Less Pain,More Gain

SUMMARY

Applied social statistics is typically one of the most dreaded courses in a social work program. Technological advances in computer applications offer tools to lessen the pain and increase the gains associated with teaching and learning statistics. This paper reports on a modest research project resulting in a computer-based approach to teaching Applied Social Statistics. This approach makes full use of MicroCase, a statistical software package. Results of evaluative efforts which appraised the computer technology-enhanced statistics course are presented. Course format, classroom procedures, workbook and homework assignments, evaluation tools, and teaching strategies are also suggested.     

Interactive Videodiscs: A Linkage Tool for Social Work Education

Abstract

The merging of videodiscs and computers now makes possible a variety of exciting instructional strategies in education. This article highlights the ways in which videodiscs can be utilized to individualize the pace of student learning and to enhance the transfer of new learning from the classroom to beginning professional encounters. Ranging from concept learning to simulations of client-worker interactions, the application of videodisc technology to classroom instruction enables the blending of theory and practice so valued by social work educators.     

Process evaluation of a preschool physical activity intervention using web-based delivery

Background and purposePreschool/childcare settings offer a practical target for physical activity interventions. Online learning programs have the potential for greater public health reach and impact. The SHAPES-Dissemination (SHAPES-D) project adapted the original SHAPES in-person intervention for online delivery to teachers. The purpose of this paper is to describe the implementation monitoring and process evaluation for the SHAPES-D project.MethodsNine preschools with 26 classrooms participated. A total of 41 teachers were trained via online learning to implement the SHAPES-D program in their classrooms. The dose received, completeness, and fidelity of implementation were assessed through website metrics, teacher surveys and interviews, and classroom observations.ResultsDose received was adequate (73%). Observed completeness and physical activity enjoyment fidelity were high (100%), although moderate-to-vigorous physical activity fidelity and social environment fidelity were low (25% each). Overall implementation was high (91%).DiscussionResults indicate that the online method of delivery is viable for dissemination. The online delivery system provides an easy method of monitoring dose received. This may be the first structural intervention to monitor dose received through web metrics.ConclusionThe adaptation of an in-person intervention to an online delivery system increases the potential for dissemination of a successful program to increase physical activity in preschool settings.     

Practice Fridays: Using Simulation to Develop Holistic Competence

ABSTRACT

There has been a call for social work programs to better prepare students for field education. This qualitative study examined an innovation titled Practice Fridays developed to enhance competence in MSW students in a classroom setting. Students (N=57) described what they learned through this simulation-based learning activity and the processes that facilitated their learning. Students reported an enhancement in knowledge, skills, professional judgment, and self-awareness, attributed to observed practice, focused feedback, and guided reflection. Findings suggest that holistic competence can be developed in the classroom when using holistic teaching methods. These findings support simulation as an innovative method of teaching holistic competence in the classroom to prepare students for field learning.     

A Teaching Model to Unite Classroom and Field

Abstract

Integration of theory and practice is always an objective of professional education. In reality, social work students frequently experience a discontinuity when they move from the classroom into the practicum. Many concepts learned in the classroom seem difficult to apply in practice and appear irrelevant to learning practice skills. A teaching model that can be presented both in the classroom and field is described in this article. Students can apply this model, which is relevant to both micro and macro settings, in diverse practice situations.     

Examining Ecuadorian teachers’ perspectives on their students’ multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

This study investigated Ecuadorian teachers’ attitudes towards multilingual students. This work was informed by findings from two previous studies consisting of observations and interviews with secondary school teachers. In this mixed methods study, 26 teachers completed a 22-question Likert Scale questionnaire that explored their awareness of the influences of students’ cultural norms on classroom instruction. In small focus groups, participants responded to three open-ended questions documenting their definition of multiculturalism and philosophies of how to create a culturally responsive classroom. Findings suggest that Ecuador’s teachers are aware of the diversity within their country but report their training did not stress the pedagogical need to consider cultural influences on teaching and learning.     

Computing brains: learning algorithms and neurocomputation in the smart city

ABSTRACT

This article examines IBM’s ‘Smarter Education’ program, part of its wider ‘Smarter Cities’ agenda, focusing specifically on its learning analytics applications (based on machine learning algorithms) and cognitive computing developments for education (which take inspiration from neuroscience for the design of brain-like neural networks algorithms and neurocomputational devices). The article conceptualizes the relationship between learning algorithms, neuroscience, and the new learning spaces of the city by combining the notion of programmable ‘code/space’ with ideas about the ‘social life of the brain’ to suggest that new kinds of ‘brain/code/spaces’ are being developed where the environment itself is imagined to possess brain-like functions of learning and ‘human qualities’ of cognition performed by algorithmic processes. IBM’s ambitions for education constitute a sociotechnical imaginary of a ‘cognitive classroom’ where the practices associated with data analytics and cognitive computing in the smart city are being translated into the neuropedagogic brain/code/spaces of the school, with significant consequences for how learners are to be addressed and acted upon. The IBM imaginary of Smarter Education is one significant instantiation of emerging smart cities that are to be governed by neurocomputational processes modelled on neuroscientific insights into the brain’s plasticity for learning, and part of a ‘neurofuture’ in-the-making where nonconscious algorithmic ‘computing brains’ embedded in urban space are intended to interact with human cognition and brain functioning.     

Service Learning in a Small Groups Course

This paper describes a service learning program used in a Sociology of Small Groups course. Service learning programs attempt to apply knowledge learned in the classroom in a setting of community service. This paper advocates the use of service learning as a tool for applying social knowledge even in courses that are not traditionally linked with service learning. The usefulness of a service learning program in a group processes course is identified. Details on the content of the program, the methods of evaluation and the relevance to the course material are provided. Numerous examples of how service learning can lead to classroom enhancement activities are described.     

Educating Students for Community-Based Partnerships

ABSTRACT

Many courses for students in professional schools may expect or require a learning experience “in the community.” Simple placement in a community does not assure, however, that students will develop competencies from a community-based perspective, that is, competencies that enable professionals to: (1) enhance the capacity of community members to serve in partnership endeavors; (2) appreciate the role of participation by under-represented or under-served populations; and (3) develop skills for mobilizing community resources to address community-defined priorities. This article describes six domains-course goals, partners, exposure, product, classroom activities, disciplines-to characterize courses and other learning experiences, in order to assess the extent to which they promote community-based competencies.     

Emotional labour in the classroom: A psychoanalytic perspective

This article explores the nature of the emotional labour that teachers perform in their daily professional lives. It reviews the work of the sociologist Arlie Hochschild in order to assess how applicable her account of the nature of emotional labour is to the world of the classroom. It suggests that her account focuses on emotional labour as exploitative, and therefore ignores its rewarding dimensions. It argues that the Object Relations psychoanalytic tradition offers a richer account of emotional life in general, and emotional labour in particular. Object Relations theory is applied to describe the emotional labour of the teacher. Four observations of teachers at work in their classrooms are presented and analysed. The article aims to show how the unconscious dynamics of recognition and mis-recognition underpin success or failure at effective teaching and learning in the classroom.     

Enhancing Competence in Health Social Work Education Through Simulation-Based Learning: Strategies From a Case Study of a Family Session

ABSTRACT

Simulation-based learning (SBL) is a powerful tool for social work education, preparing students to practice in integrated health care settings. In an educational environment addressing patient health using an integrated care model, there is growing emphasis on students developing clinical competencies prior to entering clinical placements or clinical practice settings. This article highlights the importance of SBL in the development of the clinical competencies of graduate social work students enrolled in a Social Work Practice in Health course. The development and implementation of an educational initiative using a family-based simulation scenario to enhance classroom learning for health social work practice is described, and recommendations for future educational initiatives using SBL are provided.     

Moving Toward Technology-Supported Instruction in Human Service Practice: The “Virtual Classroom”

SUMMARY

With the challenge for human services faculty to better integrate classroom materials to the realities of today's practice and the advent of several new communication technologies and technology-mediated instructional software, the use of Web-base instruction and the “Virtual Classroom” as a pedagogical strategy may be a viable added dimension to the learning process for human services practice courses with the potential to improve learning efficacy. Possible teaching strategies are discussed as well as implications for research.     

Celebrating Diversity

Summary

Questioning the validity of the middle-class, white, male, heterosexual standard of sexual normality, feminist sexuality education celebrates diversity by considering how socioeconomic class, ethnicity, race, religion, region, gender, sexual orientation, age, and physical health or disability function independently and in interaction to shape sexual attitudes and experience. Students are treated as active participants in the learning process, not passive vessels to be filled up with facts. Instruction focuses on affective and cognitive learning simultaneously. This article considers a variety of techniques for empowering students to share thoughts and feelings both in the classroom and through individual and collective homework assignments. By treating those we teach as colleagues, not subordinates, and by attending to individual growth and group process, teachers become students too, taking emotional risks in the classroom, opening ourselves to new information, and being willing to listen to students' criticism and suggestions for improvement.     

Resources Ancillary Services and Classroom Instruction

Abstract

This article is the story of a social work instructor and her deaf-blind student. The chapter includes: (a) an overview of Gallaudet University, focusing on the Social Work Program and the Office of Students with Disabilities program, (b) personal background information about the student and her professor, and (c) perspectives of the educational process by both the student and her instructor. The article concludes with recommendations to both students and instructors for addressing the needs of deaf-blind students in the classroom and university setting.     

Partially shared objects and the (Elusive) potential of expansive learning: the case of “jury” in community-based citizenship classes for Nepali-speaking Bhutanese refugee elders

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on community-based citizenship classes for Bhutanese refugee elders held in central Ohio. As part of a larger longitudinal study centered in the ethnographic and discourse analytic traditions, the article analyzes a classroom moment where the notion of a “jury” is briefly taken up and discussed. This moment is put into dialogue with relevant data from student interviews and teacher playback sessions using cultural-historical activity theory as an analytical framework to argue that the understanding of a “jury” is a “partially shared object” that reveals asymmetrical power relations between activity systems, with implications for expansive learning opportunities.     

Accommodating Emotion and Affect in Political Discussions in Classrooms

Abstract

This article calls for greater attention to the role of emotion and affect in classroom discussions where theoretical models of discussion and deliberation tend to emphasize the rationalistic elements called for in such pedagogical strategies. Using two examples drawn from secondary classrooms, the authors highlight the role of emotion and affect in student exchanges about controversial public issues. Given the contemporary climate of national political discourse, being prepared for and accommodating these elements will be essential to taking up these strategies as a form of inquiry-oriented teaching and learning that seeks to address public issues with students across the curriculum.     

Using a logic model to evaluate the Kids Together early education inclusion program for children with disabilities and additional needs

Despite clear evidence that learning and social opportunities for children with disabilities and special needs are more effective in inclusive not segregated settings, there are few known effective inclusion programs available to children with disabilities, their families or teachers in the early years within Australia. The Kids Together program was developed to support children with disabilities/additional needs aged 0–8 years attending mainstream early learning environments. Using a key worker transdisciplinary team model, the program aligns with the individualised package approach of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS).AimThis paper reports on the use of a logic model to underpin the process, outcomes and impact evaluation of the Kids Together program.MethodsThe research team worked across 15 Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) centres and in home and community settings. A realist evaluation using mixed methods was undertaken to understand what works, for whom and in what contexts. The development of a logic model provided a structured way to explore how the program was implemented and achieved short, medium and long term outcomes within a complex community setting.Discussion and conclusionKids Together was shown to be a highly effective and innovative model for supporting the inclusion of children with disabilities/additional needs in a range of environments central for early childhood learning and development. The use of a logic model provided a visual representation of the Kids Together model and its component parts and enabled a theory of change to be inferred, showing how a coordinated and collaborative approached can work across multiple environments.