Abstract

Social work practice education experienced an unprecedented conjuncture during the pandemic. On the one hand, the restrictive measures drastically limited fieldwork opportunities, with serious consequences on students’ careers and learning. On the other hand, those difficulties fed several unprecedented innovations in practice education programs. In the aftermath of the pandemic, reviewing those experimentations and discussing their current value is relevant, especially by considering the pre-pandemic situation. To do it, the article explores the changes of Italian social work practice education in 2020/2022 and discusses the possible role of the pandemic as a critical juncture (Capoccia 2016). Our quali-quantitative analysis shows that crucial organizational and institutional conditions lack to capitalize the value of the abovementioned experimentations. As a result, social work practice education in Italy appears to back to an old normality which presented several criticalities.