Research on the Application of Participatory Teaching Methods in Social Work Education

Social structure transformation demands higher capabilities of social work professionals, but traditional teaching suffers from low participation and theory-practice disconnection. Based on social constructivism and immersive learning theory, this study developed an enhanced “preparation-participation-reflection-reconstruction” cyclic model. A quasi-experiment with 160 social work students used multi-source data triangulation. Results showed the model significantly improved students' participation, reflective depth, critical thinking, and academic self-efficacy. Reflective depth fully mediated the path from interaction frequency to professional competence, strengthened by the “collaboration-feedback loop”. With only six extra minutes of teacher preparation per class, the model is low-burden and operable, showing stable effects across genders and stronger effects among sophomores. It provides a feasible framework for cultivating practice-oriented social work professionals.