Where’s the Community Practice? Gaps in Community Practice Education in a Clinical-Community Social Work Program

Although the profession of social work has a rich history of supporting community organizing and engagement efforts, there has been a trend toward educational programs that focus heavily on the clinical components of social work. The purpose of this study was to perform an exploratory investigation of the potential need for more community-centered educational content at a school of social work in the Gulf Coast, which advertises itself as offering a clinical-community practice program. Researchers developed and administered a questionnaire to all current students of the School of Social Work to evaluate the program’s efforts to provide a balanced clinical-community practice education. Student responses to the questionnaire suggested that the community practice learning opportunities at the school were not represented equally in quality or quantity to the clinical material. Students reported limited access to field placements that focused on community practice. The researchers suggest that the results of this study are reflective of a potential national trend in social work education toward a narrower focus on clinical practice, and away from its roots in community organizing and advocacy.     

Rebuilding New Orleans: A Community Field Learning Experience

This article examines how to set up educational seminars for social work students that expose students, first-hand, to a natural or man-made disaster's physical and human impact on a community. These short, intensive experiential seminars help students appreciate the social work role in addressing extreme cases of trauma and loss that have immediate application to their professional work and studies at home. The study also presents evidence via personal reflections of students and faculty about the value-added benefits of the seminar learning experience in terms of the students' integration of course material, readings, and field placement experiences, and their personal and professional growth and maturation as beginning social workers.     

Biotechnology education as social and cultural production/reproduction of the biotechnology community

This paper is a commentary to a paper by Anne Solli, Frank Bach and Björn Åkerman on how students at a technical university learn to argue as biotechnologists. Solli and her colleagues report from an ethnographic study performed during the first semester of a 5-year program in biotechnology at a technical university in Sweden. Their study demonstrates how students begin to acquire ‘the right way’ of approaching the controversial issue of producing and consuming genetically modified organisms. In my response I discuss the ethnographic account of this particular educational practice in terms of social and cultural production/reproduction of a biotechnology community and how the participants (students and teaching professors) deal with the dialectic of individual and collective transformation. In the perspective of the biotechnology community, the work done by the teaching professor becomes a way of ensuring the future of the biotechnology community in terms of what values and objectives are held highly in the community of practice.     

Meeting health,mental health,and housing needs of older adults: A case review of the congregational social work education initiative

This article presents results from an innovative social work field education program, which prepares BSW and MSW students to work in interdisciplinary teams with congregational nurses as they serve persons age 55+ or older. The Congregational Social Work Education Initiative is a field education project based on an applied interdisciplinary model, whereby social work students at the graduate and undergraduate level partner with congregational nurses to serve at-risk members of congregations and religious affiliated organizations (RAOs). Students and nurses provide free health, mental health, and wellness services to address individual, family, group, and community health, mental health, and housing issues. Funded by community health foundations, it trains BSW and MSW students for professional practice in congregational and community religious affiliated settings through interdisciplinary and collaborative methods. Information on the development of the model and case illustrations are provided so other social work educational programs and congregational nurse programs might duplicate its success.     

The Simulation of a Neighborhood Family Service Center for Teaching Macro Practice

ABSTRACT

This paper describes an approach to teaching macro practice that involves students in the development of a simulated neighborhood family service center. Utilizing existing partnerships between a urban university, several public schools and social-health agencies, students work with actual data from census reports and community surveys to design and administer a simulated center and its programs. An integrated macro practice framework is utilized to ensure that students develop a set of knowledge and skills for community and agency based practice. The course embodies the belief that students must be educated to integrate community and organizational theory and practice in order to be agents of social change. Implications for social work education will be discussed.     

Quality Control in Social Work

This paper examines the need for gatekeeping within social work education. It examines the processes within the university, social work educational programs, and the practice community. It highlights concerns about gatekeeping's implementation. Suggestions are made for quality control in classroom instruction, field education, and student evaluation.     

A longitudinal analysis of student participation in a digital collaborative storytelling activity

Despite the positive potential of the online social networking platforms, the longitudinal studies regarding how children participate in digital storytelling communities is still scant in the literature. This study investigated how 26 elementary students participated in a 2-year digital storytelling community mediated by a social network application. By analyzing the students’ weekly responses, social networks, and their language learning performance, the results suggested that their oral reading proficiency improved along with their participation in the long-term activity. It was also found that the community features impacted the students’ sense of engagement in the activity. The feature of the learning community that allows students to team up with partners to complete a story improved their engagement and motivation. The social network analysis found that multiple literacies including multimedia processing, language, and collaboration were all considered by students as important criteria for the partnership to complete the collaborative digital storytelling work. However, such a prolonged collaborative digital storytelling activity also introduced new challenges for those students demonstrating unfavorable collaboration profiles as they needed to learn how to collaborate in order to team up with others. The implications of the findings for educational practice are discussed.

     

Needs Assessments: An Integrated Assignment in Civic Service

An undergraduate social work program developed a service‐learning experience in partnership with a local United Way organization to complete a community needs assessment project. The experience integrated the curricula of a social work research methods course and a generalist‐macro practice course with the principles and actions of experiential and service‐ learning, evidence based practice, and civic responsibility. This integrated curricula project yielded practical, “real world” outcomes for the local community and learning outcomes for the students. Needs assessments conducted by social students resulted in particular groups of community citizens receiving targeted services from agencies receiving funding from United Way. Evidence obtained from the students who participated in this experience indicates that two important learning outcomes were achieved; a heightened awareness of the local community's resource system and a sense of connection to the local community, along with the enhancement of students ‘self‐esteem and increased self‐confidence in their abilities.     

Study Abroad Participation at Community Colleges: Students’ Decision and Influential Factors

This study aimed to better understand college students’ decisions to participate in short-term study abroad programs and to identify influential factors. Our constructive interview data with traditional and nontraditional students from three mid-Atlantic community colleges identified (a) the interplay between individual, social, and institutional factors, and (b) distinctive decision factors related to students attending community colleges. Notable factors included opportunity of a lifetime, academic transfer prospects, personal timing, cost affordability, faculty encouragement, family support, honors program, and group affinity. Moreover, students in this study shared how they were able to navigate and overcome their familial and vocational challenges (e.g., funding and concerns about academics–life balance) to engage in a study abroad program. Finally, we discuss the results with continuing applicability to educational practice at community colleges as well as policy implications for community college students.     

Assessment of special educational needs integration by the educational community in Spain

The study collected and contrasted the opinions of different sectors of the educational community about the functioning and integration of students with special educational needs. In order to do this, a broad questionnaire was sent to teachers of diverse educational stages, to counsellors, parents and to students, both with and without special educational needs. The objective was to examine the respondents’ approach to mainstream integration and their opinions about how their school operated. At the same time, the study examined their opinion concerning the work of the teachers, the learning and social development of the students, the relationships with families and the input of the education authorities. Barriers which create difficulties for educational integration were assessed.     

Educational use of social networking technology in higher education

This study explored how social networking technology can be used to supplement face-to-face courses as a means of enhancing students' sense of community and, thus, to promote classroom communities of practice in the context of higher education. Data were collected from 67 students who enrolled in four face-to-face courses at two public universities in Taiwan. Findings indicated that the majority of participants developed strong feelings of social connectedness and expressed favorable feelings regarding their learning experiences in the classes where social networking sites were used as a supplementary tool. Learner difficulties and concerns of instructors about the educational use of social media are addressed with recommendations for future research and practice.     

The Value Dilemmas of Faculty Advising; Significant Issues in a Code of Ethics for Faculty Advisors

ABSTRACT

Although frequently challenging, faculty advising continues to be a crucial component of social work education. Yet the current diversity of students, educational programs, and field placements present many ethical dilemmas to the faculty advisor. This paper explores the administrative, educational, and supportive roles of the faculty advisor, the inherent conflicts which develop and the effects of these conflicts on the ethical advising of social work students.

Similar to the classroom teacher, the faculty advisor can positively model ethical social work practice to students. Case examples from faculty advisors are used to study ethical dilemmas which arise in promoting social work values of self-determination and confidentiality. Recommendations are made to promote ethical practice among faculty advisors.     

Lemons to Lemonade: How Five Challenges in Teaching Macro Practice Helped to Strengthen Our Course

Teaching macro practice can be challenging. While students have some concepts of what macro practice entails, their knowledge may be limited and sometimes inaccurate. Moreover, students may be reluctant to engage in macro change efforts. Given the scarcity of literature regarding teaching macro practice and the growing importance of it in social work, this article addresses major issues that we encountered in teaching macro practice at a large Midwestern school of social work. In our institution only 6% of students are enrolled in macro concentrations and we wish to encourage students to expand their interests in macro practice even if they do not wish to pursue a macro concentration. We describe a macro practice course we designed to meet the challenges of teaching community, organization, and policy practice skills to master's level and advanced undergraduate students. Our goal is to expand the macro practice pedagogy literature and encourage social work faculty to consider both established and innovative ways of introducing the planned change process in community, organization, and policy practice to their students.     

Enhancing project-oriented learning by joining communities of practice and opening spaces for relatedness

This article describes an extension to project-oriented learning to increase social construction of knowledge and learning. The focus is on: (a) maximising opportunities for students to share their knowledge with practitioners by joining communities of practice, and (b) increasing their intrinsic motivation by creating conditions for student's relatedness. The case study considers a last year capstone course in Mechanical Engineering. The work addresses innovative practices of active learning and beyond project-oriented learning through: (a) the development of a web-based decision support system, (b) meetings between the communities of students, maintenance engineers and academics, and (c) new off-campus group instances. The author hypothesises that this multi-modal approach increases deep learning and social impact of the educational process. Surveys to the actors support a successful achievement of the educational goals. The methodology can easily be extended to further improve the learning process.     

Strength and Motivation: What College Athletes Bring to Social Work

College athletes develop many strengths and skills during their athletic career, such as dedication, ability to work across cultures, leadership, and community building. Social workers need many of these same skills. This study explores the potential transfer of skills from athletics to social work among 15 former college athlete MSW students. Qualitative interviews asked about transferability of skills developed as college athletes to social work practice. Participants identified both interpersonal and intrapersonal skills gained in their athletic career that were of use in social work practice. Implications for both athletic career development and social work recruitment and education are discussed.     

The Educational Journeys of Students of Color Across the Educational Pipeline: A Pedagogy of Storytelling or a Struggle for Freedom?

Social inequality as evident through poverty, racism, and irrelevant social and educational policies and practices have created consistent disparities on most educational achievement and attainment outcomes for historically marginalized students, and students of color specifically. These ongoing inequalities and injustices require policy, practical, and pedagogical changes across the educational pipeline. The work of the people on the ground needs to be intentional when exploring ways to creatively and courageously engage with students of color inside and outside the classroom. This paper describes, conceptualizes, and applies a pedagogical practice called Educational Journeys/Caminos Educativos, which is built on a grounded, context-specific, and culturally relevant set of processes that helps students, educators, leaders, policy makers, and other stakeholders to co-create a series of pedagogical approaches that facilitate opportunities for educators to heal, build, and thrive with historically marginalized students, particularly minoritized, immigrant, and undocumented youth. The goal of this paper is to propose pedagogical processes that allow these populations, and the educators who serve them, to imagine a new social condition for and with students of color across the educational pipeline as a gesture toward equity and social justice. The author suggests that the pedagogy of Educational Journeys is more than storytelling; it’s about a struggle for freedom—past, present, and future.     

Towards educational inclusion in a transforming society: some lessons from community relations and special needs education in Northern Ireland

This paper focuses on the socially constructed ideas that have come to be given the status of taken‐for‐granted knowledge within not one, but two, fields of professional practice in Northern Irish schools; community relations and special needs education. Dominant discourses were viewed as constructing norms around which educational professionals approached issues to do with difference and social justice—differences of attainment and disability in the case of educational special needs, and, in the case of school‐based community relations work, ethno‐political and religious differences. Our analysis identified some very powerful common discourses that served to maintain the status quo and limit the space for creative and pluralistic struggle. We argue that this process of unravelling or deconstructing professional meaning‐making in relation to education for diversity is a crucial first step towards the development of a more inclusive participative practice. In the final section, we consider some of the implications of our work and speculate about the meaning of educational inclusion within a transforming society.     

高职院校学生反思内涵研究评述

在当前职业教育一直关注于高职学生的岗位实践能力、适应能力与可持续发展能力培养的情况下,反思理论无疑为此项工作开展开辟了新思路。反思的意义在于它是有效连接学校理论与工作实践的桥梁;反思的发展特征说明它是可以不断进步和发展的;反思过程的阶段性特征表明它是一种动态的认知建构过程,遵循4个阶段的循环过程而不断往复前进;反思实践共同体则提出借助团体的思考与判断来反思自己的工作行为,将自我内部对话转变为社会性实践。高职院校应当在学校中贯彻反思教育,促进学生职业素质的持续发展。     

South Korean Perspective on Learning Disabilities

In the context of the educational system and the nature of special education in South Korea, I describe policy, practice, and research about children with learning disabilities (LD). Recently, the study of LD has attracted professionals from multiple disciplines including general and special education, medicine, psychology, and social work. In Korea, the field of LD has developed rapidly over a brief period, but there are many problems to be solved in the near future. In particular, the field of LD in Korea lacks: (a) consensus about a conceptual definition, (b) a clear set of criteria for identifying students with LD, (c) lack of assessment instruments for identifying LD, and (d) general low understanding or misunderstanding of students with LD among teachers and parents.     

Exploring How a Study Abroad and International Service-Learning Project Shaped Preservice Teachers’ Understanding of Humanizing Pedagogy

In an attempt to better prepare future teachers to fight against social injustice, support their culturally and linguistically diverse students and wrestle with social and educational complexities around the globe, many education programs have increased the number of study abroad programs and international service learning projects. In this qualitative study, we explored seven preservice teachers’ experiences related to humanizing pedagogy after participating in a study abroad program combined with an international service-learning project in a South African rural community. Analyzing multiple data sources such as interviews and reflective journals, we discovered that the preservice teachers grappled with the political, social, economic, and educational differences they encountered during the international project and wrestled with conflicting ideas and beliefs about poverty and language. They identified their relationships with students as catalysts to address these educational issues and their need to reverse systemic inequities. They built caring relationships with students in the community and developed additive perspectives the focused on the students’ community cultural capital. The preservice teachers expressed deep critical reflection and a desire to promote a more fully human educational world where students have the opportunities to enact their agency, their creativity, and their language and culture.