schuster et al., 2016). The authors recommend letting students see real-world injustices while at school; connecting students with recent graduates; and helping students develop skills in relationship building, reflection, cultural and educational humility, and self-care.

The literature shows that social work students encounter challenges transitioning from school to work. A common challenge is that social work students feel unprepared when they transition into a job . For myself, the challenges of transitions happened not only when moving from school to work but also from one workplace to another. Literature suggests that there are many ways to overcome the challenges (Glassburn, 2020; Richards-Schuster et al., 2016; Tham & Lynch, 2019). From my experience, one way was through being curious: I turned my fear and stress being in a new place into curiosity. To my understanding, there is little literature about using curiosity to cope with the challenges of transitions, which is the central theme of this chapter. However, even though literature about overcoming transition challenges through curiosity is limited in social work, there is literature on this area in other disciplines such as Nursing (Sun et al., 2023) and Vocational Studies (Koen et al., 2012). The literature in other disciplines talked about how curiosity helped overcome transition challenges and ease the transition process.

Curiosity Approach

When I was training to be a social worker, I was introduced to and inspired by literature of different social work approaches. An article that still profoundly influences me today after years of practice is ‘Not-Knowing’ and ‘Assumption’ in Canadian Social Services for Refugees and Immigrants: A Conversational Inquiry into Practitioner Stance by DeFehr et al. (2012). Even though the article is about practitioners working with refugees and immigrants, I believe that it has implications to practitioners working with other populations and settings, too. The authors described the approach they were using but did not give a specific name to it. However, I understand that the approach is built around the practitioner’s curiosity. For easier reference, I will call this the “curiosity approach.”

According to DeFehr et al. (2012), the curiosity approach refers to the genuine curiosity about people around us, including understanding their perspectives and strengths. Practitioners do not make assumptions, and instead, they work from the stance that they want to know more about the people they are working with. This includes clients, colleagues, and community partners. Coming from curiosity, we ask people what they think instead of assuming we know what they think. This prevents us from making assumptions and thus helps to avoid misunderstanding. Moreover, curiosity also refers to curiosity about the world. We think about an issue or a challenge in the world from different angles. We consider these issues and challenges from new perspectives. We think deeper about them instead of just seeing their surfaces.

Examples of Transitions Guided by Curiosity

I used the curiosity approach several times to guide my transitions from school to work and from one workplace to another. There are many ways to put our curiosity into practice. For example, I search for answers, ask questions, observe, reflect. I will explain how I apply these strategies in the examples that follow.

Setting 1: Senior Community Centre

My first social work job was in a senior community centre. One of my roles was providing information and referral services, which are services that clients come to the centre and ask for information and support for, such as tax filing service, benefit applications, and bus pass application. One common reason seniors came to my centre was that they needed certain government resources that they were entitled to but could not apply for them by themselves. This was especially the case when they needed to apply for resources online because, while some were tech-savvy, many seniors were not able to go online.

My colleagues, our clients, and I called government departments to ask what we could do. The government departments answered, “go online, there is no other way.” This was shocking for me as a new social worker. At school, we learned about equity (Ife, 2008; Solas, 2008). People come from diverse backgrounds, and because of these backgrounds, some are in more advantaged positions while some are in less advantaged positions — they are not on a level playing field. Accommodation is therefore needed so that people can access equal opportunities. However, the reality told me that society was not accommodating. The government department’s response showed that the government did not practice equity.

Many new social workers feel shocked when they realize the discrepancy between what they imagined at school and what they can do in reality to practice social justice (Glassburn, 2020; Richards-Schuster et al., 2016). I began to be curious about my clients and their situations. I asked them, colleagues, and community partners why my clients could not go online. I concluded that there were several reasons. First, some had no financial resources except a public pension, which they had to use for necessities, including food and housing could not afford the technology. Second, some had limited or no technological literacy. Classes and devices on the market often did not consider the needs of senior users. Third, some did not feel comfortable using the technology, and they did not have or could not ask their family or friends to help. There were volunteer programs in the senior community centre, but it was hard to retain volunteers due to limited funding. I reflected on what the implications were that older adults needed to access online to apply for the resources, but they could not go online. At school, I learned that a human need can be interpreted as a human right (Ife, 2008, 2012). In other words, access to technology is a human rights issue. I later collaborated with seniors and research and community partners to conduct a study and publish a report and an article on advocating for seniors’ access to technology and related information and services as a human right (Wong et al., 2021a, 2021b).

Setting 2: Long-Term Care

I later moved to work in long-term care. Residents, families, and team members in long-term care came to me for different things because they believed what they came to me with was within my role as a social worker. However, gradually I felt that something was not right. I worked overtime several hours every day. Yet, I did not know that I should say no when others came to me. I realized that the root problem was that I did not know what my role was. At school, I was taught about the roles of social workers, such as counselling, resource connection, and advocacy. During my first job, I was clear about what my role was because my employer made it clear to me and others on my team. Therefore, I was shocked by not knowing my role in the new setting. It appeared that everything was included within my role, from screening admission packages of new residents to cleaning the belongings of residents who passed away. I felt stressed not knowing my role as it seemed that everything fell on my shoulders. Instead of just feeling stressed and fearing not knowing my role, I was curious to explore what my role was. I asked myself, “What are the social worker’s roles in long-term care?” I was the only social worker in the facility, so I did not have another social worker to ask. Therefore, I had to search for answers. I asked residents, families, and colleagues what they thought my role was and should be. I searched for job postings of social workers in other long-term care facilities that included the roles of social workers. I attended conferences and exchanged views with other participants from healthcare and social services located throughout Canada. I even conducted a research project (Wong, 2021) where I interviewed social workers in long-term care about what they thought their roles were and learned that social workers’ roles in long-term care depend on the contexts because of the differences in the resident population, family population, team structure, and more. However, as social workers in long-term care, we share a common scope of practice grounded in our fundamental professional values: self-determination, relationship building, and advocating for social justice. We define our job according to these values.

Setting 3: Hospital

I later moved to work in acute care in a hospital where professionals use terms that people outside healthcare do not necessarily understand. For example, abbreviations are common. I was shocked as I realized that I did not know many of the terms being used because I was not taught them in school. In my previous work setting in long-term care, even though it was a healthcare setting, these terms were not used. I tried to guess the terms from the context and searched for the answers. However, I still could not understand all of them. At one point, I was curious about myself, “What don’t I just ask my colleagues what the terms mean?” I reflected that this was related to my fear of being seen as incompetent or bothering other colleagues. I did not want to look stupid by asking people simple questions, and I did not want to bother my colleagues in a fast-paced work setting. However, I could not do my job properly without understanding what the terms meant because I was responsible for the best interests of my clients. For the sake of my clients, I asked my colleagues what the terms meant; I soon realized that some of my colleagues also did not understand the terms. When I asked my questions, I unintentionally helped the speakers who used the terms understand that not everyone understood what they were saying. This facilitated a culture of using simple language and facilitated interdisciplinary collaboration.

The hospital I worked in was in a multicultural and aging community in Vancouver, British Columbia. The primary language used in healthcare services in Vancouver is English. However, clients came from diverse cultural and language backgrounds. My previous work settings had clients from diverse cultural and language backgrounds, but the environment of this hospital was even more diverse. Working with the cultural and language diversity was a challenge to me at first because many of my clients spoke limited English, sometimes because of cognitive deterioration. When my colleagues and I asked these clients whether they had further questions, they usually said no. However, we did not want to make assumptions that the clients understood our question, and we were curious whether and to what extent the clients understood what we said. Therefore, we asked the clients, “Would you please tell me how you understand what I said?” We realized that they did not understand, or they understood in different ways from what we told them. I reflected on how we could improve communication. Interpretation did not entirely resolve the problem Because sometimes clients continued to not understand or they misunderstood what we said even if there was an interpreter present. We came to realize that sometimes the gap was more than language — it was a gap in culture. We do not have a definite answer on how to improve the communication. However, my curiosity guided me to think deeper about spending more time to clarify my intent when we come from different language and cultural backgrounds.

I learned from my colleagues that clients from certain cultural groups are more likely to decline home-care resources after discharge from the hospital. Homecare refers to professionals going to the home of clients to provide care. My colleagues attributed the decline to culture. Patients of some cultural groups prefer to receive care from their families. While I thought this was reasonable, I was curious to explore this further. Therefore, when patients or their families declined the resources, I asked them for the reasons. Indeed, many of them were open to home care resources. However, they and their families had limited English abilities. They worried that if they could not communicate with the professionals, the situation would be worse than not having the home-care resources. This made me think about whether we have enough language and culturally appropriate home care resources in our healthcare system. I also started raising the lack of language and culturally appropriate home care resources among my healthcare and social work colleagues.

Conclusion

I used examples from my experiences to show how curiosity guided my transitions from school to work and from one workplace to another. My experiences taught me that I felt shocked with the new challenges every time I moved to a new setting. However, curiosity helped me to reduce my anxiety working in a new setting. Also, it helped me to go deeper with the new challenges. It helped me turn my stress and fear of transitions into interests to explore the unknowns.

I applied curiosity by different strategies: searching for answers, asking questions, observation, and reflection: I observed why my clients could not go online when I graduated from school and practiced in the senior community service centre. I searched for what the roles of social workers were when I transitioned to long-term care. I asked my colleagues what medical terms meant when I first started working in the hospital. I constantly reflected about my practice and things I observed. My reflection led me to take actions, such as research and advocacy.

How do we nurture curiosity? I found networking with other people helpful. Talking to people helps me to learn about their perspectives which broadens my understanding of and nurtures my curiosity of people. I also found continuous education helpful; learning new ideas keeps me curious about the world. It helps me acknowledge that the world is changing daily, so my curiosity should never stop.

Note: This chapter was based on the author’s lecture when she received the Inspiring Social Worker Award 2021 co-organized by the British Columbia Association of Social Workers and the University of British Columbia.

Discussion Questions

1. What does curiosity mean to you?
2. Why is curiosity important in social work practice?
3. How could curiosity guide your transitions?
4. How could curiosity guide your practice?
5. How could you cultivate your curiosity in practice?

References

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Ife, J. (2012). Human rights and social work: Towards rights-based practice. Cambridge University Press.

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Tham, P., and Lynch, D. (2019). “ Lost in transition?” — Newly educated social workers’ reflections on their first months in practice. European Journal of Social Work, 22(3), 400–411. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691457.2017.1364701

Wong, K. L. Y. (2021). How do social workers working in long-term care understand their roles? Using British Columbia, Canada as an example. Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 64(5), 452–470. https://doi.org/10.1080/01634372.2021.1900479

Wong, K. L. Y., Sixsmith, A., and Remund, L. (2021a). In Community—Information and Referral Services for Seniors in British Columbia: Past Learnings and Learnings since COVID-19. https://www.sfu.ca/content/dam/sfu/starinstitute/Documents/In%20Community%20-%20Information%20and%20Referral%20Services%20for%20Seniors%20in%20British%20Columbia_Report.pdf.

Wong, K. L. Y., Sixsmith, A., & Remund, L. (2021b). “Older adults’ access to information and referral service using technology in British Columbia, Canada: Past learnings and learnings since COVID-19.” In M. Pomati, A. Jolly, and J. Rees (Eds.), Social Policy Review 33: Analysis and Debate in Social Policy (pp. 161–180). Policy Press.