Service Learning in Baccalaureate Social Work Education: Results of a National Survey of Accredited Programs

Service learning is neither field education nor volunteerism. Rather, it is a pedagogical approach designed to reinforce classroom instruction with concurrent service activities occurring in the local community. This service is driven by community-identified needs. Service learning supports social work values, yet the profession has been slow to embrace it in social work education. This article reports results of a national survey examining the use of service learning among baccalaureate programs accredited by the Council on Social Work Education. The majority of respondents report service learning is a required component of at least one course (generally an introductory or practice-based course) and has been incorporated into their programs for more than a decade. Results also suggest some programs may not implement service learning appropriately as it remains undifferentiated from volunteerism or field education.     

Service learning, social justice, and campus health

Healthy campuses are critical so that students can learn and actively participate in shaping and maintaining a strong educational environment. This Viewpoint describes the commonalities between service learning, social justice, campus health, and the goals of Healthy Campus 2010, which was developed from the larger Healthy People 2010 objectives proposed by the US Department of Health and Human Services. The values, methods, and intended results of service learning are closely related to effective health promotion and disease prevention. Service learning focuses on personal and civic responsibility, thus providing students with opportunities for enhancing individual and community health. Service learning also espouses social justice and provides a vehicle for students to learn about, reflect on, and address health disparities. The author cites research concerning the effect of service learning on students in institutions of higher education and their social justice-related behaviors.     

Reconceptualising refugee education: exploring the diverse learning contexts of unaccompanied young refugees upon resettlement

Abstract

This article explores unaccompanied young refugees’ participation in various learning contexts beyond school. Drawing from a qualitative study based on interviews with unaccompanied young refugees, educators and social workers in Norway, the findings emphasise the need for a holistic approach to refugee education in and across contexts of learning. The refugees originate from countries where access to formal schooling was difficult or disrupted. Many of them have been exposed to traumatic events prior to arrival. As the educational and psychosocial needs of resettled refugees are diverse and complex, it is unlikely that schools are able to meet them all. Participation in diverse settings, activities and practices beyond school may expand young refugees’ opportunities for meaningful learning as well as promote their social inclusion. Facilitating access to adequate learning contexts, along with supporting their own commitment to succeed, is decisive for young refugees’ educational achievement, psychosocial adjustment and inclusion in society. The paper emphasises the need for reconceptualising refugee education as inclusive of diverse learning contexts in and outside of school. Enhanced collaboration between schools, local community organisations and wider society will facilitate and support resettling young refugees’ opportunities to achieve their fullest potential.     

Framing Service Learning in Social Work: An Interdisciplinary Elective Course Embedded within a University–Community Partnership

While academic service learning has grown in popularity across disciplines and universities, the pedagogical strategies for service learning courses vary greatly, especially for courses focused on development in underserved communities. Ideally, service learning pedagogy should place equal importance on student and community benefits, build reciprocal relationships with community partners, and engage students in deep reflection about social cultural and economic issues. In designing a new service learning elective course to engage students in a rural town revitalization project, we intentionally framed the course to meet the aforementioned goals. We used a three-component service learning pedagogy model that: (1) embedded the course in an existing university–community partnership; (2) mobilized interdisciplinary teams of students for community-identified projects; and (3) promoted reflection on complex economic and social justice issues by integrating students' processing through blog, faculty–student–community discussions, and community feedback. Benefits to students and community based on two qualitative studies are discussed, as are implications for social work education and research.     

Teaching Note—Infusing Social Justice Into Doctoral Programs of Social Welfare: An Incremental Approach

This article describes an effort to further infuse social justice education into doctoral programs in social welfare. It articulates the rationale and tactical approaches for aligning mission statements with the operational realities of university contexts. Within 1 school of social work, doctoral students with diverse orientations to social justice came together to articulate a vision for social justice education that expanded the educational contract between students and the institution by enhancing their respective opportunities and responsibilities in the areas of scholarship, teaching, and service. This article shares 30 learning objectives emergent from an incremental change process for enhancing social justice education at the doctoral level and reflects on the strengths and limitations of this approach to advancing social justice priorities.     

Introducing Asset-Based Models of Social Justice into Service Learning: A Social Work Approach

Increased attention is being given to university–community partnerships. Among such partnerships is service learning, a pedagogical model that integrates experiential community service activities and academic learning. Traditional service learning models often diverge from social work methods that embrace strengths, empowerment, antioppressive principles, and citizen-driven approaches. This article presents the integration of a progressive service learning model into a graduate-level social work macro practice course. The model gives explicit attention to respecting the dignity and worth of the individual by sharing power and developing collaborative relationships between students and community residents where both are serving and learning together.     

Service learning and the practice of social justice and care

The values of a social justice pedagogy in teacher education are assumed to be firmly established in South African higher education. This article discusses how serviced learning (SL) can provide practical experience of caring and serve the promotion of the ideals of social justice in two initial teacher education programmes. However, an analysis of data in this case study shows that, although SL practice has served as a platform for social justice and for care as two basic educational values, participants were not yet able to verbalize and theorize these values. They were also not able to embed these values in their reflection about service as an inherent component of education. With data from different role players in a number of SL projects, we show that the students’ discourse of what it means to be a caring teacher in a just society has not yet been developed despite the successful practical experience. It was found that, although the students had been building a practice ‘platform’ for service, they had not yet been able to articulate the conceptual intersect of care and social justice clearly. With this epistemological notion in mind, two main themes from the data analysis are discussed: 1) How SL shifted student learning from ideas ‘about’ service to implemented service, and 2) how the practical experience promoted reciprocity in inter-institutional and inter-generational communities of practice.     

Improving Social Work Students' Understanding of Health and Social Justice Knowledge through the Implementation of Service Learning at a Free Community Health Clinic

Service learning is a teaching strategy that involves engaging in a mutually beneficial partnership between a community and students in the classroom. Social work education and service learning share core values of service and social justice and, when unified, can offer students unique opportunities to engage in meaningful application of knowledge and skills in a real-world setting. This article provides an exemplar describing the unique student learning outcomes that resulted from a service learning partnership between graduate-level social work students in a diversity course and a community health clinic serving Latino immigrants and Burmese refugees.     

Unthinking the European Higher Education Area – differentiated integration and Bologna's different configurations

Differentiated integration was conceived of as a political methodology and as a technology to achieve a European “union” in the field of knowledge policies. However, the non-achievement with regard to the political goals of the European Higher Education Area has highlighted the limitations of this approach to promote furthering the EHEA. In this paper, unthinking is both a research strategy aiming to question those limits and a pedagogical tactic to question the assumptions about the futures. As a research strategy, articulations between unity and diversity are examined. Based on the analysis of the documents endorsed by the Education Ministers in keeping the pace of the Bologna process, the paper contributes to expand knowledge on the nature of Bologna’s differences and underlines the paradoxes in dealing with those differences. As a pedagogical tactic, unthinking questions the assumptions about the future scenarios sketched for higher education. Alternative ways to further integration are discussed on the basis of the idea of integration of the “differences”, bringing to the centre education as a political concern, as higher education institutions, professors, and students/graduates are those at the core of the political management of the “differences”.     

‘Health in all Placements’ as a Curriculum Strategy in Social Work Education

The convergence of health and social perspectives that aim to improve the quality of life of individuals, groups and communities through advancing the social determinants of health provides an important context for social work education. The adaptation of global initiatives such as Health in All Policies (HiAP) to a `health in all placements' approach in social work education is suggested as a curriculum initiative to support learning about health inequalities and enable students to locate their practice in the social, political, environmental and economic context of health and wellbeing. The integration of this approach with principles of social justice, social inclusion and the theoretical framework of transformative learning in field education is also discussed. It is argued that the approach supports the inclusion of global and local perspectives in social work curricula and pedagogical imperatives in higher education.     

A New Pedagogical Approach for Integrating Social Work Students and Service Users

This paper analyses recent experiences at the School of Social Work, Lund University, the first in Sweden to use an innovative pedagogical approach for integrating social service users with social work students in the classroom (an EU-funded project). The concept of gift exchange was used to make sense of the approach. Gift exchange is based on the norm of reciprocity and the principles of gift economy—to give, to receive and to return. As one of the most significant integrative relations, this exchange of gifts and courtesies serves the purpose of keeping balance in the system. The focus in this project was on the relationship between two groups of students: service user students—that is, social service users in the role of students on the course—and social work students. The experience of undertaking this project raised many questions, such as what promotes and what hinders mutual learning between two parties in the classroom. Findings show the relevance of such concepts as the gift economy and the importance of reciprocity in teaching contexts. They played an important role in the process of creating a positive learning climate and understanding the integration of social relations between the two groups.     

Interculturally trained Finnish teachers' conceptions of diversity and intercultural competence

As schools become increasingly multicultural, teachers need special sensitivity to recognize differences and intercultural competences to be able to support the personal and academic growth of diverse students. This paper introduces newly qualified teachers' conceptions of diversity and intercultural competence in a Finnish context. The teachers in the study graduated from a Masters of Education International Teacher Education Programme, which focuses on intercultural aspects of education and teachers' work. Data for this research were collected and analysed qualitatively by applying a phenomenographical research approach. On the basis of the data interpretation, three different diversity categories were formed: visible and invisible group level differences and individual differences. Conceptions of intercultural competence in educational contexts also formed three qualitatively different categories (1) an ethical orientation including values, interpersonal characteristics and basic orientation towards other people and the world; (2) efficiency orientation including organizational skills and ability to act in various roles and situations; and (3) pedagogical orientation including intercultural pedagogical competences.     

The Meta Co-production of Community Outcomes: Towards a Citizens’ Capabilities Approach

This article contributes to the growing amount of literature on co-production, focusing on co-production of public outcomes and taking the perspective of local government and public managers. A model for explaining the dynamics of outcomes’ creation at the community level is provided. The core argument of the article is that community outcomes result from a sum of peer production, co-production and inter-organizational collaboration processes promoted and activated at individual, organizational and network level across the public, third and private sectors. Institutional, managerial and organizational implications are discussed. The article argues that local government and public managers are asked to play new roles and to employ a new ethos grounded in a citizens capabilities’ approach.     

Beyond Cans and Capacity

Many essential public services are provided through networks of community‐based nonprofit organizations. Previous research has demonstrated that simply providing additional resources to these organizations is insufficient to better address demands for public services. We also know little about how and why these organizations adopt network‐level objectives related to service provision. In this analysis, we expand the focus of service provision beyond capacity to incorporate the unique roles that define the very existence of nonprofit organizations, and how these roles affect organizational behavior with respect to service network objectives. We use focus group, survey, and administrative data from one hundred community‐based nonprofit organizations in an emergency food service network to explore the relationships among capacity, roles, and specific program objectives.     

Encountering and dealing with difference: second life and intercultural competence

With increasing cultural diversity as a result of globalization, intercultural competence (IC) to interact and co-exist in multicultural environments is recognized as being very important. Research indicates that cultural knowledge alone, or even being immersed in a different cultural environment does not necessarily lead to the development of IC necessary to deal with differences in behaviour, communication styles, and values and beliefs. Rather, it requires intentional development particularly of critical awareness of an individual’s cultural identity, and the values and beliefs that underpin one’s attitude and behaviour. Providing effective learning and teaching approaches to facilitate development of these affective and behavioural dimensions, challenges traditional pedagogical practices. Second life (SL), a multi-user virtual environment, potentially provides effective intercultural experiential learning opportunities to develop the desired IC by challenging personal beliefs and assumptions underpinning cultural frameworks and identity. This paper evaluates SL as one of the approaches used to develop IC in a first year IC module in a New Zealand university. Based on data from two case studies, it presents and discusses significant findings in terms of using SL and the development of students’ IC.     

Inquiry-based learning: A socially just approach to higher education

Higher education’s potential to transform social and economic status and improve society, underlies increasing demands to improve access. But simply increasing access is not sufficient—it is important to ask whether our prevailing pedagogical approaches facilitate an effective and socially just higher education system. In other words, are traditional pedagogical approaches used in universities today truly accessible to the broader student population entering university? The current paper argues that the majority of pedagogies remain rooted in traditional approaches that favor those who benefit from continuous education from primary through to tertiary education. Such approaches rely heavily on incremental credentialism and are neither truly accessible nor socially just. Most introductory courses in universities require prior knowledge and “expect” students to be enculturated into a particular type of learning: as such, students with different levels of preparation, who come from different backgrounds, may be excluded from full participation. In addition, the rising costs of tuition fees and textbooks, and access to technology create inequities that reinforce socially-based discrimination higher education. The paper reports on the impact of implementing a specifically designed course, using closed-loop, reiterative problem-based learning, to create learning paradigms that focus on a more socially just approach for students entering university: these courses do not demand specific prior knowledge, foster difficult ways of thinking, and focus on developing research skills through access to library resources. Finally, the paper reports on students’ expectations about higher education and underscores the importance of re-thinking at least the first-year experience for students.     

推进养老服务体系建设的思路与对策——以广东为例

发展社会养老服务、完善养老服务体系是我国应对人口老龄化的一项长期战略任务。广东作为我国老年人口最多的省份之一,养老服务体系正面临着养老服务资源短缺失衡、居家养老支持系统缺乏、机构设施与专业人才不足等严峻挑战。为改变广东养老服务建设的滞后局面,必须明确广东养老服务体系的发展目标、理念和原则,大力推广居家养老模式,重力建设社区养老服务设施,调整机构养老服务结构,开放养老服务市场,深化养老服务领域的改革,完善养老服务的配套制度,构建广东新型养老服务的制度体系。     

Facilitating Online Learning Communities: A Comparison of Two Discussion Facilitation Techniques

ABSTRACT

The advent of the twenty-first century has brought a proliferation of web-based courses in higher education. While prior studies have examined the comparability of online and traditional courses, a better understanding of effective pedagogical strategies to enhance online learning is needed. This study compared two distinct approaches to facilitating discussions in relation to participation rates, interaction patterns, depth of cognitive processing, and learning outcomes in two sections of an online course. Significant differences were found between sections (N = 41) in the frequency and types of interaction among students as well as in learning outcomes.     

Linking the Academy to the Community Through Internships: A Model of Service Learning,Student Empowerment,and Transformative Education

This paper provides an overview of an internship program designed to empower students and to build collaborative relationships within the local community. The structure of the internship program is designed from a combined service learning, empowerment, and transformative learning perspective. It is set up with a series of empowering activities, including preplanning, initial exploration, siteselection, and contract design. The requirements for the internship course include a commitment to academic education and skill development that are couched within an emancipatory pedagogy. Through transformative learning, students can become empowered citizens. Through university-community partnerships, the potential for ameliorating social problems is strengthened. As we create a new community of learners in the twenty-first century, the role of the university in the community may be strengthened through internship programs.