Teaching Note—Developing a Professional Writing Course Using a Holistic View of Competence

ABSTRACT

Writing is a skill that spans many competencies. The Council on Social Work’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards promotes a holistic view of competence informed by knowledge, values, skills, and cognitive and affective processes. This teaching note contributes to the scholarship of teaching and learning by describing a professional writing course that uses a holistic pedagogical approach. We provide pragmatic strategies and assignments that can be readily adapted by other faculty and programs.     

Teaching Note—Developing an Online Blended Learning Course on Psychiatric Diagnosis

ABSTRACT

It has been suggested that the task of teaching and learning social work practice in an online environment can greatly be facilitated if thoughtful attention is paid to course design. This article details the design of a blended-learning online course to teach MSW students the process of psychiatric diagnosis. First, the development of the course philosophy is discussed. Second, the choice of the VARK (visual, aural, read/write, kinesthetic) learning model is explained. Finally, the design of the course consistent with the philosophy and learning model is presented.     

Teaching Note―Conceptualization of a Contemporary Social Work Ethics Course

This article outlines the conceptualization of a contemporary social work course for the foundation level of a midwestern U.S. master’s of social work program. The conceptualization uses problem-based and applied learning and reflective thinking with attention to the developmental level of students. A brief review of factors to be considered in teaching social work ethics is included. Student learning beyond the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics is described as well as the use of an ethical decision-making model.     

Teaching Note—Diversity and Difference Through a Rural Lens

This teaching note demonstrates how the PEN-3 cultural model provides an opportunity to address, embrace, and achieve cultural competence among social work programs. By facilitating a more complex and nuanced understanding of diversity and difference, the PEN-3 model allows social work students and practitioners alike to move beyond a historic understanding of diversity and difference to an awareness that truly addresses the intersectionality of the multiple dimensions of diversity, including place diversity. This teaching note particularly focuses on the importance of understanding how place diversity, or the unique social and environmental context where individuals, families, and communities are embedded, influences the interactions and individual experiences among rural individuals and their subsequent health outcomes.     

Teaching Note—Learning About Segregation and Cultural Competence

ABSTRACT

The Council on Social Work Education requires students to understand how diversity and difference shape human experience. But segregation prevents students from appreciating the circumstances of others’ lives and how widely human experience differs by race, religion, and other social identities. This teaching note presents the Social Contact Survey, a pedagogical tool designed to help students understand their level of segregation, its effect on their daily lives, and its relationship to social work practice. Aversive racism and intergroup contact theories suggest a relationship between segregation and prejudice and frame the survey. Following a review of the literature and theory, the survey instrument and pedagogical suggestions are provided.     

Teaching Note—Teaching Self-Care and Wellness as a Professional Practice Skill: A Curricular Case Example

Educating for human rights and justice requires attention to the well-being of those being prepared to pursue these aims. This article describes an MSW program’s implementation of teaching self-care as a core practice skill. This curricular innovation stems from the increasing literature documenting the deleterious effects of burnout in professional helping and the need to address this concern in educational curricula. Further, this curricular change is a result of increased student exhaustion affecting academic performance and professional preparedness, and the ethical imperative to address this phenomenon. We describe specific components, strategies, and assignments in the curriculum as well as assessment of the curricular innovation. This curricular example is readily adaptable for other programs.     

Teaching Note—Asserting Social Work’s Role in Developing an Interprofessional Education Project

ABSTRACT

Interprofessional (IP) education is an essential component of today’s health care education. IP education has been recognized and supported for its potential to educate workforce-ready health care clinicians with the knowledge and skills, necessary to collaboratively deliver high-quality, client-centered care. While social work’s reflective, patient-centered, and holistic approach to care is invaluable in addressing healthcare challenges at all levels, social work’s lack of involvement in IP health care team practice is evident in the development of IP education curriculum with other health care disciplines. This article describes how one School of Social Work at a regional public university became part of a longitudinal IP education project in collaboration with a large R-1 research university, creating an IP opportunity for Master’s in Social Work (MSW) students. It also discusses the process taken for social work inclusion in the IP project, an experiential elective course designed to supplement the project, as well as Transformative Learning Theory, the conceptual framework used.     

Research Note—Multiple Time Point Course Evaluation and Student Learning Outcomes in an MSW Course

ABSTRACT

Evaluation methods play a key role in measuring student learning outcomes. Yet traditional assessments focus on assessing student satisfaction with instructors or courses rather than their progress toward competencies. In addition, the common pretest-posttest assessment is problematic because of response-shift bias. Although multiple time point assessment is suggested, very little is known about its application and potential in social work education. This research note examines how student self-assessments of their progress on core competencies in an MSW-level social work course change across three time points (pretest, posttest, retrospective test). The findings suggest that students underrated and overrated their competencies at the pretest. We argue that using multiple time point self-assessment addresses this internal validity threat and should be considered in social work course evaluation.     

Teaching Note—Integrating Theory and Research Methods in a First-Year Doctoral Sequence or Program

This teaching note describes an innovative process in which faculty members worked collaboratively to create an integrated three-course sequence of requisite course content in a PhD program, developed complementary assignments, and coordinated a classroom experience that led to the creation of an individualized area statement and eventual integrated literature review. Lessons learned from this experience are discussed.     

Teaching Note—Reification and Recognition in the Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program

ABSTRACT

At an Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program course in a correctional facility, roughly half the students are from the university (outside students) and half are residents of the facility (inside students). I participated as a teaching assistant in an Inside-Out social work course on drugs and crime that was offered in a prison for men and interpreted the observed and reported experience of students using Lukács’ concepts of recognition and reification as discussed by Axel Honneth. This teaching note explores the implications of the Inside-Out course for outside students’ reification and recognition of people who are incarcerated, and by extension, members of groups that typically receive social work services. The pedagogical elements of Inside-Out courses that promote recognition and the limitations of the program are discussed.     

Teaching Note—Description and Preliminary Evaluation of a Modified College Experience for Adults With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

ABSTRACT

This article describes the implementation and preliminary evaluation of a modified college experience for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) at a small liberal arts college. To increase social work students’ interest in working with this population and access of people with IDD to higher education, Bridges to Skidmore was founded in 2010 as a low-cost method for providing cooperative learning opportunities for students and individuals with IDD. Preliminary evaluation reveals that participation can change students’ attitudes toward those with IDD, which may increase their intention to work with this population in the future. The program has created an enriching experience for the college students, lecturing professors, and adults with IDD, and can be easily replicated on other campuses.     

Teaching Note—Revisiting Stereotypes: Enhancing Cultural Awareness Through a Web-Based Tool

Educating social work students to work in a diverse, multicultural reality is a major challenge in the profession. This teaching note suggests one method, the Web-based implicit association test, to develop and enhance cultural awareness among social work students. Based on my experience, I propose a framework for using the test to initiate a meaningful learning experience for students.     

Research Note—A Pilot Cyber Counseling Course in a Graduate Social Work Program

Cyber counseling is a new and growing medium for offering mental health services to children and youth. However, there is a lack of identification of the core competencies required to provide effective online counseling. A school of social work, in partnership with a national service agency providing online counseling to children and youth, developed and offered a 13-week course to participating MSW social work students and agency staff. The development of online counseling competencies was assessed through individual interviews with participants and a content analysis of online posts. Participants scored well in areas of assessment and intervention. Challenges were identified in relationship building within an online environment.     

Teaching Note—“By Any Means Necessary!” Infusing Socioeconomic Justice Content Into Quantitative Research Course Work

ABSTRACT

Existing research suggests a majority of faculty include social justice content in research courses but not through the use of existing quantitative data for in-class activities that foster mastery of data analysis and interpretation and curiosity about social justice–related topics. By modeling data-driven dialogue and the deconstruction of quantitative meaning making related to social justice in and around social work practice topics, we can prepare our students to be agents of change in their social work careers and possibly engage our students in an often difficult course. Specifically, I provide examples for how discussions about socioeconomic justice can be infused in teaching about univariate, bivariate, and multivariate statistical analyses from the perspectives of critical consumption and the production of research.     

Teaching Note—The Ethnographic Interview as a Method in Multicultural Social Work Education

The ever growing diversity poses challenges for social work educators, who are engaged in developing new pedagogical methods for enhancing multicultural practice. Within the framework of a diversity course, I have developed a pedagogical practice for training social workers to work in a diverse, multicultural reality. Students conduct an ethnographic interview with a person from a different, unfamiliar group, creating an encounter with the other. They then analyze the interview and complete a written reflective assignment. The interview and accompanying assignment allow students to reflect critically on how their image of the other is socially constructed and on the essential role of context and power relations in the construction of the other, the self, and the relationship between them.     

Teaching Note—Time for a Teach-In? Addressing Racist Incidents on College Campuses

ABSTRACT

This teaching note discusses a teach-in organized in response to a racist incident on a college campus. An examination of the history of teach-ins demonstrates that social work educators have been involved with them since the beginning of the profession, and the method is a natural fit for social work given its historic role. Social work educators have unique professional and ethical responsibilities to respond to hate crimes and other racist incidents on campus and to develop the competencies of social work students to do the same. Teach-ins are a model for doing so in ways that demonstrate the profession’s commitments to social justice advocacy, social justice education, and a robust implicit curriculum.     

Teaching Note—Using Problem-Based Learning to Illustrate the Concepts of Privilege and Oppression

This article presents an overview of problem-based learning and demonstrates how to apply this approach in a course designed to teach students about privilege and oppression. The authors illustrate how to facilitate students’ resolution of a complex problem that requires examination of underlying assumptions about how privilege and oppression are manifested in social institutions. Various problem examples are provided in addition to illustrations of the problem-based learning process, the role of students, and the responsibilities of the instructor. The authors conclude with a discussion of the contributions and limitations of this teaching approach.     

Teaching Note—Creating an Integrative Research Learning Environment for BSW and MSW Students

ABSTRACT

Research courses are often the least popular among BSW and MSW students because the connection between social work practice and research is not always evident. This teaching note introduces the structure of the Social Work integrative Research Lab (SWiRL), which was implemented in a social work program without a doctoral program at a large public university. SWiRL offers students opportunities to engage meaningfully in a variety of social work research projects using a framework of nested mentoring. Students gain hands-on research experience while they develop confidence, leadership, and mentoring skills within this structure. The authors discuss recommendations for other social work programs that do not have doctoral education or an established research environment.