Social Justice Becomes a Living Experience for Students,Faculty, and Community

This social justice course was the result of a service‐learning project with African American and First Nations peoples of a Southern community telling their story of desegregation through the creation of a video documentary project. Combining the pedagogy of service‐learning with documentary video making, a social justice project was created that impacted students, faculty, and community.     

Research Literature Review on Social Work Education Instructional Methods: 1998–2008

This article presents a review of research studies examining instructional methods reported in the social work education literature published between 1998 and 2008. From a sample of 91 studies, 31 were identified as having used either a single group pre/post test design or a comparison of two or more groups and inclusion of a learning outcome measure. Most of the studies were deficient in either the employment of comparison groups, pre/post designs, utilization of multiple learning outcome measures, or a clear delineation of the connection between teaching methods and learning outcomes. Very few studies were based on previous work. A challenge is made to the field to conduct better designed studies and several suggestions for doing so are offered.     

Critical Thought within the Social Welfare Policy Course

Critical thought is a necessary element for proficient practice in social work at both the micro and macro levels. For this reason, social work educators must seek to integrate critical thought in BSW and MSW curricula. This article provides a method for achieving this integration in the social welfare policy course. The method includes the four following phases: instruction regarding logical errors, presentation of logical errors in contemporary political debate, demonstration of critical thought in policy position analysis, and self-assessment of one's own logic. The implications of this method for practice in a values-based context are discussed.     

Effects of the WhyTry social skills program on students with emotional and/or behavioral problems in an alternative school

Social skills training (SST) is an evidence-based intervention to help increase social competence for students with emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), but there is limited research that addresses SST for students identified as experiencing EBD at alternative campuses. A mixed methods design was utilized to examine SST at an alternative campus for students identified as experiencing EBD. Pre-intervention data were collected for students' attendance, grades, office disciplinary referrals, and behavioral rating scales, after which the WhyTry SST program (Moore 2008 Moore, C. 2008. The WhyTry Program, Salt Lake City, UT: WhyTry.  [Google Scholar], WhyTry, Salt Lake City, UT, USA) was implemented. Following the intervention, the same data were collected. Non-parametric statistics guided the quantitative analysis, because of the small population being studied. Differences from pre- to post-intervention were examined. Students exhibited significant differences from pre- to post-intervention in the number of office disciplinary referrals and several areas on the behavioral rating scales. Triangulation methods drove the qualitative data collection through observations, student interviews, and teacher interviews. Insight into motivation and perceptions was gained through the qualitative analysis.     

The social studies methods course: what do teacher candidates know and want to know about teaching social studies?

During the past decade, there has been more than an adequate amount of research addressing issues regarding social studies methods courses. However, the apparent void is that there is no clear understanding of what pedagogical content knowledge or understanding of pedagogical approaches teacher candidates bring with them to social studies methods courses or what they expect from their time in social studies methods courses. The purpose of this study is to determine the mentality of the typical social studies methods course student, as he or she enters a social studies methods course. Employing analytic induction (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007 Bogdan, R. C. and Biklen, S. K. 2007. Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theory and methods , (5th ed.), Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.  [Google Scholar]; Erikson, 1986 Erikson, F. 1986. “Qualitative methods in research on teaching”. In Handbook of research on teaching , (3rd ed.,, Edited by: Wittrock, M. C. 119–161. New York, NY: Macmillan.  [Google Scholar]; Patton, 2002 Patton, M. Q. 2002. Qualitative research & evaluation methods , (3rd ed.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  [Google Scholar]) and content analysis (Patton, 2002 Patton, M. Q. 2002. Qualitative research & evaluation methods , (3rd ed.), Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.  [Google Scholar]) to analyze and interpret the data, 9 categories for what the students know and 8 for what the students wanted to know were constructed.     

Our Social Work Imagination

Abstract

The aim of this article is to present the case for social work, the case that the old truths and fighting spirit of an earlier day-our social work imagination-live on, even in the face of uncaring economic forces and resurrected punitiveness. Sustained by an idealism as old as humankind, members of the profession continue to advocate for the poor, the sick, and the oppressed.     

Data Mining for Web Site Evaluation

Abstract

This paper evaluates the actual use of a course Website by graduate social work students. The study utilized data mining techniques to discover meaningful trends by using the data from server logs. The course Website was accessed 24,730 times by all 49 graduate students during a semester. The students utilized the course Website 23 hours a day, 7 days a week, day and night, evening hours, and weekends. The most popular area was the course documents area and the least popular was the student area. Study findings have implications for distance learning in higher education.     

Using blogs in qualitative educational research: an exploration of method

When compared with wider social research, qualitative educational research has been relatively slow to take up online research methods (ORMs). There is some very notable research in the area but, in general, ORMs have not achieved wide applicability in qualitative educational contexts apart from research that is inherently linked to the Internet, for example, research on educational technologies or students' online behaviour. This paper demonstrates how ORMs can be useful in qualitative research projects. It describes how on-going, reflective, qualitative data were collected using a popular, community-based online tool – blogs. The research project that utilized this approach aimed to trace how a group of international students in the United Kingdom responded to their new environment over six months. This article attempts to provide a new understanding on the use of blogs as a tool for data collection.     

Black bodies,White rural spaces: disturbing practices of unbelonging for ‘refugee’ students

In global times, when the forced migration of refugees from war-torn countries like Sudan impacts the demography of once ethnically homogenous schooling spaces, I consider the need to better understand the geographical making of racism. This article explores the lived experience of two newly arrived Sudanese students studying at a rural high school in Australia. Using Foucaultian theory, and Foucault’s theories as they have been taken up by Judith Butler, I explore the production of educational exclusions at a rural school. I investigate the Sudanese students’ struggle for belonging against particular discourses of rural Whiteness. In the students’ rural schooling space, their Black bodies are highly visible and are discursively cast as ‘out of place’. I examine the way discourses of rural Whiteness produce schooling exclusions that implicate schools in the spatial regulation of unbelonging.     

焦作市污水处理厂中水回用的可行性分析

焦作市水资源短缺。污水未经处理或部分处理后排入地表水,造成地表水和地下水水体污染．使水资源更加匮乏。中水回用是解决水资源短缺的一种有效途径。文章通过对焦作市污水处理厂的废水提出可行的处理工艺．论证了中水应用于绿化、替代工业冷却水、洗车、冲厕、河湖水体的补充、道路浇洒等方面的可行性,并且通过对中水工程的成本分析和效益分析,表明开发中水市场是环境效益和经济效益双赢的选择。