English abstract
The problem of the present study was to question and investigate the importance of including training camps in the Bachelor program of Social Work at Sultan Qaboos University and to identify the obstacles that might prevent their inclusion in the program, The study sought to achieve six objectives namely; identifying the importance of including the training camps in the program, the obstacles that might prevent such inclusion from the point of view of the faculty members, the readiness of the students to participate in these camps once they are included in the program, and the obstacles that might encounter such participation in order to find solutions to overcome them, and put forward a proposal for the inclusion of training camps in the program. The study included six chapters; the first chapter focused on the problem, the second chapter dealt with the theoretical framework of the study while the third chapter was devoted to the methodology. Chapter four presented the results of the study, which were discussed in Chapter five. The sixth and last chapter showed the general results and implications of the study. The study adopted an analytical descriptive approach, which was applied by using the comprehensive social survey method that is considered the most suitable to be used in the descriptive studies. Two types of tools were used to collect data. The researcher designed a questionnaire to collect quantitative data from the social work students and was distributed to 137 students from the third, fourth years and beyond while interviews were adopted as a tool for collecting qualitative data from faculty members specializing in social work. The results of the study showed, first, that most faculty members agreed on the importance of including the training camps in the program. Second they revealed a positive correlation between the participation of students in the training camps and their level of professional performance. They also indicated that students are willing and ready to participate in the training camps if included in the study plan. In addition to the previous results, the study revealed a number of factors that may hinder the inclusion of the training camps in the program. Some of those obstacles were academic, physical and cultural while others related to university rules and regulations and to social work students. To address all these obstacles, the results proposed a number of solutions. The study was concluded with a proposed scenario for including the training camps in the social work program, Since the training camps have an important role in refining and appropriately preparing social workers expected to graduate from the program, the study presented some important proposals, including: considering the training camps as a prerequisite requirement for graduating students in the BA of social work program and the need to adjust the cognitive, training and research aspects of the training camps' programs to the reality of the Omani society so that students can best understand the needs and problems of their community.
