That is, legislative intent must be balance with what is fair. Nowhere is ethical guidance more essential, and nowhere is ethical content less prominent than in field education. Ethics are the foundation of the profession. Professions were initiated on faith. Faith became ideology.
Ideology is accompanied by a set of ethics that are binding on the practitioner.
Yet, as the founding work experience for many students, and as the founding instructional work experience for all students, field education does not include systematic instruction in ethical professional practice. Since field education is the arena in which the values of the profession are learned through supervised practice with an education purpose, it is logical to think that field education is the place to locate an important portion of a student s education in ethics. There is ample evidence to the contrary. There is scant literature on ethics in field education. For example, between 1983 and 1993 there were forty-nine articles published on field education in the journal of Social Work Education and the Journal of Teaching in Social Work.