Show me the way to the next worthy deed: Towards a microstructural theory of volunteering and giving

Using the data from a survey undertaken in the United States in 1992, this article examines the effects of altruism, self-interest and social ties on motivations to give and volunteer, as well as the effects of volunteering on definitions of life goals. Social ties with non-profit organisations were good predictors of both the value of charitable contributions and the time volunteered for charitable causes. The level of prior philanthropic activism and social connections with philanthropic institutions had an effect on life goals. Altruism and the desire for self-improvement had effects on volunteering, but not on giving. Utilitarian motives (expected career advancement) had no observable effects on volunteering or giving. Based on those findings, a general microstructural model of philanthropic behaviour is proposed. A version of this paper was presented at the 1995 Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.     

Through Adversity Comes Strength: Volunteering and Self-Esteem Among People with Physical Disabilities

The goal of the present study was to examine differences in self-esteem between volunteers with physical disabilities and their counterparts who do not volunteer. Another goal was to examine the contribution of the characteristics of the volunteering experience (motives for volunteering, satisfaction with the rewards of volunteering, and the quality of relationships with beneficiaries) to explain self-esteem among volunteers with physical disabilities. The research sample included 160 Israeli participants with different physical disabilities. Of these, 95 volunteered and 65 did not volunteer. Participants who volunteered had higher self-esteem than those who did not. The findings highlight the compensatory role of volunteering for people with disabilities: The contribution of volunteering to enhancing self-esteem was mainly evident among participants with poor socioeconomic resources (low education, low economic status, and unemployed). Egoistic and altruistic motives for volunteering as well as satisfaction with the rewards of volunteering contributed to explaining self-esteem.     

Volunteering in a School Kitchen Garden Program: Cooking Up Confidence,Capabilities, and Connections!

This paper reports on the evaluation of a kitchen garden program in primary schools in Victoria, Australia. It focuses on the motivations, impacts, and issues associated with volunteering in the program. The study revealed that volunteers are drawn from a range of sources, including: families of current and former students, former teachers, local residents, clients of aged care and/or disability services, other schools and communities, local universities, community organizations, the community services sector, and the corporate sector. Benefits to volunteers included: opportunities to use time productively, an increased sense of belonging, learning opportunities, and an increased sense of self-worth and enjoyment. For schools, volunteers enhanced engagement between the school and the local community, enabled them to engage more effectively with hard to reach groups, and increased student engagement. In addition, the involvement of volunteers improved the sustainability of the program, improved communication between teachers and families of students from minority ethnic groups, and gave students the chance to relate to new people, to learn from their experience and to have fun in working with the volunteers. Perhaps the most telling benefits to flow both to students and to volunteers were not the “three Rs—reading, w’riting and a’rithmetic” but the three Cs—confidence, capabilities, and connections. However, a clearly identified issue was the importance of matching volunteers’ motivations and needs with the roles they play to sustain current levels of volunteering and, therefore, the program itself.     

Virtual Volunteering: Online Volunteers Providing Assistance to Human Service Agencies

SUMMARY

A growing number of agencies involve volunteers via home or work computers and the Internet. The Virtual Volunteering Project [http://www.serviceleader.org/vv/] has researched and worked with more than 100 organizations involving online volunteers to document the benefits of online service for agencies, volunteers and audiences served, and to disseminate ways agencies can incorporate virtual volunteering into their organizations. This paper describes the Virtual Volunteering Project and summarizes data from a variety of sources that highlight the activities of agencies and volunteers engaged in virtual volunteering and the factors associated with success in virtual volunteering programs.     

Emerging Social Work Field Education Trends in China

MSW field education in China has been adopting Western models. However, this adaptation cannot address all educational and professional training needs in China. This study used an exploratory qualitative study design and interviewed 54 MSW students regarding their field experiences at a university in Shanghai. Results revealed six key themes: field education curriculum design’s influence on student field experiences, faculty advisers’ influence on student field experiences, field agencies’ expectations toward MSW intern performance, field agencies’ capacity to host MSW interns, student perceptions of their professional competencies, and students’ coping strategies to manage challenges in field practicum. Competency-based social work field education is a potential solution to address the current social work field education challenges in China.     

“If I Did It Over There,I Can Do It Here”: U.S. Latinx Social Work Students in Costa Rican Service Placements Deepening Their Professional Identity and Skills

ABSTRACT

Social work student participation in global experiences continues to increase despite limited research on the impacts of these educational experiences on knowledge and skill development. This article reports on professional identity and skill development for 25 U.S. Latinx students who completed internships or service-learning projects in Costa Rica while living with host families. Three groups of MSW students spent 6 weeks in full-time summer internships and one group of primarily BASW students completed two-week summer service-learning projects and language immersion course work. Through longitudinal qualitative data collected before, during, and after the time abroad, and the use of the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards as a conceptual framework to assess learning outcomes, three key areas of professional gains emerged: demonstrate ethical and professional behavior, engage diversity and difference in practice, and engage with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. This study reveals specific benefits of opportunities for students assumed to already be culturally competent with clients of related backgrounds because of language or ethnic similarities. Discussion on the findings and implications for social work educators and students is included.     

Developing a Cross Border,Multidisciplinary Educational Collaboration

This paper presents a case study of the initiation of a collaborative, multidisciplinary educational program between a US university and a university in Mexico. The authors utilized a developmental model for international engagement. Building upon the work of an interdisciplinary area studies program within the US university, the authors initiated a summer program for students and faculty that included language and cultural immersion, interaction with social agencies in the community and collaborative research. Faculty from the US university provided instruction at the Mexican university, and Mexican faculty provided instruction in both language and content areas to students and faculty from the US university. This program has paid particular attention to the development of mutual cultural and linguistic understanding, utilizing an innovative combination of course work, family and community living opportunities, interdisciplinary learning, and structured educational trips into the community. As the two universities gain experience with each other and begin to resolve logistic and other challenges, student internships, joint semester abroad programs, and use of the program for continuing education for community professionals will be explored.     

Target Problems,Time Limits,Task Structure

This paper documents the opportunities for student field training within university-based institutes on aging. Both the advantages and disadvantages of operating such field-work programs are analyzed. A practicum is proposed which reflects an emphasis on planning, administration, policy analysis, and program development. The benefits to students include collaboration with the allied professions, availability of specialized training resources, and emphasis on proposal writing and communication skills. Potential complicating factors for student learning grow out of the institute’s close proximity to academic accountability, the multiplicity of roles carried by field-instruction staff, and placement in an environment different from that of traditional service agencies.     

Overall evaluation of economic theories

This article evaluates economic theories of the non-profit sector by their ability to enlighten our understanding of the scope of inquiry, the determinants of the size and scope of the non-profit sector, and the behavioural responses of donors, volunteers, paid staff and non-profit organisations to changes in their external environment. Adherence to a non-distribution constraint has proven to be a useful way of delimiting economic analysis of non-profit organisations, but more attention should be paid to alternatives. Economists have been less successful at developing usable distinctions between voluntary action and exchange. The size and scope of the sector appear to be determined by entrepreneurial supply factors, donations (which in turn are influenced by tax policy, governmental spending, fund-raising, and the quality and mixture of organisational outputs, commercial or charitable), commercial activities, capital supply, the supply of labour (paid and volunteered), the marketability of outputs, and the distribution of consumer characteristics. Variations of James's (1983) model have proven useful to predict the reaction of non-profits to exogenous changes. I thank Symposium participants, especially Mark Schlesinger, Paul DiMaggio, Anne Preston, Avner Ben-Ner and Helmut Anheier for helpful suggestions.     

Negotiating Interactions in State�CVoluntary Sector Relationships: Competitive and Collaborative Agency in an Experiential Workshop

This article examines an experiential student workshop focused on state?Cvoluntary sector relationships in the UK, which formed part of a postgraduate voluntary sector studies programme. The different group behaviours observed were instructive in illustrating how students, all working in third sector or related public agencies, perceive and have assimilated demands and practices of the external environment. These insights also highlight the value of experiential learning in higher education both for student reflection and research. The article adopts an interdisciplinary approach to examine some consequences of ideologies and behaviours associated with managerial culture permeating actions in this interactive setting. It combines critical discussion of non-profit organizations with group relations and learning theories, offering a different perspective through which to explore patterns embedded in inter-agency relationships. Consideration of ways that these patterns might be changed to improve the service environment in the voluntary sector has wider implications for research in this field.     

Is volunteer labor part of household production? Evidence from married couples

Volunteer labor is generally modeled as an individualistic pursuit, akin to leisure or to human capital accumulation. Some activities labeled as volunteering, however, may be more usefully thought of as quid pro quo time commitments that are part of securing services for family members. Parents are frequently expected to volunteer, for example, when their children participate in youth sports leagues or school marching bands. In such cases, volunteering is essentially an instance of household production undertaken outside the home. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we divide volunteering into three categories—youth-related, religious, and non-youth-related secular—according to the likelihood that an instance of volunteering in the category represents household production. We find evidence that husbands and wives respond to one another’s time pressures such that youth-related volunteering looks like a task for which husbands’ and wives’ time inputs substitute for one another. Further, we find this pattern for housework, and not for other forms of volunteering. An increase in either spouse’s hours of market work will significantly reduce that spouse’s likelihood of volunteering for youth-related activities while raising the partner’s likelihood of volunteering. A similar pattern holds for hours volunteered to youth-related activities, with the wife’s responses achieving statistical significance.     

Facilitating Shared Online Group Learning between Carers,Service Users and Social Work Students

We report on our progress in developing a pilot online group teaching innovation with 14 participants, including five service users and carers, and nine social work students. Enhancing student learning by providing shared educational opportunities between students, service users, and carers can be a challenge to organise but the project demonstrates some success in doing so. The evaluation suggests that even the smallest level of service user and carer involvement can enhance student learning and personal development during social work education and training.     

Modeling stability of growth between mathematics and science achievement during middle and high school

In this study, the authors introduced a multivariate multilevel model to estimate the consistency among students and schools in the rates of growth between mathematics and science achievement during the entire middle and high school years with data from the Longitudinal Study of American Youth (LSAY). There was no evident consistency in the rates of growth between mathematics and science achievement among students, and this inconsistency was not much influenced by student characteristics and school characteristics. However, there was evident consistency in the average rates of growth between mathematics and science achievement among schools, and this consistency was influenced by student characteristics and school characteristics. Major school-level variables associated with parental involvement did not show any significant impacts on consistency among either students or schools. Results call for educational policies that promote collaboration between mathematics and science departments or teachers.     

Service learning from the supply side: Community capacity to engage students

The rapid increase in the use of service learning raises important public policy questions about who is being served and whether partner agencies have the capacity to meet student demand for community‐based experiences. This article uses a large sample of nonprofit organizations and a comparative framework to examine the characteristics of partner agencies and the scope and nature of college student community involvement. Multivariate analysis tests these factors on a community agency's ability to engage more students, particularly service learners. The findings are generally optimistic about agency willingness to involve students, suggesting widespread community benefits from their involvement. While organizational size and capacity predict current student engagement, an agency's past experience with students and its perceptions of student benefits have the greatest impact on its willingness to take on future students.     

Encouraging Creativity in the Social Work Classroom: Insights from a Qualitative Exploration

Creativity is vital to the learning process of social work students. Despite its importance, educators are still uncertain of ways to enhance creativity and translate it from classroom to practice. Therefore, this study examines social work student perspectives on ways to define creativity, infuse it into the classroom, and apply it as practitioners. This study qualitatively explores the open-ended insights of 37 social work students. Through an unguided semantic analysis and application of Kolb’s experiential learning theory, the following themes emerged: classroom, creativity, performance, activities, and ideas. These themes indicate that students believe that additional creative opportunities in their classrooms would eventually benefit them as practitioners. Further pedagogical emphasis on increasing student creativity through experiential learning activities would be beneficial.     

Assessing student staff motivation and satisfaction to strengthen health education services

A student staff inquiry project in the department of health education at a large state university assessed the motivation and satisfaction of student staff and peer educators. The students who managed this Student Inquiry Project created the interview tool, collected and analyzed the data for themes, and developed follow-up recommendations. Through this student-driven qualitative process, several themes emerged, including the need for more department visibility, student opportunities, student identity, skill building, and appreciation. The department is using the recommendations to strengthen student connection, satisfaction, and training.     

‘Your whole life depends on it’: academic stress and high-stakes testing in Ireland

International research consistently shows that high-stakes exams are a significant source of stress and worry for students within secondary education. Existing research focuses on individual variation in exam-related stress levels among students with very little attention given to the influence of school context on student stress. Using data from the Irish Post-Primary Longitudinal Study, a mixed methods study of secondary students, this paper examines both individual and school level factors influencing the levels of stress among students preparing for the nationally standardised Leaving Certificate examination. The paper presents new findings which highlight the potential role of schools in ameliorating student stress. Findings show that student stress is not only influenced by individual-level factors but that certain aspects of the schooling process impact on stress levels. In particular, the quality of student–teacher interaction and peer relations within the school are found to have a significant impact on student stress levels. Students with more positive interactions with their teachers have lower stress levels with higher stress levels among those who have experienced bullying from peers. Stress is also influenced by programme choice at upper secondary level and the extent to which students are facilitated in their choice of subjects.     

An International Perspective of Field Instruction

Abstract

Social work educators and practitioners have long debated several issues confronting field instruction. For example, they have addressed the structure of field placement, school versus agency-based supervision, remuneration to agencies that accept student placements, and the use of employer agencies as field settings. Because problem-solving increasingly involves working with people in nations other than the United States, it is important to gain an international perspective on field instruction issues. To this end, an international study was conducted to examine social work field instruction and the educational context in which it occurs. This article reports the findings of that study, which involved 51 countries. The universality of field instruction as an integral part of educational program, is apparent, as are the similarity of issues, problems, and proposed solutions Moreover, the findings indicate areas in which social work education has greater international consistency than education for the professions within national and regional boundaries, whereas other areas are influenced more by national and regional factors than by a universal social work professional culture.     

The Relevance of Self-Determination for Corporate Volunteering Intentions

Corporate volunteering programs are increasingly used to bolster community involvement, address social issues and improve the reputation of organisations. Despite this growing trend, our understanding of what motivates corporate volunteers is scant. Drawing on self-determination theory, this study investigates motivational differences among employees engaging in different corporate volunteering types and in independent volunteering, and examines the relationships between these volunteering types and employees’ intent to volunteer in the future. Findings obtained from a survey of 318 employees suggest that higher levels of motivation to volunteer for reasons of ego enhancement or guilt prevention (introjection) were associated with a higher likelihood of participation in employer-organised, large-scale volunteering. Lastly, compared to the other types of volunteers, corporate volunteers had the highest intentions to volunteer through their company in the future, while independent volunteers had the highest intentions to continue volunteering in their own time without employer support. These results highlight the importance of offering various types of corporate volunteering opportunities to employees, as people engaging in corporate volunteering do not make up a homogeneous group, and that different corporate volunteering activities fulfil different motivational needs.

     

Queens Field Instruction Center: A Field Instruction Center for Multilevel Education in Social Work

This paper will describe the organization and educational program for undergraduate and graduate social work students in the Queens Field Instruction Center, an administrative unit that provides a closer working relationship between schools of social work and social agencies on all levels. The center's structure and program allow for the concurrent and integrated placement of social work students. Research opportunities are offered to identify and conceptualize the outcome and learning experience for each level. The field instruction program offers further research possibilities in examining whether multimethod training provides students with skills equal to those receiving single-method training.