ENHANCING ADULT LEARNING IN AGING STUDIES

The legacy of social work/gerontology education arises from the "training" of good employees for a particular job. As the professionalization of the occupation occurred, a greater proportion of faculty encouraged social work students to become partners in the learning process, rather than subjects to be trained. However, adult learning in formal settings, for the most part, remains instructor designed and directed. With a grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation in New York City, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) is preparing social work education for the aging of American society. It is therefore, an opportune time to recognize that it is not only what we teach but also how we make the educational environment for adults more learner-centered that will broaden the agenda of the CSWE initiative.     

Student teachers’ professional identity

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative interview study of the professional identity of 45 student teachers. The students described their personal experiences in teaching their own subject and the positive and negative emotions that were evoked. Students emphasized failure or success but not what they had or had not learned. Broader social contexts and professional relationships within the teaching community were marginalized.The study suggests developing the social aspects of learning to teach by supporting teacher identity formation in initial training. Stronger links between teacher education and society might better prepare students for their future work.     

What can be learned from writing about early field experiences?

This paper describes the evolution of assignments in a course for students preparing to teach secondary science, mathematics, and agriculture science. We describe and analyze work done by preservice students in two different years to look for developing teacher knowledge, explicate how we have come to understand teacher knowledge as it was enacted in this particular context, and discuss how our self-study contributed to the growth of our knowledge as teacher educators.     

ePortfolios: The Method of Choice for Validation

Community colleges have long been institutions of higher education in the arenas of technical education and training, as well as preparing students for transfer to universities. While students are engaged in their student learning outcomes, projects, research, and community service, how have these students validated their work? One method of validation is the design and development of the personal and professional ePortfolio. This article chronicles the process of how ePortfolios offer validation of a student’s learning experiences to meet workforce expectations as part of an individual’s holistic social media footprint (e.g., ePortfolios [workforce] and social media [interpersonal]).     

Teaching Toward Justice: Reflections on Collaboration,Engagement, and Social Action in Uncertain Times

ABSTRACT

Recent societal and political shifts have underscored the need for higher education programs to examine and reflect on the ways in which they address equity and social justice. As teacher-educators, we feel this call with particular urgency. In this paper, we describe our past and current efforts to engage in self-reflective inquiry and enact ways to better teach social justice in uncertain times. These efforts have included reflecting on our existing efforts as well as new directions such as creating an assignment to engage students in the analysis of their own social locations and creating a new course aimed at addressing intersectionality and social justice in education through the lens of documentary films. We recognize the need to not only address barriers to educational equity within our coursework, but also within our program itself as we work to improve our representation as well as our relationships with the surrounding schools and communities.     

Preparing Students for Social Action in a Social Justice Education Course: What Works?

The purpose of this study was to explore students’ perceptions of how the curriculum and teaching strategies in a social justice education course prepared them for social action engagement. Past studies using a similar approach to teaching about social justice issues did not include student interviews. Students’ perspectives can shed light on how experiences in a social justice education course prepared them to challenge social oppression and work toward equity in their daily lives. Six students were interviewed one semester after they completed a social justice education course. Findings indicated teaching strategies (e.g., experiential activities) that included students’ lived experiences also increased their personal awareness, empathy, confidence, and knowledge about tools for social action. These teaching strategies were identified more often than content as key in preparing students to take action. Classroom implications are discussed.     

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.     

Moving Stories: Evaluation of a BSW Oral History Project with Older Adults with Diverse Immigration Histories

The purpose of this study was to evaluate an experiential learning project with BSW students to see if their perceptions of older adults have changed. The project consisted of an oral history project and presentation that matched BSW students with older adults from diverse ethnic backgrounds to gather their immigration narratives. The study used a single group pretest posttest design with 17 BSW students enrolled in an integrative field seminar class. Using a series of inferential analyses, BSW students’ attitudes towards older adults, future career plans, confidence with working with older adults from diverse backgrounds, and geriatric competencies were examined. Overall, a significant increase in BSW students who had varying levels of participation in project perceptions of geriatric social work competencies between pretest and posttest were found. Students who both conducted and presented the oral histories of older adults also were significantly more likely to report future plans to work with older adults compared to students who did not. Exposing BSW students to aging and diversity content has important implications towards fostering student interest in pursuing social work practice with older adults and preparing them for culturally competent social work.     

学前教育专业舞蹈表演的教学探析

在学前教育专业中应开展适合幼儿教育,发展有目的的舞蹈表演表现能力的教学。塑形健美,培养气质;解决软开度,提高肢体控制能力;丰富舞蹈语汇,提高舞蹈认识;学习成品舞蹈剧目以及舞蹈实践等,舞蹈表演能力可达到系统、准确、广泛的训练效果。     

Perceptions of technological,pedagogical and content knowledge (TPACK) among pre-service teachers in Estonia

Most countries stress that preparing quality teachers for twenty-first century students is an essential task for teacher training institutions. Besides the skills for how to teach subjects effectively, teachers should also know how to integrate digital technology into their teaching. Several studies have been done based on the TPACK framework. Some of these studies use this framework for specific subject domains. In this study a generally applicable instrument for measuring TPACK was created. The aim of the paper was to validate the created instrument and to find out how pre-service teachers perceive their technological, pedagogical and content knowledge regarding the TPACK framework in Estonia, in a technologically highly developed country where technology is broadly used in general education. Conducting factor analysis all items with technology merged into one factor meaning that young generation perceives technology already integrated with content and pedagogy. The results indicate that pre-service teachers lack pedagogical knowledge, but they perceive that they are good at integrating technology into their teaching. Differences in perceptions were also found according to gender, age and curricula.     

Becoming a teacher of primary science: integrating theory and practice

This paper reports a study of how a group of six students learnt to teach primary science as they went through a 4-year teacher education degree. The study shows that from early in the course students had a clear view of how they wanted to teach science and had a range of concerns about their teaching. Their views gradually became refined and actionable in the classroom as they went through the course. A variety of data types was used to interpret their learning. A significant number of their decisions were not recorded in their written work so were only available in discussion or action. All students were able to deal with the complexity of their classrooms in their oral discussions, but fewer could do this in writing. The students drew on a range of programme material to support their decisions, and these are used to show the interaction between their work in school and in college.     

Teaching Instructional Design: An Apprenticeship Model

Several cognitive psychologists have written about the importance of placing instruction within “authentic” contexts that mirror real-life situations. They argue that knowledge learned in academic settings does not necessarily transfer to non-academic settings. Whether preparing performance technologists or instructional designers, educators must strive to create meaningful problem-solving contexts that enable students to define, and subsequently solve, real-world problems. In an attempt to address this issue we have modified the way we teach instructional design. This paper discusses a cognitive apprenticeship approach to teaching design, which incorporates elements of modeling, coaching, reflection, articulation, and exploration. We describe how these features are embedded within three phases (orientation, situated training/learning, and exploration) of an introductory instructional design course designed to move our novice designers along a continuum of expertise as they develop and refine their own professional design skills. Although the apprenticeship model described here specifically addresses concerns within the context of preparing instructional designers, we believe that this model can be adapted to address similar issues in the education of performance technologists.     

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.     

The Drama of Prejudice

Empathic communication is regarded as one of the most important abilities for social workers and health professionals in their work with clients. in this study one group of social worker students who participated in a 3 month course of intensive communication skills training was compared to a group of students following the ordinary social work course of study. The groups were compared in relation to communicated empathy as measured on the Carkhuff Scale of Empathic Communication before and after the training period. The analysis showed that students who participated in the skill training program increased their level of empathic communication significantly. The control group did not increase their level. The results are discussed and compared with the results of other published studies on the effect of communication training on the level of communicated empathy.     

社会学的反思性和社会学本科教学的反思

反思性是社会学的一个重要特质。我国社会学本科教学目前存在诸多问题,社会学教育工作者要充分发挥批判性反思精神,做好大学新生的启蒙教育工作,编写出更多新颖生动的本土化教材,对有无学术志向的两类学生因材施教,多给学生创造社会实践机会,提高社会学本科人才培养的质量。     

The Readiness of Primary Schools to Teach the National Curriculum in Art and Design

This paper summarises the findings of the research and development project, ‘Supporting Primary Art’ which was established at the Centre for the Study of the Arts in Primary Education at the Rolle Faculty of Education of the University of Plymouth in October 1992 with support and funding from the Calouste Gulbenkian and Paul Hamlyn Foundations. It is the intention of the project to investigate the response of teachers in primary schools to the introduction of the national curriculum in art and, on the basis of the understandings gained, to develop and evaluate appropriate forms of in-service training and support materials to address those difficulties and concerns identified by teachers in meeting the overall requirements of the Statutory Orders for Art. The project has in mind the significant advantage to the development of art and design education in our schools that is presented by the introduction of the national curriculum in art and the opportunities here to reinforce and extend the richness and quality of the teaching of art to a wider cohort of schools. We hope that this report will help LEAs and those involved in the initial, postgraduate and in-service training of teachers in their work in preparing students and supporting teachers to understand, teach and deliver the national curriculum in art.     

高职英语教学必须增强适应性和方向性

高等职业教育必须密切关注社会需求,所以高职英语教学要适应学生,因材施教;要面向市场,因“用”施教,在语言训练和考试评价当中还要培养交流能力和合作精神。     

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.     

职业技能竞赛促进高职人才培养模式改革研究

高职院校学生技能培养还存在着很多的问题,还未能满足社会企业用人需求,以致"招工难"和"就业难"同时存在。因此加强学生职业技能培养,以满足经济和社会发展的需要,人才培养模式的改革是一项紧迫的要求。技能竞赛是职业教育教学改革的一项重要创新,突出和强调技术技能,竞争力的先进奖励为导向,是新时期职业教育的改革和发展中的重要助推器。"以赛促学,以赛促教"加快了高技能人才培养模式改革,提高学生学习技能热情,促进教学改革步伐,提升就业竞争力。     

Diversity and Difference in the Online Environment

ABSTRACT

The online environment challenges social work educators in their approach to developing students’ cultural awareness and culturally competent skills. To develop student competencies, it is important for accredited social work programs to consider both their explicit and implicit curricula. Although research has focused on the influence of multicultural classrooms and engaging diverse students, scant literature has been focused on teaching about diversity and difference in the online environment. This article hopes to fill this gap in knowledge by providing recommendations for social work programs to consider as they look to teach diversity and difference in the online environment.