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Social Work Education

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What Does Professionalization Mean?Tracing the Trajectory of Social Work Education in Taiwan
Wan-I. Lina; Kate Yeong-Tsyr Wangb a National Taiwan University, Taiwan b National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan Online publication date: 02 November 2010

To cite this Article Lin, Wan-I. and Yeong-Tsyr Wang, Kate(2010) 'What Does Professionalization Mean?Tracing the

Trajectory of Social Work Education in Taiwan', Social Work Education, 29: 8, 869 881 To link to this Article: DOI: 10.1080/02615479.2010.517015 URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2010.517015

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Social Work Education Vol. 29, No. 8, December 2010, pp. 869881

What Does Professionalization Mean?Tracing the Trajectory of Social Work Education in Taiwan
Wan-I. Lin & Kate Yeong-Tsyr Wang

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The purpose of this article is to review the history and recent developments of social work education in Taiwan. The inuences from Taiwans political, economic and social changes as well as the international diffusion of social work have led to the unique development of social work education in Taiwan. In this paper, various factors that are relevant to the status of social work education in Taiwan are discussed, including: (1) the origin of social work education; (2) the subsequent development of social work education; (3) the rapid expansion of social work education; (4) social work curricula before and after the late 1990s; and (5) teaching staff before and after the late 1990s. Finally, reections on the development of Taiwans social work education will be presented. Keywords: Social Work Education; Professionalization; Taiwan

Introduction As in most colonized countries, social work in Taiwan was inuenced by the colonizers, the Japanese. After the period of Japanese rule, social work knowledge was further inuenced by Western capitalist countries, mainly the US. Since the 1950s, changing political, economic and social contexts have inuenced Taiwans social work development (which is mainly copied from the US model) and there has been a gradual process of professionalization. The development of social work education has reected the progress of the social work profession and has also revealed its unique features in Taiwan. This paper will discuss this development from the following ve aspects: (1) the origin of social work education; (2) the subsequent development of social work education; (3) the rapid expansion of social work education; (4) social work curricula before and after the late 1990s; and (5) teaching staff before and after

Wan-I. Lin, National Taiwan University, Taiwan & Kate Yeong-Tsyr Wang, National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan. Correspondence to: Wan-I. Lin, Department of Social Work, National Taiwan University, No. 1, Sec. 4, Roosevelt Road, Taipei County 10617, Taiwan. Email: linwani@ntu.edu.tw

ISSN 0261-5479 print/1470-1227 online q 2010 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/02615479.2010.517015

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the late 1990s. Finally, reections on the historical development of social work education in Taiwan will be presented. The Origin of Social Work Education in Taiwan Social work was introduced to Taiwan by Japan during the Japanese colonial period. Since 1919, traditional Japanese social relief has been replaced by Westernized social work, known as shakai jigyo. The original idea of shakai jigyo came from the Charity Organization Societies in the UK in the late 1800s. The idea of shakai jigyo had also been promoted in Taiwan. Mr Kinebuchi Yoshifusa, a Japanese philanthropist and consultant to the Governor-General of Taiwan, established the Association of Shakai Jigyo and published The Friend of Shakai Jigyo to introduce new concepts in the late 1920s (Lin, 2006). The promotion of social affairs in Taiwan could be regarded as a way of enhancing social solidarity in the colonized country. After the Japanese colonial period, the Chinese Nationalist Party assumed power in Taiwan. It started reorganizing governmental institutions and established the Bureau of Social Affairs. On the one hand, social work was regarded as a measure to improve peoples well-being; on the other, the major social service reform was used as an instrument to eliminate the legacy of Japanese policy and to implement social policy under the ideology of the Nationalist party (Shyu, 1948; Ku, 1948, p. 5). The political context of the mid-1940s also inuenced the development of social work education. The rst social work program in Taiwan was the Social Administrative Program of the Provincial Administrative Junior College (a public college) in 1951 (Chang and Mo, 2007; Feng, 2008). The aim of the program was to inuence the workers in the eld of social assistance so that Taiwans social welfare structures could be developed and prepared for the return to mainland China (Fu, 1952, pp. 36 38). In other words, social workers were considered to be part of the labor force which could be mobilized when the Chinese Nationalist Party defeated the Chinese Communist Party and regained sovereignty of mainland China (Du, 1952; Shue, 1952). Social work education had been politicized to some extent after the mid1940s and this situation did not change until the early 1970s (Lin, 2006). The rst social work program in Taiwan, as discussed above, was a two-year program comprising 84 credit hours, and was known as the Social Administrative Program. Most of the teaching staff did not come from a social work background. In 1955, the government merged the college where the rst social work program had been established, with the other public college. It was renamed the Department of Sociology. In 1958, the department was divided into two: sociology and social administration. These changes reected several features of early social work education in Taiwan. The rst feature was that social work education was designed as a four-year program at university level. It was set up as an example for training social workers in higher education in Taiwan. The second feature was that the inclusion of social workers in the public sector, i.e. the staff of social administration, was to be fostered. The third feature was that social work was a part of sociology and the social work program was only one division of the sociology department.

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From the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, sociology departments were founded at both public and private universities. Private universities included Tunghai University (in 1956), Fu-Jen University (in 1969) and Soochow University (in 1973). Taiwan Provincial Normal College, a public university, set up a branch of Social Affairs under the Department of Social Education in 1955. (The term Social Affairs is borrowed from the Japanese term Shakai Jigyo as mentioned above.) In 1960, National Taiwan University also established a sociology department with sponsorship from the Asia Foundation (Lin, 2006). With the establishment of sociology departments, universities started training potential social workers; this can be regarded as the rst stage in the education of professional social workers in Taiwan. Due to the lack of qualied social work teaching staff, social work courses were rather limited. During the abovementioned period, most of the courses were taught by members of the sociology faculty. Core courses for the social work programs were not standardized and courses dealing with methods of intervention as well as specializations in elds of practice were also inadequate. For instance, if the social work courses at Taiwan Provincial Chun Shin University (reorganized from the Provincial Administrative Junior College) and Taiwan Provincial Normal College are compared, the number of required courses were 16 (72 credit hours) and 14 (54 credit hours), respectively. The titles of the courses held in common at these two institutions were: Sociology, Social Survey, Social Psychology, Social Work, Social Problems, Social Thoughts, Social Casework and Social Insurance (Rung, 1963). Even though the titles of the courses are similar, the contents of the courses were not necessarily alike. Taiwan Provincial Normal University combined social administration and social work in the Social Work course. The Social Problems course included topics related to social policy and the Social Casework course was titled Case Study. These curricula indicate that the professional education of social workers was still underdeveloped and that knowledge from sociology played a relatively important role in social workers education. Social work was recognized as applied sociology during this time (Lin, 2006). There are various reasons why social work was considered to be a subdiscipline of sociology. (1) During the 1920s, in mainland China, Yenching University founded the division of social work within the sociology department. Other universities in China, such as the University of Nanking, Ginling Womens University, Fudan University, Cheeloo University and the University of Shanghai, followed suit. Not surprisingly, Taiwan copied the same model in the 1950s. (2) The shortage of social work teaching staff was another limitation to establishing social work departments. (3) Neither the Nationalist Party nor the government truly understood the discipline of social work or sociology. The problem was compounded by some sociologists who believed that they had expertise in social work or social administration, and so the distinction between social work and sociology was easily overlooked (Yei, 1985; Hung, 1991; Lin, 1991). The Subsequent Development of Social Work Education In the 1960s, Taiwan began to transform from an agricultural to an industrial society. Poverty became a pressing social issue which the government needed to address;

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community development was the major measure used to do this. The idea of community development had been introduced by Mr Chang Hon-Chiung during the 1960s. Mr Chang was educated in social work in the US. Soon after retiring from his position at the United Nations, he promoted the idea of community development. The government put the idea into effect and with nancial support from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the Research and Training Center of Community Development was established. This center sent 15 graduated students to the US, the Netherlands, and the UK for more advanced social work training. The center also published the Community Development Journal, which has been widely circulated in Taiwan since that time. Without doubt, community development was the major intervention used in social work during the 1960s and 1970s. The goal of poverty elimination by means of community development meant that the demand for social workers was great. The government proposed an experimental plan for recruiting social workers in local communities or public institutions, which was implemented in the 1970s (Social Affairs Bureau of Taiwan Province, 1983). By 1980, 17 counties had developed the system for recruiting social workers and by 1998, the number of social workers had increased to 414 (Lin and Shen, 2008). The rapid growth in the number of social workers necessitated an improvement in their professional education. The direct result of this need was the development of the second stage of social work education. In 1969, the Bureau of Social Affairs, Ministry of Interior, invited Ms Porthy Moses, a consultant at the United Nations, to visit Taiwan and hold a forum on the teaching of social work. The Ministry of the Interior and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) held another important conference in 1971. The participants at this conference put forward a proposal for a comprehensive framework for social work education (Ministry of the Interior, 1971). Ten core courses were compiled: Introduction to Social Work; Social Casework; Social Group Work; Community Organization and Development; Social Administration; Social Policy and Legislation; Social Research Methods; Social Statistics; Human Behavior and the Social Environment; and Social Work Practice. This framework laid the foundation for the future development of social work education in Taiwan. In addition to the redesign of the social work curriculum, there were some pivotal changes in the academic institutions. The National Taiwan University began to set up separate undergraduate curricula for social work and sociology students in 1973. Students began to be independently enrolled at the masters level in 1974. The decision to separate the social work and sociology departments was made at Tunghai University in 1979. Other universities followed Tunghais lead. These institutional transformationsseparate course curricula, the independent enrollment of social work students and the establishment of social work departmentsindicate that social work was being recognized as an academic discipline and that this development could be seen as a milestone for social work professionalization. With the increasing number of social work students and faculty members, the conditions for forming professional organizations gradually matured. The Medical Social Worker Association and the Taiwanese Association of Social Workers (TASW)

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were established in 1983 and 1989, respectively. The development of medical social work can be traced back to the 1950s; the organization of the association represented the strong professional identity of medical social workers. The TASW is composed mainly of social work practitioners and faculty members. The formation of this association demonstrates the power of collective action; social workers joined together to lobby for the establishment of the Ministry of Social Welfare in the central government and for the formalization of the governments social work personnel system in the late 1980s and 1990s. The critical achievement of these two professional organizations was the enactment of the Social Worker Act. The rst draft of the Social Worker Act was initiated and proposed by the rst author of this paper and a group of social workers in 1991, the purpose of which was to promote the professional status and protect the rights of social workers; social work organizations continued lobbying parliamentarians for the Act to be implemented. It was nally passed in 1997, another turning point in the development of social work. The Act species the certication and licensing system which individuals need to pass the certication examination to become certied social workers. A code of ethics has been developed for regulating social workers. At this stage, social work in Taiwan has experienced the following ve characteristics of professional development as suggested by Wilensky (1964): the demands of the social work workforce, the need for social work education and training, the emergence of professional organizations, passing laws to protect the profession and the self-regulatory mechanism of social work ethics. The Rapid Expansion of Social Work Education After martial law was lifted in 1987, various civil groups were organized and developed. During the late 1980s and the 1990s, many issue-specic welfare organizations were established and they devoted a great deal of time and effort to lobbying for laws and policies such as The Child and Youth Sexual Transaction Prevention Act, Gender Equality in Employment Act, and Domestic Violence Prevention Act. The pressure from these groups and the new social problems of the post-industrial society, including unemployment, poverty, single parenthood and an aging population, forced the government to pass or amend social welfare laws. Social welfare expenditure and the number of social welfare services began to mount in the public sector. At the same time, the government began contracting out social service programs to non-prot organizations in order to meet the rapid growth of peoples welfare needs. The demand for social workers in both public and private sectors increased rapidly. The abovementioned social, economic and political changes led to the rapid expansion of social work departments at universities during the late 1990s. When the Social Worker Act was passed, the professional status of certied social workers was legitimized and social work became a relatively popular career choice for young people. Many universities instituted social work departments, with the approval of the Ministry of Education. Students are attracted to these universities with the result that

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these departments ensure a steady supply of potential social workers. Until 1996, there were 14 social work/social welfare undergraduate programs with an annual enrollment of about 1,100. There were 10 masters programs with an annual enrollment of about 140 and two PhD programs with 11 students enrolled for each year (Lin, 2000). However, from 1997 to 2010, 13 undergraduate programs, 14 masters programs and two PhD programs were established. Currently in 2010, there are 26 undergraduate programs, 24 masters programs and four PhD programs. The annual enrollment at these three levels is 2,650, 347, and 19, respectively. If six other programs related to social services for the elderly are included, the total number of students will be greater than the above gures. In considering changing trends in the last 15 years, six characteristics of social work education in Taiwan are evident and can be summarized as follows. (1) Since the Social Worker Act was passed in 1997, the number of social programs has doubled and the number of students enrolled has almost trebled. (2) Since 1996, universities of science and technology have also provided social work training, and currently there are ve social work departments at universities of science and technology. (3) There are more social work programs in private universities than in public ones. Before 1997, there were eight social work programs at public universities, which accounted for 50% of the total professional programs. However, when the Ministry of Education implemented the education reform policy, the establishment of private universities was encouraged to give more high school graduates an opportunity for further study. Hence, not only did the number of private universities increase, but also the number of social work programs. Among these newly established programs, nine are private and only two are public. (4) The number of social work students has grown rapidly with most of the students coming from private universities. The enrollment at private universities is 1.5 times larger than at public ones. Therefore, the increase of private universities has had an impact on the number of social work students. (5) The role of masters degree programs in social work has become relatively important in terms of supplying future social workers. All, except four universities with social work undergraduate programs, have masters degree programs. Compared with individuals who have bachelor degrees in social work, those who receive masters degrees are more willing to choose social work for their careers. Therefore, although masters students comprise only 13% of the total number of social work students, their greater motivation and the demands of the labor market will ensure that more graduates with masters degrees enter this profession. It is expected that social workers with masters degrees will become a major part of the labor force in the future. (6) Four-year undergraduate programs and two-year masters programs have gradually been recognized as the standard model for social work education. Although, in the past, several universities offered special training programs for practitioners/students without social work degrees, many of these courses have now been closed. To enhance the quality of professional education, the formal and standardized course models have been accepted by the social work community. Another point worth mentioning has to do with the reason why private universities are more likely to institute social work departments, namely cost. Relatively speaking,

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the cost of facilities and equipment for training social work students is not very high. The more students that enroll in the programs, the more revenue universities will receive. Although the Ministry of Education sets the standard for the student-toteacher ratio (i.e. 25:1) for daytime classes, universities cannot necessarily meet this standard. By recruiting fewer teaching staff, universities can reduce the nancial burden of personnel costs. However, the consequences of the shortage of teaching staff will negatively affect both students and faculty members. Students right to study would be compromised and faculty members teaching loads would become unreasonable. In order to improve the quality of higher education, the Ministry of Education implemented a system of higher education evaluation and accreditation in the mid-2000s. Furthermore, with the rapid expansion of social work departments at the undergraduate level, nearly 3,000 students graduate from social work programs every year, but there are fewer than 10,000 job opportunities. It is apparent that most social work graduates do not choose their profession as their occupation. From the perspective of professional education, the large gap between supply and demand indicates, to some extent, that educational resources are not being allocated effectively, particularly for the undergraduate programs.

Social Work Curricula Before and After the Late 1990s As discussed above, the social work community had reached consensus about the required courses for social work education in the early 1970s. These requirements, copied from the policy of the Council of Social Work Education in the US, have been approved by the Ministry of Education in Taiwan. By 1990, the government deregulated the course design of higher education; hence, universities had more autonomy regarding their academic development and could use their own discretion. Most social work programs still followed the previous course requirements, although the number of credit hours was perhaps adjusted. However, this was not the case for some social work programs which were established during the 1990s. For example, some programs did not offer the foundation course in human behavior and social environment or the basic intervention methods of social work and others. This indicates that one of the unintended consequences of the deregulation policy was the lowering of the bar for social work education. Thus social work graduates might not be competent to provide social services at a professional standard (Lin, 2000). In order to standardize the minimum criteria for social work education, another regulatory mechanism was developed: the professional certication system. According to the Social Worker Act passed in 1997, as well as the Chinese language test, there are six courses with written tests for screening certied social workers: Social Work; Human Behavior and Social Environment; Direct Practice; Social Work Research Methods; Social Work Administration; and Social Policy and Legislation. The requirements of these tests have led to academic institutions once more standardizing their course structures.

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Practitioners without formal social work education can also take the certication examination on condition that they complete the required 20 credit courses. This exible policy led to the emergence of special training programs for such practitioners. However, the introduction of special programs is contradictory to the development of formal social work education. Hence, a stricter criterion has been proposed which will come into effect in 2013. According to the new rule, in order to be eligible for the certication examinations, the candidate needs to complete 15 required courses. The maximum credit for each course is three hours. Again, this change has a direct impact on the structure of social work courses required by universities. In addition to the required courses, the following will present the changing patterns of elective courses. Lin et al. (1999) pointed out that some undergraduate social work programs instituted the course framework of direct practice and indirect practice in the late 1990s. Other programs classied elective courses into several groups, based on the purpose of the program or the expertise of the teaching staff, e.g. family social work, medical social work, social welfare or children and youth services etc. At the masters level, most of the programs used the framework of direct/indirect practice and students were required to decide on the direction of their studies. The above course designs have been revised during the last 10 years. About 40% (10 programs) of the undergraduate programs have set up course modules. The conceptual framework of course modules is based on the elds of social work practice. In the various elds of practice, work with children and the family is the most popular, social work management is second, and health and social care is the third most popular. Course modules are not very common in masters programs: only nine programs have this kind of course design. Further analysis of social work programs that include module designs at both the undergraduate and masters levels indicates that most programs have different course modules for undergraduate and masters students. In fact, there are many obstacles in operating the kind of system that incorporates different course modules at different levels. A limited number of teaching staff members cannot offer diverse courses at both the basic and advanced levels. Also, at present, masters programs have about 10 20 students each year and the minimum class size required by universities is about ve. Hence, it is not possible for universities to provide a variety of courses in each module, and students often need to take courses across modules. It is clear that in the current learning environment, it is very difcult to develop students with expertise in one special area of practice. According to the amended Social Work Act of 2008, there will be two levels of certied social workers. Certied social workers who have passed the rst level of the certication examination can take another advanced examination in one special area of practice. Five areas of practice have been classied: (1) medical social work; (2) mental health and social work; (3) children, youth, women, and family social work; (4) social work with the elderly; and (5) social work with the disabled. It is apparent that, with the changing requirements of the certication examination, the next challenge we have to face is how to provide adequate training for students to specialize in one area of practice, particularly at the masters level.

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Finally, the social work practicum has been one of the required courses since the 1970s. The Social Work Act also stipulates that examinees of the certication examination have to take the practicum courses at school. There are two types of eldwork placements: a concurrent placement and a block placement. For the concurrent placement, junior/senior students work as interns for 12 hours a week for a period of 16 weeks, constituting not less than 192 hours. For the block placement, junior students do little or no classroom work during the summer and spend 40 hours per week for eight weeks in agencies. In total, the minimum hours for eldwork are around 512. In Taiwan, students undertake their summer block placements in private non-prot agencies, public agencies, or hospitals, but for concurrent placements, it is not necessarily an agency-based practicum. Some social work departments arrange for students to learn how to plan social service programs for agencies or communities on a simulation basis. Usually, this kind of arrangement is made when there is a shortage of eldwork placements during academic semesters, especially in the central or southern part of Taiwan. In addition to practicum placements, freshman or sophomore students will usually do agency visits to get a better understanding of social work practice. Some programs provide an introductory course to prepare students for their eldwork placements. According to the requirement of the Social Work Act, social workers who provide onsite supervision at the practicum site must have a social work background with at least three years practical experience. Furthermore, faculty members at universities who oversee the students experience in practicum, visit students at the placement sites and award the students grades. As discussed above, some social work programs do not have teaching staff with social work degrees. If these members of staff are supervisors, students learning opportunities will be affected as well as the collaboration between agencies and universities. Teaching Staff Before and After the Late 1990s The global norms for the education and training of social workers recognizes the standards for professional staff (IASSW and IFSW, 2004; Weiss-Gal and Welbourne, 2008). Standard 5.1 states that an institution needs enough professional members of staff who all have an adequate range of expertise and who have appropriate qualications, as determined by the development status of the social work profession in any given country. As far as possible, a masters degree in social work, or a related discipline (in countries where social work is an emerging discipline), should be required. Considering that Taiwans social work education program has been developing for over 50 years, the teaching faculty members should at least have masters degrees in social work. Besides the international standards, the personnel regulations of the Ministry of Education stipulate that at least two thirds of teaching staff in each department must hold PhD degrees. Moreover, the educational background of professional staff must match the educational goals of the department. Hence, most social work teachers should have a social work background and a doctoral degree. The following section

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will analyze the educational backgrounds of teachers in Taiwan on the basis of their highest academic degrees. A limitation of using the highest academic degrees is that one teacher may have a masters degree rather than a doctoral degree in social work. By 1998, there were 158 faculty members in 21 social work programs. Among them, 65% had received PhD degrees and 34% had masters degrees. Only 51% had a background in social work, social welfare or social policy. Of the remainder, 15% had a background in sociology, 12% in education, 10% in psychology/counseling, 4% in family studies, 2% in studies in Sun Yat-Sens thoughts/national development/liberal arts/other social sciences, and 6% in other areas. These gures indicate that 10 years ago, the expertise of social work teaching staff was inadequate. Further analyses indicate that the problem of under-qualied teaching staff was even more serious in newly-established social work programs (Lin, 2000). The problem of inadequately qualied social work teachers has not shown signicant change since the late 1990s until 2010. The percentage of teaching staff with a social work background remains at 50% and those with a sociology background at 14%. The percentage of staff with backgrounds in education (6%) or psychology/counseling (9%) has decreased. The group that showed the biggest increase was that of teaching staff who had received degrees in studies in Sun Yat-Sens thoughts/national development/liberal arts/other social sciences (7%). In effect, this means that even with the rapid development of social work education, and although the number of job opportunities in the eld has increased, the shortage of qualied teaching staff still exists. The negative impact of the shortage of qualied teaching staff on students is evident. Without a solid professional training, students ability to provide quality services to clients, who are usually the most vulnerable people, would be compromised. Furthermore, it is difcult for students to cultivate a professional identity from the social work community. Their professional status, job opportunities or employment security cannot be improved because a large amount of social work graduates enter into the labor market annually whose professional abilities cannot be guaranteed. Barretta-Herman (2008) conducted a survey on the IASSW members to establish the percentage of teaching staff with social work degrees in various countries. He found that North America had the highest percentage (83%) and Africa had 74%, while the Asia Pacic and European regions had lower percentages (54% and 48%, respectively). Barretta-Herman (2008) pointed out that in the Asia Pacic and European regions, staff members held degrees in a wide range of disciplines, including: sociology, social policy and education. For this paper, a broader denition of social work was used, which includes the eld of social policy. Hence, if one uses BarrettaHermans denition, the percentage of teachers in Taiwan with social work degrees would be even lower. The shortage of qualied teaching staff is due to the fact that there are four PhD programs in social work/social welfare in Taiwan. On average, only about 19 students are enrolled each year. There are about three graduates with foreign PhD degrees in social work each year. With the rapid expansion of social work education after the late

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1990s, the demand for teaching staff totally outstripped supply. Therefore, universities recruited teaching staff from disciplines other than social work. Most of these staff members are only in their 30s and will remain in their positions until they retire. Another phenomenon related to social work doctoral programs in Taiwan is that the job market for PhD students remains quite limited, due to the fact that most of the teaching positions in universities have been lled. Owing to the low birthrates and the slow population growth, the possibility of establishing new universities is gradually declining. Even if there were pressure from the higher education evaluation to require schools to offer more positions, the job opportunities would still be limited. If PhD programs in social work/social welfare are to survive, full-time practitioners may become the major enrollment source of PhD programs, as they do not need to worry about unemployment after graduation. However, this will constitute a change of direction from the main education goals of doctoral programs: cultivating potential researchers or teaching staff for higher education. This would create another problem. Postgraduate students in Taiwan need more opportunities to be exposed to the international academic community (Shek et al., 2007). The change of direction will restrict the PhD programs from going global. This will be another challenge Taiwan has to face in the near future.

Concluding Remarks Social work education has developed for over 50 years in Taiwan. In addition to international inuences, political, economic and social developments have also had an impact on the process of professionalization in social work education. Some of the developments can be seen as the driving forces. From the political perspective, the process of political democratization since the late 1980s facilitated the rise of social movements and the formation of non-prot social welfare organizations. This, in turn, led to an increased demand for social workers. Universities also responded to the changes in the labor market. The enactment of the Social Work Act in 1997 facilitated the greater standardization of the social work curricula. Moreover, the promotion of higher education evaluation and accreditation by the government from the mid-2000s put more pressure on universities to redesign professional courses and recruit more qualied teaching staff. From the economic perspective, the transformation from an agricultural to an industrial society which began in the 1960s brought about new social problems and created a demand for more social workers. The emergence of a post-industrial society in the late 1980s has meant that Taiwan is again facing different social problems. These have helped to promote the expansion of social welfare and led to an increase in social work job opportunities. These trends have had a profound impact on the expansion of social work education. From the social perspective, the merging of the professional social work organizations in the late 1980s has resulted in a strong professional identity and the enhancement of professional status, with more students choosing social work as a career.

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Some other developments can be seen as formative. The governments deregulation policies on the establishment of private universities and the requirements of department curricula after the 1990s directly or indirectly resulted in the inadequacy of social work training, the undersupply of qualied teaching staff and the oversupply of potential social workers. Since the Social Worker Act has accorded legitimate professional status to social workers, and the professional community has matured in Taiwan, the social work community should be more actively involved in solving the existing problems and responding to the new challenges in the next stage of development in social work education.

References
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