‘An altruistic act to give back’—the social work practice educator role in Ireland: motivation, satisfaction, challenges, and supports

Social work education is undergoing significant expansion, and internationally, securing requisite numbers of student placements to meet expanding numbers is challenging. This is similarly the case in Ireland, where the system is reliant on social workers assuming a practice educator role in addition to performing existing social work duties. Despite the pivotal role of practice educators, their perspectives are under-researched. In this article, we explore the perceptions of social work practice educators in Ireland to understand how motivation, challenges and support impact their role satisfaction. Based on a sample of 107 social workers and using both quantitative and qualitative data, we reveal that social workers have strong intrinsic motivation to engage in practice education, and this predicted their satisfaction with the practice education role. The extent of challenges encountered negatively impacted their satisfaction, and perceived support was an important amplifier of the motivation-satisfaction relationship. We highlight the precarity of the Irish model of placement procurement, as motivation to provide placements may be lost when individual practice educators leave their posts. We highlight future research, policy and practice implications of our findings.