Social work education has been a growing field in Mainland China in the last two decades, accompanying economic reforms and the reintroduction of social sciences into the curriculum in higher education. The rapid increase of social work programs has also generated concerns and discussion. This study examines one of the most important educational concerns—the nature and challenges of field education. After briefly introducing the development of Chinese social work education, we describe critical features of field education in the United States. We then examine how such educational features may present similar and different challenges in China, drawing on a purposive survey of 15 Chinese universities with an MSW program. The survey content focuses on three specific aspects of field education, including field education curriculum design, features of field agencies, and challenges encountered in implementing field education. Content analysis is conducted to identify key themes and issues in these emerging programs. We find that the lack of faculty supervisors, inadequate field agencies for placement, and few qualified social workers at field agencies are among the most frequently reported challenges. We then provide specific recommendations for addressing the challenges and assisting the development of social work field education in China.

Research has rarely examined how the COVID-19 pandemic may affect teens’ social media engagement and psychological wellbeing, and even less research has compared the difference between teens with and without mental health concerns. We collected and analyzed weekly data from January to December 2020 from teens in four Reddit communities (subreddits), including teens in r/Teenagers and teens who participated in three mental health subreddits (r/Depression, r/Anxiety, and r/SuicideWatch). The results showed that teens’ weekly subreddit participation, posting/commenting frequency, and emotion expression were related to significant pandemic events. Teen Redditors on r/Teenagers had a higher posting/commenting frequency but lower negative emotion than teen Redditors on the three mental health subreddits. When comparing posts/comments on r/Teenagers, teens who ever visited one of the three mental health subreddits posted/commented twice as frequently as teens who did not, but their emotion expression was similar. The results from the Interrupted Time Series Analysis (ITSA) indicated that both teens with and without mental health concerns reversed the trend in posting frequency and negative emotion from declining to increasing right after the pandemic outbreak, and teens with mental health concerns had a more rapidly increasing trend in posting/commenting. The findings suggest that teens’ social media engagement and emotion expression reflect the pandemic evolution. Teens with mental health concerns are more likely to reveal their emotions on specialized mental health subreddits rather than on the general r/Teenagers subreddit. In addition, the findings indicated that teens with mental health concerns had a strong social interaction desire that various barriers in the real world may inhibit. The findings call for more attention to understand the pandemic’s influence on teens by monitoring and analyzing social media data and offering adequate support to teens regarding their mental health wellbeing.