Undergraduate students’ perception of their own strengths and weaknesses as potential social workers

This article offers some insight into how undergraduate social work students perceive their own strengths and weaknesses. This qualitative research study explored responses from 51 s-year students. Participant responses revealed five main themes in strengths and weaknesses categories: characteristic features, client work related, communication skills, expert-centred approach and problem-focused approach. In order to teach students social work core values and perspectives, it is crucial for the educators themselves to explore their own approaches related to the strengths perspective vs deficit-based approach and their willingness to change their own views and teaching methods to prepare future professionals.     

Do public relations practitioners perceptually share ingroup affiliation with journalists?

Upwards of 200 studies over the past hundred years have reported on the relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists. However, no experiment has compared the group members’ perceptions when seeing their roles in action. Inspired by frameworks of social identity theory, intergroup deception, and the black sheep effect, we test how public relations practitioners and journalists respond to a crisis communication media interview. In our experiment, a company spokesperson either answers questions or engages in stereotypical “spin,” which journalists historically consider one of the most offensive public relations strategies. Results indicate that public relations practitioners align with journalists in their perceptions of a spokesperson’s trustworthiness and the organization’s trustworthiness across treatment conditions. Practitioners also manifest the black sheep effect, disliking their group representative engaging in deception. Furthermore, we explore whether the effects on perceptions of trustworthiness are moderated by psychological identification with their respective industry. Discussion concerns the theoretical and practical ramifications of the groups sharing ingroup affiliation, contrary to prevailing notions of acrimony.     

How to keep Rosie the riveter from contracting VD: A case study of how U.S. social reformers used public relations during World War II

Much of public relations historiography on World War II focuses on the government uses of the function. This study fills a gap in the literature by exploring how a non-governmental organization called the American Social Hygiene Association (ASHA) used persuasion communication efforts to enlist the aid of management, labor, and local communities in the United States in the control of venereal disease (VD) rates. The case study advances a more diverse understanding of how activists have utilized public relations and found that the social reformers’ use of persuasive communications strategies and activities aligned with the view of public relations as the strategic and intentional participation in the social construction of meaning to achieve a planned outcome.     

基于心理咨询开展的在校大学生心理问题质化研究

在校大学生心理健康问题一直受到学界广泛的关注，但以往的研究大多采用的是量化研究，只从数据分析的角度，对大学生的心理健康指数进行实证分析，一般难于针对个体提出具体的实践层面的措施。质化研究为解决这一问题提出了新的研究思路。通过心理咨询资料收集，对在校大学生的心理问题进行分析，发现在校大学生心理问题主要集中在人际交往、自我意识、耐挫能力及学业压力上。开展心理健康教育应侧重对上述四个方面的关注，以提高在校大学生的心理健康指数。     

‘What you need to do is …’: social work students’ reflections on an advice giving audit exercise

This paper reports on qualitative research investigating the advice giving behaviours of social work students. Second-year students, who were enrolled in an interpersonal communication skills course, were required to undertake an ‘advice-giving audit’ exercise across 6 days, with the aim of strengthening their awareness of the interactive nature of advice giving. Students then wrote a diary entry about the frequency of their everyday advice giving behaviour, its intent and reception. Nineteen students provided these reflections for analysis. Findings included three themes pertaining to advice-giving: (i) Giving advice as a natural, comfortable and unconscious way of communicating; (ii) Power and position influences advice dissemination, and (iii) Withholding advice opens, deepens and confuses norms of communication. A fourth theme pertained to the insights that students reported from engaging with the exercise. These findings illustrate the complex interactional process associated with professional advice giving. The research also suggests that experiential activities, which are conducted outside of the classroom, have significant potential to promote the critical examination of embedded communicative practices.     

Let the right one in: A Bourdieusian analysis of gender inequality in universities’ senior management

This article examines the lack of gender diversity in senior management positions in professional staff in universities. These results are analysed via a Bourdieusian analysis of economic, social, cultural and symbolic capital. Through a purposeful sample of senior professional staff working in universities in three countries: Australia, Canada and the UK, six career‐enhancing strategies needed for career success were determined. The article critiques the resource‐based view of career capital and argues that capitals accumulation for career success can be understood by considering the concepts of symbolic violence and habitus as a way of understanding intra‐cohort differences. It proposes that by considering both the subjective and objective cultural constructs via habitus, and by acknowledging the importance of symbolic capital and symbolic violence towards women, this may be one way of increasing female representation in senior management.     

蒙台梭利儿童饮食生活教育的扎根研究

当今国内对蒙台梭利的研究更多体现在宏观层面，而专门对饮食生活教育的研究较少受到关注，特别是缺乏“深描”性质的质化研究。鉴于此，研究者以6部蒙台梭利教育论著作为“访谈”对象，采用非交互性资料收集方式，深度挖掘文献资源，通过三级编码发展出蒙氏儿童饮食生活教育的扎根理论。研究发现，蒙氏儿童饮食生活教育思想体系包括饮食营养的价值追求、食物的来源及处理、儿童饮食行为的发展、饮食生活教育过程等4个理论构念，其中包含健康功能、健康权利、健康卫生、食品制作、食物选择、饮食文化、发展需求、发展阶段、营养因素、行为练习、饮食调控、教育误区等12个触发式概念。蒙氏饮食生活教育也是一个调节儿童与食物主客交互并具有积极价值追求的实践体系，对于当今儿童健康教育现实具有极强的指导意义。     

Queering Counselor Education: Situational Analysis of LGBTQ+ Competent Faculty

Research demonstrates counselor educators often lack skills and knowledge to train counselors to become lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and other sexualities and gender identities (LGBTQ+) competent. This study explores the process of educators integrating LGBTQ+ competencies into their professional work. Using grounded theory and situational analysis methodologies, in-depth interviews with seven LGBTQ+ competent counselor educators were conducted and analyzed. Findings suggest educators infuse personal passion for LGBTQ+ topics into their professional work, experienced discrimination and resistance across multiple domains, infuse advocacy into their work, and have a similar definition of LGBTQ+ competent counseling. Various techniques are presented to help educators infuse LGBTQ+ competency in the classroom.     

An exercise in futurity: servitude as pathway to young Filipino men’s education- to-work transition

This article examines how young Filipino men looking to work in international seafaring deploy servitude as a means of attaining education-to-work transition. It focuses on those applying to work for free as ‘utility men’ (gofer or flunkey) in Manila’s manning and crewing agencies that supply seafarers to ship operators around the world in exchange for the promise of boarding a ship. Based on participant observation and life history interviews, the article accounts for how they transform their servitude into diskarte – strategy by which they navigate the limited employment opportunities in the Philippines – by constructing their ‘utility manning’ as an informal and negotiated pathway to employment. The young Filipino men’s seeking and enduring servitude, geared towards gleaning better social possibilities, becomes a profoundly rational act of investing in and securing their future.