Factors Influencing M.S.W. Students' Interest in Clinical Practice

This study utilizes linear and log‐linear stochastic models to examine the impact that a variety of variables (including graduate education) have on M.S.W. students' desires to work in clinical practice. Data was collected biannually (between 1992 and 1998) from a complete population sample of all students entering and exiting accredited graduate programs of social work in California (n = 5,793). The influences of past practice experiences, professional motivations, socio‐demographic characteristics, ideological affiliations, and education and training experiences while a graduate students were all examined. Findings suggest that there is tremendous commonality in the variability of interest toward doing clinical practice among all student groups both before and after the completion of graduate studies. Male and female students, students of varied ethnic, social class and political identifications/affiliations, along with students of varied ages did not differ in their desire or interest to engage in clinical practice. The desire to prepare for private practice had the strongest influence—that was maintained over the course of their education—on students' interests in clinical social work. Desires to work with the poor were not associated with students' desires to be clinicians who wish to apply their trade across a wide variety of problems and populations.     

Organized labor: Toward a new dignity in the workplace

Jim Auerbach is Assistant Director of the Department of Education, AFL-CIO, Washington, D.C.     

Accessibility and Order: Crossing Borders in Child Abuse Forensic Reports

Physicians write child abuse forensic reports for nonphysicians. We examined 73 forensic reports from a Canadian children's hospital for recurrent strategies geared toward making medical information accessible to nonmedical users; we also interviewed four report writers and five readers. These reports featured unique forensic inserts in addition to headings, lists, and parentheses, which are typical of physician letters for patients. We discuss implications of these strategies that must bridge the communities of medical, social, and legal practice.     

EMERITUS PROFESSORS: ENGAGEMENT AND INVOLVEMENT

Teachers and practitioners of gerontology in universities and social agencies are overlooking an important resource that resides in the skills, experience, and knowledge of retired professors. Many of them are healthy, financially secure, and willing to volunteer their talents in interdisciplinary and intergenerational projects on the campus and in the community. The author suggests that retired professors, organized in an Emeritus College, officially recognized and modestly funded, would bring a grand‐parental, extended‐family presence to the campus, and provide a partnership with teaching faculty and students involved in gerontological education and practice. Such a college would not displace regular faculty or graduate assistants, but provide supplementary support in organizing and participating in symposia, lectures, research, tutoring, public relations, fund‐raising, and similar activities on the campus and in the community. The two‐year experience at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale is reviewed.     

How Not to Work and Play with Others: An Updated Taxonomy of Dysfunctional Individual Behaviors in Groups

Much of what we do in today's organizations involves working collectively in groups or teams. Certain individual behaviors hinder this effort. In this article, the author proposes a taxonomy of dysfunctional individual group member behaviors that is informed by the much‐cited list of self‐serving behaviors proposed by Benne and Sheats in 1948. This taxonomy identifies six individual dysfunctional behaviors using the categories of personal relating, power, and performance.