Utilizing Actors to Simulate Clients in Social Work Student Role Plays

Abstract

The social work education literature contains limited discussion of the use of role play in the classroom. This article discusses the logistics of recruiting and utilizing professionally-trained actors to simulate clients in social work role plays. Promising results from assessments of BSW and MSW students with actor-simulated clients are presented. Students described their experiences with the actor-simulated clients in very positive terms. These responses did not statistically vary by program, age, gender, or race.     

GERONTOLOGICAL EDUCATION FOR STUDENTS IN NURSING AND SOCIAL WORK: KNOWLEDGE,ATTITUDES, AND PERCEIVED BARRIERS

Most health care and social service providers are routinely required to work with elderly clients and clients’ aging family members. Research suggests that students entering these professions have knowledge deficits and lack positive attitudes toward older people. Few prefer to work with aging clients. Professional curricula are not providing students with adequate training to serve the current needs of this population, much less to meet projected increases in demand for services. To examine this issue, 67 master's students in nursing and social work completed questionnaires assessing (1) knowledge about aging, (2) attitudes toward old people, and (3) perceived barriers to gerontological education. Results confirmed the existence of knowledge deficits among respondents. Attitudes tended to be neutral rather than strongly positive or negative. Knowledge scores were related to attitudes, to respondents’ ages, and to their having lived in households with older relatives. Nursing students identified the greatest barriers in gerontological education as insufficient curriculum time and lack of academic role models. Social work students perceived lower status of work with the elderly and limited experience with healthy older people as the greatest barriers. The two groups agreed that fragmentation of services contributes to inadequate gerontological preparation. Findings suggest a need for didactic and experiential learning opportunities, reinforced by appropriate academic role models, for students in service professions.     

Quality Improvement of Business Education in Romanian Universities: The Student as Customer and Client

This study frames the quality transition of Romanian business education embracing the role of students as clients and customers. In the first part of the study, responses from ninety‐four fourth‐year Romanian students provided a statistically significant gap between the level of importance of business competences and their level of preparation. The second part used content analysis to establish four major improvement themes: 1) new course specification; 2) pedagogical modification using practical applications; 3) course delivery improvement; and 4) university‐directed field experiences. The findings support the notion that Romanian students provide reliable and unique assessments of their education.     

Social Work Students' Attitudes About Working With Involuntary Clients

Social workers employed in areas such as public child welfare, substance abuse, and corrections often provide services to involuntary clients. These individuals do not seek social work services on their own volition and may be actively opposed to the services they are receiving. This study explores social work students' attitudes about working with involuntary clients. The article is based on a cross-sectional survey of social work students (N = 107) at a large Southeastern university. Participants answered questions regarding their experience, knowledge, and attitudes about involuntary clients. Findings and implications for social work education and practice are discussed.     

Leading Jewish Educators of Blessed Memory

The popular image connoted by the term “Jewish education” is the teaching-learning process in the classroom of an all day school, yeshiva, and afternoon school. The students are typically children of elementary school age. As the image expands, it includes adolescents in the high school, college students in special courses, and adults in synagogue-sponsored adult education courses. Jewish education for professionals in Jewish communal service agencies has not been part of the public's perception of Jewish education. To be sure, the professional's primary concern is helping clients with their problems and his knowledge base is primarily geared toward that objective. The “Jewish” component in the preparation for professional practice has not been a primary concern of Jewish educators.     

Perceived Competency in Working With LGB Clients: Where Are We Now?

Lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) clients use counseling services at higher rates than their heterosexual counterparts, yet current training for counselors may be inadequate. In this online study, 234 graduate counselor education and counseling psychology students completed the Sexual Orientation Counselor Competency Scale ( Bidell, 2005 ) and provided information about their training in working with LGB clients. Participants viewed themselves as more competent on the Awareness and Knowledge subscales than on the Skills subscale. Increased level of training (doctoral vs. master's), number of LGB clients seen in practica, and attendance at LGB‐focused workshops and conferences were associated with increased competence. Implications for programmatic development are discussed.     

ETHNICITY,AGING, AND HEALTH: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY EXPERIENCE

Recent trends in geriatric care have focused on the importance of teamwork through interdisciplinary interaction as a means of improving and maintaining the quality of life for clients and their families, while at the same time fostering professional growth of the health care providers. However, the literature is sparse on how university students are prepared through interdisciplinary team approaches to work effectively with geriatric clients in a diverse cultural environment. This article discusses how one undergraduate course was developed and implemented using an interdisciplinary focus to help students learn about ethnicity, health, and older adults. To begin the interdisciplinary focus, an interdisciplinary advisory team was assembled. This team was instrumental in guiding the process of planning, implementing, and evaluating this course. Recommendations from both the students and the advisory team demonstrate that a combination of team learning and multicultural education is essential to empower students to acquire skills for cross‐cultural work.     

Jewish Ethnic Needs in Multicultural Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

CSWE established a variety of standards regarding minority populations and diversity (CSWE, 1992). Some minority groups, although covered by CSWE standards, in practice are not dealt with in social work education. One in particular, Jewish students, is recommended for attention. This article focuses on what students of all backgrounds need for working effectively with Jewish clients, coverage of Jewish topics in the curriculum, and students' level of comfort in expressing their religion within the context of social work education.     

Enrolment choices in Portuguese higher education: do students behave as rational consumers?

As part of a progressive change occurring in the way public sector beneficiaries are conceived, higher education students started to be more and more perceived as clients or consumers. This implies assuming them as rational and conscious actors aware of what to expect from higher education attendance and of its returns. Framed by the metaphor of students as consumers, this paper aims to discuss whether students behave as rational consumers when choosing to enrol in higher education. Based on the findings of a qualitative study analysing Portuguese students’ choices it is possible to conclude that they tend to behave as rational consumers when they decide to attend higher education and when they choose a given institution, but not when they decide on attending a specific study programme. In this last case, instead of comparing the diverse study programmes and collecting information before forming their preference, students first formed this preference and, only then, gathered information. Student socialisation process emerged as a key element in shaping the preference for the study programme and in the vocation to choose it.     

“I Thought I Hated Data”: Preparing MSW Students for Data-driven Practice

Social work is an applied profession using a combination of theory, research, and practice to meet the needs of client populations. First-hand experiential learning is central to social work education. Just as students learn clinical skills by interacting with clients in a practice setting, students need a forum to use real data to develop their skills in accessing, understanding, interpreting, and presenting answers to pertinent social work research questions. This paper describes one university's efforts to design and implement coursework opportunities for students to integrate the use of actual data to answer pertinent real-world research and evaluation questions.     

INTEGRATING RESEARCH PROJECTS INTO FIELD WORK EXPERIENCES: ENHANCED TRAINING FOR UNDERGRADUATE GERIATRIC SOCIAL WORK STUDENTS

The aging of the U.S. population is creating a growing need for well-trained social workers to serve aging clients and their families. The needs of these clients are often multidimensional, requiring practitioners who are well trained in understanding and applying complex theory, research findings, and practice approaches. Unfortunately, several factors impede best case scenarios in geriatric social work education. These include limited opportunities to study or specialize in aging, a smaller than optimal proportion of social work students seeking such training, and students' frequent fearfulness of research courses and their first practicum field experience. This paper suggests that we can more effectively train social work practitioners (as well as researchers and administrators) by modifying the common practice of teaching research and practice in distinct and separate courses. Specifically, we advocate the addition of an applied research component to the field work portion of students' training. The systematic approach to problem study and explanation, which is the cornerstone of research training, should also be applied to real world practice complexities that students encounter during their field work training and practitioners face in their careers.     

Critical Issues in Distance Education: A report from the United States

Distance education has grown rapidly in the United States in recent years. Both private‐ and public‐sector organizations have embraced the practice of reaching their clients, employees, and students at a distance via new technologies afforded them by the telecommunication and computer nexus. Distance education is grounded on technology, and its practice would be difficult, if not impossible, without it. However, reducing the idea to its technological foundations, and losing sight of its social science base has led to a conceptual confusion in the field. This article will illustrate the growth of distance education in the United States, describe the social science paradigm of distance education, demonstrate the empirical evidence of this paradigm, and analyze its ramifications for the field in general, as well as for students, educational organizations, and instructors.     

Determinants of higher education choices and student satisfaction: the case of Poland

The dynamic changes in tertiary education that were observed in Poland for the last 20 years transformed the Polish educational market and led to the immense expansion of educational institutions. The rapid increase in the number of students that continued until 2006 is however over and Polish universities have begun to compete for their clients. Increased competition along with the pessimistic forecasts for Poland with regard to demographic changes result in the growing demand for the knowledge on determinants of student educational choices and satisfaction. Although the amount of studies in this field is growing, Poland is still substantially underrepresented in the current research. The purpose of this article was to examine the underlying factors behind the choices that Polish students make while pursuing their tertiary education. The research method that combines focus groups’ discussions and a survey study among 1,420 business major students helped us to identify the factors behind three phases of the decision making process: pursuing higher education; information search along with final choice of a university; and satisfaction from chosen studies. Our research implies that decision making with regard to tertiary education is multifaceted and longitudinal as it combines a different set of factors in each stage of the decision making process.     

新形势下高职学生管理工作的挑战与对策

新形势下,高职院校在学生教育管理中仍面临着诸多问题,包括工作环境的多元化、服务对象的复杂化以及自身的简单化,对学生管理工作提出了一系列挑战。因此,了解高职学生教育管理的特殊性及其面临的问题与成因,树立“以学生为本”的管理思想,提高辅导员自身素质,创新适应新形势的工作方法是提高高职学生教育管理质量的重要保证。     

The Utility of Simulated Clients in Macro-Practice Courses

Over the past several decades, the use of simulated or standardized clients has been an important area of pedagogy for social work education in training students to work with individuals, families, and groups in practice settings, often in preparation for a practicum placement. Little in the extant literature, however, has focused on the possible utilization of this pedagogical tool in preparing students for engagement at the macro level, such as community development, organizing, policy practice, or other types of involvement with large systems. This article considers the possible strengths and benefits of simulated clients within macro-level courses—especially relative to experiential activities that don’t involve simulated clients—as well as important logistical considerations related to such use.     

Developing the developers: Some ethical dilemmas in changing times

Abstract

Universities in Australia, like those in many Western countries, currently are being pushed to find for themselves an increasing share of their own budgets and to consider themselves as service providers to students, their ‘customers’. These students, having paid fees, may well expect to get what they have paid for and, in current labour market conditions, that may amount to a degree rather than an education. That is, universities are now under‐funded and, frequently, far from being seen as educational institutions, are seen as businesses whose role is to provide adequate service at optimum price. By and large, educational development staff do not teach students so they do not contribute directly to the income of the enterprise. The position of such staff and the units in which they are located is thus increasingly coming under threat as ‘economies’ are sought by academic ‘managers’. One poignantly pointed issue, then, is the extent to which educational developers might appropriately change the style and substance of their activities to assist in the evolution of universities to embrace and perhaps to thrive in the new environment. Would this amount to collusion or to co‐operation? Developers have, in the past, often attempted to develop themselves by embracing the model of reflective practice and implementing it both while carrying out their work (a kind of action learning) and at conferences and in journals and books of various kinds. However developers, and their clients (actual and potential), are under increasing pressure and for many survival, not thriving, may be the main issue. The issue for developers may well be the identity of their clients ‐ the university; its management; its teaching staff; its students (the university's supposed ‘customers'). In this paper I focus on the ethical dilemmas which may arise when educational developers try to develop themselves to serve various possible clients.     

Attitudes Toward Homosexuality among Graduate Counseling Students

The authors surveyed graduate counseling students regarding their attitudes toward homosexuality: its etiology; the mental health of homosexuals; the role of the mental health professional in treating homosexual clients; and myths and fallacies surrounding homosexuality. The results indicate that counseling students feel ill-prepared to deal with homosexual clients, are unsure about the etiology of homosexuality, and that female students respond differently from male students regarding many aspects of homosexuality.     

Modular programming of curricula

A large scale modularisation of curricula in higher education based on relatively large modules is discussed. These modules are flexible courses and not the well known small instructional modules within a course. The idea of these so-called programme modules, together with some applications and implications are discussed in the context of the Dutch higher educational system which is quite similar to that in other Western European countries. One implication is a less static concept of what a curriculum is. This may affect students, teachers, curriculum planners and legislators in their thinking about what kind of education a university can offer (in the near future) to its potential clients.