Along with a growing number of social workers with the license, from 19,196 in 2004 to 33,315 in 2006, the complexity of issues faced by clientele that has been furthered due to both increasing psychosocial risks and multi-cultural issues directs one\'s attention to concern with the qualification of social workers. Considering these characteristics of the field of social work, the professional value and judgment come to be evermore important and require development of the social worker\'s self-awareness that needs to be carefully examined and developed while social workers are educated and trained.
In this context, this study purported to emphasize the importance of self-awareness in social work practice involving social work values, observation of the code of ethics, and use of knowledge and skills in an integrated manner; to develop theoretical framework of self-awareness; and to suggest development of social work pedagogy and the direction of social work education.
Through literature review, the previous conceptualization of self-awareness was critiqued because of its limited foci on the social worker\'s intrapersonal state and on the relationship between the client and the social worker. Then, in order to reintroduce \'environment\' into social work practice, this study casts an alternative conceptualization of critical self-awareness(i.e., critical reflexivity) using theoretical perspectives from sociology and specifically from Kondrat(1999). Also reviewed were the textbooks of social work practice in terms of the range of recognizing self-awareness as important and utilization of it in the texts. Finally this study suggested a simulation method as one of the effective pedagogy to enhance self-awareness, and actual exemplary cases of simulation in different social work settings in the US.
According to this investigation on the self-awareness issue in social work practice, implications are made for the direction of social work education in terms of ways in which self-awareness can be facilitated both in school and in the community and for future studies regarding the effects of social worker\'s self-awareness on social worker\'s competence and client\'s outcome being able to support the educational and professional effectiveness of enhancing self-awareness.