Shaking the “Magic 8 Ball”: Reflections of a First-Time Teacher

Social work doctoral candidates and others without much or any formal teaching experience or training are frequently invited to teach a variety of graduate-level social work courses. This beginning teaching experience can be quite challenging both personally and professionally. Yet, it is seldom discussed in the literature, especially from a personal perspective. This paper seeks to address that gap by providing a narrative account of the author's first-time experience teaching an Advanced Clinical Practice course to fifteen second year social work masters students. Included is an examination of influences on the experience of teaching, with particular attention to the importance of attending to student needs, teaching techniques, and to who the “self” is that one brings to teaching. Implications of the author's experience, including an appended “list” of what might have been done differently is presented as a general guide for other new social work educators as well as for those who mentor them.     

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.     

Platform learning and on-demand labor: sociotechnical projections on the future of education and work

Platform learning harnesses the operating capabilities and logics of digital platforms such as Uber and Amazon to imagine synergies between on-demand labor and on-demand learning, transforming living into learning, and learning into labor. This paper seeks to make three original contributions to critical analysis of platform learning. First, as an analytical foundation, it brings together two distinct strands of scholarship on the evolving relationship between learning and late capitalism, and the digitalization of education policy and governance, synthesizing them in relation to questions concerning labor and work in the emergent on-demand economy. Second, it draws on these ideas to engage the learning and work projections of two strategic forecasting organizations, Institute for the Future and Knowledge Works, as case studies of platform learning. Third, the last section of the paper builds on the sociotechnical projections of these organizations as the basis for a critique of the political economy of platform learning, highlighting four areas requiring further inquiry: (1) value extraction; (2) exploitation of labor; (3) efficacy and inequality; (4) imagination.     

Distributive Justice in Education and Conflicting Interests: Not (Remotely) as Bad as you Think

The importance of education and its profound effect on people's life make it a central issue in discussions of distributive justice. However, promoting distributive justice in education comes at a price: prioritising the education of some, as is often entailed by the principles of justice, inevitably has negative effects on the education of others. As a result, all theories of distributive justice in education face the challenge of balancing their requirements with conflicting interests. This article aims to contribute to developing an account of conflicting interests by identifying a category of conflicting interests—non‐positional conflicting interests—the realisation of which does not necessarily disrupt distributive justice. Non‐positional conflicting interests include, for example, the interest in realising one's full potential and parents’ interest in familial relations. The article argues that the core dimensions of non‐positional conflicting interests can usually be realised without upsetting distributive justice, and that actions that do upset distributive justice tend to be peripheral to these interests. Either way, there is no severe friction between distributive justice and non‐positional conflicting interests: in the former cases, both are realised simultaneously. In the latter, tension exists; however, because the infringement on the conflicting interest is of relatively little weight, it is often justified, all things considered, in order to promote distributive justice. The conclusion is that while there are indeed cases in which distributive justice must retreat in the face of other interests, the friction between distributive justice and other interests is actually weaker than meets the eye.     

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.     

Helping Youth in Underserved Communities Envision Possible Futures

Empowering youth through the exploration of their possible futures is a fresh and innovative approach to the Teaching Personal and Social Responsibility model (TPSR). The purpose of this study was to examine the combination of TPSR with the theory of possible selves. This combination, called the Career Club, was a program specifically designed to better assist students in understanding and facilitating reflective discussions on their future decisions. Career Club was taught weekly for nine sessions, 90 min each, at an inner city elementary school in a large metropolitan city. Participants comprised 12 seventh- and eighth-grade boys and girls who had at least 1 year and up to 5 years of experience in a TPSR program. Data sources included document analysis, lesson observations, formal interviews, and observational field notes. Themes were classified into the following categories: hopedfor-selves and feared selves—a delicate balance, coaching as a necessary component, and coming to understand possible futures. These results indicated that Career Club was effective in providing the participants a meaningful career exploration in coaching. Data also suggested these coaching experiences facilitated reflective discussions on realizing their future orientation choices.