Fiction, Book Groups and Social Work Education

Abstract

If, as Doris Lessing (1994) explains, ‘there is no doubt fiction makes a better job of the truth’ (p. 314), then the use of fiction within a book group format in social work education can, to some degree, be justified and not viewed as unremarkable events, the way they often are within popularist contexts (Hyder, 2013). Moon (2010) recognises their uniqueness, describing book groups as ‘an unusual example of the use of fiction in higher education’, acknowledging, however, that ‘fiction has been used to introduce topics and ideas’ (p. 149) outside of the study of English, literature or creative writing. Indeed, even if embryonic, informal or sporadically used, book groups (or reading groups as they are sometimes referred to) create learning spaces in which we can consider all sorts of actualities and possibilities, largely from an objective position. The purpose of this chapter is to outline the use of fiction in a book group context within social work education, a multifaceted teaching and learning medium that can contribute to the shaping of the qualifying practitioner’s approach. As I have written extensively about the use of fiction within book groups in an academic text and a peer-reviewed journal (Scourfield & Taylor, 2013; Taylor, 2014a), you might wonder why it is being recounted again. Given that we are considering creativity within this book, it is felt appropriate to share some further insights about the method as it unfolds and to offer a template that could be modified in other subject areas across higher education.