Including Disability in the Social Work Core Curriculum: A Compelling Argument

In light of an impending review of the Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards (2012), alongside imminent service system changes associated with the rollout in Australia of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), this article argues for urgent inclusion of disability in the Australian social work core curriculum. Although increased disability content has been debated previously, the implications of the NDIS policies for changes to the mainstream services system in Australia offer compelling reasons for revision. Recommended is a comprehensive review of how disability is presented in curriculum and development of new guidelines for essential core curriculum content.     

Social Work Student Views on Palliative Care Learning Resources

Abstract

Many social workers are expected to work with individuals and families who are dealing with life-limiting illnesses, yet during their university education they may not have been exposed to materials that address issues related to death and dying. The Social Work Department of University of New England in Armidale, Australia designed and delivered a palliative care teaching and learning session using publicly funded online materials. Themes emerging from questionnaire and focus group data analysis included appreciation for the importance and emotional demands of the materials, sensitivity and flexibility among educators who ideally have work experience in the field, expanding presence of social work philosophy in curriculum materials and exploring spirituality, and examining culture-informed practice in greater depth. Among the implications is the need for concerted efforts to teach about death and dying using high quality accessible materials, while ensuring social work values and approaches are reflected in the content.     

论大学语文教师的课程意识

大学语文课程现有的教学困境,不仅与高等教育的功利化意识有关,也与教师自身课程意识的落后有关。要改变这种现状,不仅需要决策层面的政策引导,更需要教师自身从课程认同意识、研究意识和创新意识上加强自我转变和提升。     

东西方四国学校公民教育概述

如何培养理想公民,是当今世界各国面临的重要课题。美国、英国、澳大利亚、新加坡四国的学校公民教育经验表明,注重公民教育培养目标的分阶段性、专门的公民课程与多学科渗透相结合。在公民课程中融入传统文化与爱国教育内容、建立学校一社区相结合的公民教育方式等,是值得我国在构建有中国特色的学校公民教育体系时认真学习的有益经验。     

Globalisation and local experience: encounters with difference in a UK school

This paper explores issues of identity, difference and globalisation in the micropolitical context of a UK school. Drawing on ethnographic data and theoretical perspectives from the sociology of education, development and globalisation, the paper takes the communication of the ‘Third World’ in the curriculum as a case study of the ways in which UK schools engage with difference. Thus, the paper goes beyond the traditional focus on ‘race’ and ethnicity, emphasising the importance of distant difference in the context of globalisation. It is suggested that whilst teachers may identify local and global factors as underpinning the need to engender critical engagements with difference, the realisation of this is complex; the communication of the ‘Third World’ in the school is characterised by contradiction, reinforcing as well as unsettling ethnocentrism. To understand this situation, we need to locate these contradictions in terms of the complex interplay of restructuring processes, policy frameworks and the micro‐politics of the school. The paper highlights the impacts of increased assessment and measurement in education alongside policy contradictions around curriculum authority. Teacher empowerment in the articulation of an appropriate curriculum is identified as a priority.     

Teaching evidence-based social work in foundation practice courses: learning from pedagogical choices of allied fields

The field of social work is attuned to the need to incorporate evidence-based practice education into masters-level curriculum. One question remaining is how to integrate evidence-based practice in the foundation practice courses. Integration of evidence-based practice across the foundation-level curriculum coincides with the Council on Social Work Education's mandate that student's engage in research-informed practice and practice-informed research. Through a discussion of definitions, criticisms, and pedagogy across the allied fields of medicine, nursing, and social work the authors address the current status of evidence-based practice curriculum in foundation-level education. The authors incorporate the lessons learned from allied fields and a Masters of Social Work student's analyses of their experience of evidence-based practice learning to propose an adult-learner model to improve evidence-based practice pedagogy in Social Work.     

An Autoethnographic Exploration of Learning and Teaching Reflective Practice

Learning and demonstrating reflective skills for practice is a key requirement for students and practitioners in Social Work in Australia. Yet teaching and assessing reflective practice continues to present a number of practical and ethical issues for educators. This paper will discuss reflective practice in the context of an autoethnographic study that researched learning to be a social worker and educator. The findings from the study suggest that educators should be cautious about the extent to which educational activities direct attention to student selves for the purposes of building skills in reflective practice. The conclusions suggest that the moral order of the discipline, the hidden curriculum and the course culture in addition to the actual activities can have a significant impact on the extent to which reflective practice assessments deliver learning benefits to students.     

Some issues for cooperative learning and intercultural education

This article connects the two fields of cooperative learning and intercultural education. We argue that cooperative learning strategies need to be equipped with intercultural understandings. Two key points that are raised here are: (1) that issues of competitiveness amongst learners and students must be dealt with head on rather than treating it from the sidelines or by brushing them aside; and (2) for learning to take place in a truly cooperative manner, there must be an emphasis on an intercultural focus within the curriculum; the content of knowledge within the curriculum needs to be non-centric. This article emphasizes that cooperative learning strategies are effective when the curricular knowledge taught in the school is drawn from all groups (dominant, subordinate or minority groups).     

Managing Care and Joined Up Thinking in the Curriculum

This paper discusses the curriculum development of a level three undergraduate course in managing care. It was produced and is presented by The Open University. The course is aimed at frontline managers in health and social care. The course team made consultation with service users, carers and managers a priority in developing the curriculum. The paper discusses this consultation process and the learning gained from it. A major contribution was to clarify debates about how far the course should have one core curriculum and how far it should offer specialist options for managers in different settings. Service users and carers had strong views on the need for better co‐ordination of services and recognition of individual needs rather than divisions into service‐led categories. Managers stressed the importance of reflecting the reality of frontline management. This helped the course team to develop a framework that stresses the commonality in the work and the importance of ‘practice‐led’ management. Service users and managers were involved as critical readers of course texts to ensure that the consultation process continued through the course development. A second strand is the need for the course to be accessible to those not yet in management positions, and extracts from an interactive CD‐ROM which presents case study material demonstrate the innovative joined up and accessible approach taken to student learning needs.     

The daughter‐in‐law questions remittances: changes in the gender of remittances among Indian migrants to Australia

In this article, I present a cross‐generational analysis of the gendered meanings and politics surrounding monetary remittances. Indian female migrants to Australia, who contribute significantly to household incomes, have recently started to question the sources and directions of remittances. This happens when the woman's earnings are sent, without consultation, to the husband's parents for luxuries, while the family in Australia is struggling. Women in paid work also want to send their earnings to their own parents, particularly if there is financial need. Remittances have become a testing ground for the traditional belief that the husband and his family own the money in the patrilineal marital household. It is possible to interpret male control of remittances without consultation as a form of financial abuse of the wife in the sending household. The article draws on two qualitative studies on five decades of Indian migration to Australia covering 203 people from 112 families.     

Selection and Preparation of Faculty for Schools of Social Work

The need to prepare social work administrators for the field is now recognized. As schools belatedly mobilize to address this need, there is uncertainty concerning our knowledge base and ability to perform in this area. While these concerns are genuine, there is a wealth of experience in curriculum development that should guide the profession. This paper focuses on the field instruction component of the administration concentration. Problems pertaining to the development of administration placements are identified and special arrangements are suggested to engage them that require a departure from traditional field instruction models and school-agency relationships.     

Evaluating multicultural curricula in the community college: A sociocultural framework

This paper addresses the need for models for assessing multicultural programs in the community college, the most culturally and socioeconomically diverse educational institutions in the country. A three-dimensional framework presents faculty, student, and curriculum variables critical to the implementation and outcomes of multicultural programs. The framework emerged from the formative evaluation of a new interdisciplinary social science curriculum and guided the design of the national field test of that curriculum in 30 community college classrooms. Three kinds of results are reported: implementation patterns; appropriateness to faculty members' teaching goals; and impact on reading behavior, interest, overall learning, and political efficacy of students with diverse ages, ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds, and political positions. Political efficacy gains of older students and students with lower socioeconomic backgrounds are discussed. The importance of such a framework in documenting the interaction between a curriculum and its sociocultural context is stressed.     

Moving the Boundaries of Feminist Social Work Education with Disabled People in the Neoliberal Era

Until recently social work education in Australia has either marginalised or neglected disability by omission. Given the increasing number of disabled people in the community, the teaching of social work within a disability studies emancipatory paradigm as an essential part of the curriculum is long overdue. As many social work educators have suggested, we are at a critical moment in Australia, where the policy environment in which social work is embedded has largely been reframed in line with neoliberal trends. For disabled people, this has meant an ongoing state campaign to diminish disability entitlements, from decreasing disability social security regimes through to the rationalisation of adult disability support and care schemes. Social workers are negotiating the competing demands of these policy constraints alongside the needs of the disabled people they work with. New moral dilemmas have emerged where they are actively faced with the question of ‘who to serve?’.     

Perceived Cultural Distance in Healthcare in Immigrant Intercultural Medical Encounters

This article responds to the paucity of empirical research on the impact of patient-provider ethno-cultural distance and providers' cultural competence on the quality of healthcare service in migrant intercultural medical encounters in Australia. A cross-sectional study was conducted with 447 patients, consisting of 195 Caucasian and 252 non-Caucasian patients from six outpatient clinics in New South Wales, Australia. Structural equation modelling was used for data analysis. The findings demonstrated that cultural distance is an influential factor in perceived quality of outpatient care. Caucasian and non-Caucasian patients' perception of cultural distance between their physicians and themselves affected their service quality ratings of their physicians' professionalism, empathy and expertise. This is the first study on healthcare service quality in outpatient clinics in Australia for Caucasian and non-Caucasian patients. Policy implications suggest intervention strategies and the need for cultural competence education in medical and health curricula in medical schools and clinical practices.     

Immigration in two federations: Canada and Australia

The need for increasingly widespread application of a policy or program, settlement, and multiculturalism is urgent in both Canada and Australia. For both countries there is a clear pattern of coalescence and divergence and the distinct growth of immigration as a federal function. While Australia has strengthened federal functions in a area of increasingly geo-political need, Canada is moving towards a looser model of federalism. By 1918 both countries were strengthening their federal functions in immigration as discussions within the British Empire on the recommendations of the 1917 Dominions Royal Commission took root. Both countries were interested in agricultural immigration and land settlement. The Great Depression caused a major reduction in population growth rates. From 1933-1948 Canada had a poor record of providing sanctuary for Jews. In Australia, however, Jewish voluntary agencies were aiding the reception of refugees by 1937. The 1st permanent embodiment of commonwealth jurisdiction over immigration was the establishment of an Immigration Branch within the Department of Interior around 1938. Australia needed extra population for defense. The major structural link between government and the immigrant communities was through the Good Neighbor Movement, which began on a nationwide basis in 1950. Both Canada and Australia are major receiving countries for refugees. In 1973 Australia reached the position of effective, practical nondiscrimination achieved by Canada in 1967. Prime Minister Trudeau's policy was multiculturalism within a framework of bilingualism. By 1978 Australia had a new federalism policy, which in all areas concerned with immigrants, refugees and ethnicity, rationalized resources allocation and imposed a political philosophy. The foci of multiculturalism in Australia are 1) community languages; 2) creation of a tolerant, non-discriminatory society; and 3) equity and participation. In 1978 Australia specified population replacement and increase as the major aim of immigration policy. In 1984 Australia showed a significant movement forward in understanding by many, but it confirmed a resistance to change on regional, gender, race, and age criteria with others. The fundamental problem for both countries will be to combine the core federal function in immigration, needed both for international and domestic politics, with an increasingly flexible response to regional factors.     

Resisting Fragmentation,Living Whole

SUMMARY

This paper presents interviews with four male-to-female transgender students of color under the age of 21 at an alternative school in the Northeast. The interviews expose the need to advocate for education that acknowledges and addresses the ways that race, sexuality, class, ethnicity, and gender together inform life experience and identity, especially within the context of educational institutions. These interviews point to the need to include an activist-oriented curriculum in schools, a curriculum relevant to the lives of gay, lesbian, and transgender students of color.     

Promoting Career and College Readiness,Aspirations, and Self‐Efficacy: Curriculum Field Test

To address the need for enhanced career and college readiness, a classroom guidance curriculum was studied using a pretest–posttest nonequivalent groups quasi‐experimental design. Data from 163 ninth‐grade students enrolled in a low‐performing high school were analyzed via hierarchical linear modeling. The analyses indicated a treatment effect on postsecondary education‐going knowledge and career and college readiness self‐efficacy, accounting for 100% of the variance explained by classroom‐level factors and indicating potential for the classroom guidance curriculum. The findings encourage career and professional school counselors to proactively employ similar classroom guidance programs aimed at encouraging high school students to consider postsecondary education opportunities. Future research could focus on component analyses of the curriculum, broadening the target populations, using mixed‐method designs, and additional validity studies of the dependent measures.     

Can social workers and police be partners when dealing with bikie-gang related domestic violence and sexual assault?

Welfare and criminal justice systems manifest different goals, cultures, values and working methods. In Australia, the welfare sector has a culture of empowerment and concern for victims’ rights, within which social workers focus on social justice and social change. In contrast, the criminal justice sector (police) is patriarchal and para-military in structure, focusing on enforcing and maintaining community order and safety. These differences can create tension when social workers and police need to work as partners in response to violence against women, in particular violence against women from bikie gangs. This article addresses the issue of partnerships between social workers and police when working with abused bikie-gang women. It presents the findings of recent research into social work practice with such women in South Australia, in conjunction with a brief exploration of the international literature on social work and police cultures, and partnerships. It concludes that whilst there is a great need for genuine collaboration and partnership between social workers and police in the complex context of domestic violence with links to organised crime, the cultures and mandates of these different professions make this difficult.     

Integrating Family Therapy Training in a Clinical Psychology Course

Teaching family therapy to clinical psychology trainees is not common practice in Australian clinical psychology training programs. There is sparse discussion in the literature. Family therapy is an evidence based intervention that complements a diversity of established theories and psychotherapies and would complement the intervention skills of trainee clinical psychologists. The aim of this paper is to illustrate how family therapy training may be integrated into a postgraduate clinical psychology course. The literature on core family therapy knowledge, skills and training methods will form the backdrop to a review of specific family therapy training courses for clinical psychology trainees. This will then be mapped against a consideration of accreditation requirements of clinical psychology courses in Australia and suggestions made for integrating family therapy into their training curriculum. Anecdotal feedback from students provides an initial step toward evaluation.     

Controversy in the Curriculum: What Do We Know About the Content of the Social Work Qualifying Curriculum in England?

This article reports the results of a scoping review into the content of the social work qualifying curriculum in England exploring whether recommendations made by the Social Work Task Force and the Social Work Reform Board for an ‘overhaul of the content and the delivery of the qualifying curriculum’ were grounded in published research. The review found that rigorous research-based published evidence about the qualifying social work curriculum was lacking. In particular, most material dated from the early years of the social work degree and did not appear to have been replicated more recently to see if the original findings held true. Other subjects, such as how students are taught about older people's human development, had been considered by researchers but were not addressed by the Task Force and the Reform Board. The implications of this are that, while the content of the social work qualifying curriculum needs to adapt to reflect changing professional contexts, there is a need for greater consensus and clarity about what should be taught and how. The development of an evidence-based curriculum in terms of course content and delivery remains a priority for social work education in England.