The advantages and benefits of a student mutual-aid group in developing groupwork skills

Abstract

There is a growing consensus in the literature that there is a crisis in groupwork education due to the limited internships that offer students the opportunity to practise with groups. In response to this crisis, the authors developed a model for teaching groupwork skills in the classroom using mutual-aid groups. This paper presents a study (n= 192) of social work graduate students who participated in the mutual-aid groups. The findings demonstrate that the majority of the students (90%) rated the mutual-aid groups as an excellent to good method of teaching groupwork skills and group dynamics.