Social Work Education

Abstract

Migration across national borders has resulted in demographic changes in the United States, causing the country to become more multi-ethnic. This presents considerable challenges for graduate level educators who need to be responsive to the unique academic needs of diverse populations by considering students' previous experiences, values, and beliefs. This change requires educators to incorporate various teaching styles and to create a classroom atmosphere where security, trust, and openness can be achieved. Developing cultural competence and creating a transformative learning environment is essential for social work educators teaching in multicultural environments in the 21st century. This article provides a brief overview of Burchum's (2002) Evolutionary Perspectives that will help to assist readers in obtaining a clear understanding of cultural competence. It also presents Blunt's Model of Cultural Competence for Transformative Education, which can promote both transformative learning and assist social work educators in fostering a transformative learning environment.     

Adjunct Faculty in Social Work Education

ABSTRACT

Adjunct faculty are growing in numbers and time spent instructing courses in social work programs. This paper describes one school's approach in working with and involving adjunct faculty as significant stakeholders in the overall educational program. The described program incorporates a number of ongoing activities to encourage adjunct faculty to contribute to the academic community beyond the instruction of one course. The paper also identifies additional strategies a social work program may consider to further strengthen the adjuncts? role in academia. The paper concludes with questions for social work educational programs and the Council on Social Work Education's Commission on Accreditation to recognize and define the position and function of adjunct faculty in social work education.     

Empowering Students in a Feminist Social Work Practice Course

Abstract

Since 1993, a faculty collective has team-taught a feminist social work practice course. The course, designed to heighten student knowledge of feminist practice, was expected to empower students. An overview of the course is presented with an analysis of its impact on student perceptions of personal and professional power. Pre and post measures of empowerment were analyzed and used to derive outcome measures of change in student views of themselves as empowered persons and practitioners. Findings indicate that students had significantly higher perceptions of their personal and professional power upon completion of the feminist practice course than before. Implications for social work students and practitioners are discussed.     

The Importance of Mentoring Faculty Members of Color in Schools of Social Work

Mentoring has received little attention in the social work literature. The career advancement needs, and the importance of mentoring faculty members of color, have not been adequately addressed, nor have mentoring strategies. This article includes a review of the literature, a definition of mentoring, benefits of mentoring for mentors and mentees, and discussion of the need and importance of mentoring junior faculty members of color in schools and departments of social work, along with strategies to achieve this goal.     

Mentorship Efforts to Support Part-time Social Work Faculty Members

Social work faculty experience increasing demands to develop and maintain a research portfolio that includes external funding and publications. Given the increase in research expectations, more part-time instructors are needed to teach courses. In addition to the literature review, we briefly describe a pilot part-time faculty mentorship project developed by our school to build a strong, connected, and consistent part-time faculty team. However, we also wanted to examine mentorship programs at other schools/departments of social work; as a result, we conducted an exploratory research study with social work deans and directors nationwide. Findings suggested that while schools of social work are more likely to employ greater numbers of faculty overall, departments tend to have higher teaching expectations for full-time tenure-track faculty. Despite variability among responses, most schools and departments provide some form of support to part-time faculty members; a lack of resources was given as the primary reason for limited mentorship activities.     

Advancing Doctoral Social Work Education: An Application of the Social-Ecological Framework

Graduates of social work doctoral programs are an integral part of social work education and, as faculty, training of BSW and MSW students. Missing from the literature are theoretical frameworks that advance the study of “what works and for whom” in social work doctoral education. Building upon the existing literature, this article proposes a conceptual framework for enhancing doctoral students’ experiences, as well as doctoral education programs. Specific strategies grounded by this framework are put forward to guide PhD students and educators in advancing doctoral social work education.     

Using Photovoice as a Tool to Engage Social Work Students in Social Justice

In order to ensure that social workers graduating from social work programs embrace social justice's central role in their professional careers, educators must find creative, theoretically grounded, practice-relevant ways of conveying this value and socializing social work students. This article describes the use of Photovoice as one tool for helping convey that value and describes its theoretical underpinning and use in a social work course. Originally developed as a participatory action research approach largely in public health, Photovoice can also serve as a powerful social work tool that facilitates the development of critical consciousness among community members who photograph and discuss elements of their lives and community. The author describes using this strategy with social work students, asking them as community members themselves to engage in the process of documenting, discussing, and transforming their analysis into an advocacy plan using the photographs. Through this process, the students learn about the power of collaborative creativity and strategic messaging. In the process of demonstrating the importance of relationship and the power of “problem-posing” the professor, as facilitator, role-models while teaching and engendering increasing critical consciousness among class participants.     

Strengthening the Signature Pedagogy of Social Work: Conceptualizing Field Coordination as a Negotiated Social Work Pedagogy

ABSTRACT

Although field education is considered the signature pedagogy of social work, the work of field coordinators appear to remain peripheral to other aspects of social work education, such as coursework and research. In this article, we suggest that field coordination requires a far more complex set of knowledge and skills than merely matching students with placements based on availability and interest. Using critical and relational theories, this article conceptualizes field coordination as a negotiated pedagogy in which the coordinators navigate complex and often competing needs among students, field agencies, and social work practice. In making visible its nuances and intricacies, we suggest that field coordination is a critical relational pedagogy essential to advancing social work education.     

Evaluation of a Training Program in Aging Research for Social Work Faculty

Since 2004, we have offered a postgraduate training program in aging research for social work faculty from across the country. The overarching goal of the program is to expand the pool of social work faculty engaged in aging research. This, in turn, will reinvigorate participants' teaching; prepare them to update aging-related content in the curriculum, with special emphasis on cultural diversity and methodological issues; and enhance their ability to motivate new generations of students to pursue the study of aging. Program design includes an initial 8-day institute in Summer I; ongoing consultation, update meetings at several national conventions, and a 4-day midyear meeting during the intervening year; and a follow-up institute during Summer II. Between 2004 and 2009, seven cohorts of social work faculty (with 14–15 members in each cohort) participated in the program. More than 40 percent of the participants were from communities of color including African American, Hispanic American, Native American, and Asian American. This article reports the results of initial evaluation from two most recent cohorts (Cohort 6 and Cohort 7). In addition, it reports the results of a follow-up study we conducted in June 2010 on cohorts 1–5. Key lessons learned in offering the program are also shared.     

Teaching Clinical Social Work Under Occupation: Listening to the Voices of Palestinian Social Work Students

The authors were invited to teach clinical social work in the Palestinian West Bank. In order to teach, we designed a study exploring how 65 Palestinian social work students described the psychological and social effects of working under occupation. Students described social stressors of poverty, unemployment, lack of infrastructure, violence, imprisonment, separation of families, and severe constraints on travel. They identified depression, suicide, anxiety, and war-related trauma as emerging from these conditions. Many experienced the same psychosocial problems as their clients in coping with harassment and delays at checkpoints. Implications for teaching social work theory and practice are discussed.     

Developing and Supporting Faculty Training for Online Social Work Education: The Columbia University School of Social Work Online Pedagogy Institute

ABSTRACT

With the growth of online and distance education in social work, faculty training and support need to be provided to ensure high-quality online social work education. A model for training social work educators in online teaching is outlined that focuses on pedagogy, technology, and social work values. Columbia University School of Social Work’s Online Campus provides a five-week Institute on Pedagogy and Technology for Online Courses for prospective social work instructors. The Institute provides a faculty training model that can be adopted in other social work programs, and seeks to model best practices in online education.     

Student Writing in Social Work

Social work professors are frequently disappointed with the writing their students produce bumt feel unsure about how improvements can be made. Unfortunately, the social work literature does not shed much light on the problem of student writing. This exploratory study suggests a model that established a rationale for writing improvement, provides writing opportunities within non-threatening classroom environments, helps students during the writing process, and promotes explicit grading criteria. Preliminary findings suggest that with this model students may lower their writing anxiety, and professors could spend less time grading papers.     

Intrinsic Motivation and Environmental Factors Affecting Research of Social Work Faculty on Aging

Within the context of Self-determination Theory, this research identifies intrinsic motivation and environmental factors that support social-work-faculty research in aging. Intrinsic factors include faculty's interest in gerontology as a field of practice, the desire to advance knowledge in the field of gerontology, including producing publications that disseminate information about their research, and the desire to make tenure and/or to advance their careers. Environmental factors include institutional supports such as release time to do research, reduced teaching loads, summer research support. Also included are mentoring relationships that complement the faculty's intrinsic motivation and create an environment supportive of research, grant writing, and publishing. Faculty motivation to work in the field of gerontology and institutional support for gerontological research are critical to sustain and expand the capacity of social work faculty to advance science in gerontology research. Such motivation is also needed to create vibrant academic environments that attract students at all levels into the field of gerontology, a field experiencing a rapidly expanding gap between service need and workforce capacity of social-work-faculty research in aging.     

社会工作专业实践教学体系的思考与建构

社会工作是以解决现实社会问题为主的应用性学科,实践性、实务性是其最本质的属性和最突出的特征。社会工作专业的实务性取向使实践教学成为培养学生运用理论知识、掌握工作技巧、内化职业伦理的重要环节。社会工作专业实践教学的四大体系——内容体系、平台体系、师资体系和管理体系是构建社会工作专业实践教学模式的主要内容,也是培养社会工作专业创新人才的有益尝试。     

The Making of a Social Work Instructor

Abstract

Concern regarding students' negative attitudes toward research, as well as the impact such negativity can exert on student learning, abound within the social work literature. Given its focus on the role cognition plays in determining behavior, Bandura's self-efficacy model provides a fitting conceptual framework for clarifying how student attitudes might be facilitating or inhibiting their acquisition and use of research skills. This article presents the key concepts and assumptions encompassed within Bandura's theory of self-efficacy and illustrates how these ideas might be applied to the teaching of research.     

论社会工作教师实践教学能力的培养

社会工作教师的实践教学能力很大程度上决定了学生实践能力培养的水平。以往有关社会工作实践教学的研究主要集中在如何构建实践教学体系、实习教学模式以及实验教学模式等方面,这些是培养学生实践能力的"硬条件"。但与此同时,在学生实践能力培养的环节中,教师的实践教学能力是不可忽视的"软因素"。社会工作实践教学主要包括实验教学和实习教师两大方面。当前,社会工作教师在实验教学和实习教学的设计能力、指导能力、反思能力等方面都存在诸多不足。社会工作教师实践教学能力的培养是一项系统工程,保障制度建设是关键,个体能力建设是基础,教学团队建设是辅助,实践基地建设是平台。     

Black First-Generation Social Work Doctoral Students

Black students are underrepresented in doctoral programs in social work, and the disparity calls for greater attention to the preparation of such students for doctoral programs. Toward this goal, this article examines the sociocultural influences on the matriculation of Black students in social work who are the first in their family to pursue a doctoral degree. The author expands on the general concept of first-generation college students to capture a more inclusive population of students who may be equally disadvantaged in doctoral programs in social work. The author also identifies strategies social work faculty and administrators can use to facilitate the entry and achievement of Black students in the doctoral pipeline.     

论社会工作教师实践教学能力的培养

社会工作教师的实践教学能力很大程度上决定了学生实践能力培养的水平。以往有关社会工作实践教学的研究主要集中在如何构建实践教学体系、实习教学模式以及实验教学模式等方面,这些是培养学生实践能力的硬条件。但与此同时,在学生实践能力培养的环节中,教师的实践教学能力是不可忽视的软因素。社会工作实践教学主要包括实验教学和实习教师两大方面。当前,社会工作教师在实验教学和实习教学的设计能力、指导能力、反思能力等方面都存在诸多不足。社会工作教师实践教学能力的培养是一项系统工程,保障制度建设是关键,个体能力建设是基础,教学团队建设是辅助,实践基地建设是平台。     

Extending the Ally Model of Social Justice to Social Work Pedagogy

Social work students, regardless of their multiple social identities in oppressed and oppressor groups, are called upon to take action against social injustice. This conceptual article introduces the Ally Model of social justice and its alignment with social work values and goals and recommends it to social work educators as a pedagogical tool to use when teaching about oppression, differentness, and privilege. It presents the literature on the model and its characteristics through the social work lens of awareness/knowledge, attitudes/beliefs/feelings, and actions/skills. It also provides limitations of the model and observations of students’ responses, based on their identities, that may act as barriers when learning about oppression and privilege. Finally, recommendations for the implementation of the model across the curriculum are offered.