The Benefits of Diversity in Education for Democratic Citizenship

The social science statement in Brown v. Board of Education (1954) stressed that desegregation would benefit both African American and White children. Eventually, it was recognized that integration, rather than mere desegregation, was important for benefits to be realized. A parallel argument is made in the legal cases concerning affirmative action in higher education: educational benefits of diversity depend on curricular and co-curricular experience with diverse peers, not merely on their co-existence in the same institution ( Gurin, P., 1999 , Gurin, Dey, Hurtado, & Gurin, 2002 ). Positive benefits of diversity were demonstrated in a study comparing students in a curricular diversity program with students in a matched control group ( n = 174 ), and in a longitudinal survey of University of Michigan students ( n = 1670 ) .     

Auspicious Experience in Social Work

Abstract

This personal narrative recounts the experiences of one psychodynamic practitioner as she grew over the course of her social work career. It follows the development of her therapeutic awareness as she first worked with adolescents in a wilderness therapy program, and later with low-income clients in several large urban areas. While discussing the role of her Masters and Doctoral education, it explores particularly the role supervision played in developing her therapeutic awareness and skills. Overall, it is directed toward explaining her professional growth as a psychodynamic practitioner and the components involved in that growth.     

Social Worker as Client: My Education as a Family Member in a Nursing Home

A social worker's professional experience in providing a service does not necessarily ease her own personal stress when she is the recipient of that same service. The author is a nursing home social worker whose own mother was a resident in the facility where she works. Her first-hand experience with the "system" and with her emotions brought new enlightenment to the practice of her profession.     

Spirituality and social work in long-term care

The spiritual aspect of care of elders in long term care has only recently been re-affirmed. A social worker who has volunteered, worked, and consulted in nursing homes shares her perspective on the importance of the "spiritual" to nursing home social work. From the perspective of 40 years of involvement in long term care, she offers suggestions for assessment, education of staff, affirming rights in the religious arena. Workers are encouraged to keep hope alive for themselves as well as for those with whom they work.     

How I am Constructing Culture‐inclusive Theories of Social‐psychological Process in our Age of Globalization

Accepting Cole's the premise that, “cultural‐inclusive psychology has been … an elusive goal” (1996, pp. 7–8) but one worth striving to attain, I first set out to identify my domain of interest and competence as an intellectual. Deciding it to be social interaction between individuals, I then searched out theoretical approaches to this domain that encompassed as many approaches to this trans‐historical concern that have emerged from cultural traditions bequeathing us their legacies. Doing this search comprehensively required me to move outside my Judeo‐Christian, Greco‐Roman, Renaissance heritage and its international diffusion via the European Empires since the 1500's, embodied most recently the American dominance of intellectual discourse since the Second World War. In my case, this journey has taken me in to Chinese culture and psychology where I have worked towards integrating the Chinese worldview and its psychological measures into the discipline of social psychology. Striving for a more inclusive culture‐view, I am now using multi‐cultural data bases to transcend this two‐cultural focus and incorporate wider measures of cultural variation into our theorizing and empirical validation of universal models for social interaction. This paper describes my current procedures for such culture‐mapping.     

Looking Back as We Look Ahead: Integrating Research, Theory, and Practice on Intergroup Relations

This article looks back at the origins of intergroup relations in social psychology just over 50 years ago. Pioneers in the field—Robin Williams, Gordon Allport, and Kurt Lewin—were all deeply concerned with integrating social science and social action. We seek to re-center this mutuality of research and practice, and to expand the focus of intergroup relations from prejudice reduction to social inclusion. The articles in this issue document cutting-edge research, theory, and practice, and make substantive contributions to the future of intergroup relations. A unique feature of this issue is a set of commentaries by prominent scholars and practitioners in the fields of intergroup relations and education. Walter Stephan, James Banks, Thomas Pettigrew, and Patricia Gurin each reflect on the collection of articles through the lens of their own personal and professional biographies to help define the intersections of research, theory, and practice on intergroup relations.     

Self-Consciousness in Shame: The Role of the 'Other'

Although several philosophical approaches to shame emphasize the role of the 'other' this has attracted less attention from psychologists. The psychological construct of self-awareness does not adequately account for the shift in perspective that is involved in shame or embarrassment. This paper outlines a framework for the analysis of shame which emphasises the adoption of another perspective on the self. It proposes that shame is experienced when an individual recognises that an action can give rise to a negative interpretation by others of core aspects of the self, even if he or she does not share that interpretation and there is no self-attribution of responsibility for any wrongdoing. The framework is applied to the analysis of two episodes from Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, North and South . The character is described as experiencing intense shame, despite her belief that she has behaved properly, and this is accompanied by her preoccupation with how her behaviour can be interpreted by others.     

“Feeling for Beauty”

ABSTRACT

May Morris (1862–1938), renowned craftswoman and daughter of William Morris, had an unconventional Victorian childhood in a home where all the members of the family were engaged in various forms of aesthetic labor, either as amateurs or professionals, and shared an aesthetic philosophy that blended the artisanal and the experimental from which would develop the Arts and Crafts movement. This article will examine the fragmentary recollections of her childhood recorded by May Morris in the introductions she wrote for the twenty-four-volume edition of The Collected Works of William Morris as a rich resource for Victorian sensory history because of the emphasis she places on the development of the child's sensorium, especially in relation to touch as the vital sense that linked family intimacy with creative activity. Employing the term “tactile aesthetics,” I show how, in the Morris household, the pleasurable sensual apprehension of the objects or materials worked by the hands of the craftsperson was inseparable from the complex feelings of connection with others. In such an environment, a feeling for beauty comprised a vital component of habitus, the embodied knowledges and aptitudes that, according to Pierre Bourdieu, are acquired from earliest childhood through the practices of everyday life within a specific social setting.     

An early example of brief strengths‐based practice: Bertha Reynolds at the National Maritime Union, 1943–1947

Bertha Reynolds, one of the foremothers of social casework, is known for her commitment to social justice and the struggles of poor and working people. Her ideas about brief strengths‐based practice, which she taught when she supervised social workers at the National Maritime Union between 1943 and 1947, are less well known. She presented these ideas with case examples in her book Social Work and Social Living, a work that includes a critique of society, social policies, and the social work profession. The author contends that Reynolds was ahead of her time in her conceptualization of brief treatment.     

The Recognition of Wifely Labour by Welfare States

This article is concerned with questions about the amount of support given by welfare states towards the maintenance of a wife engaged in housework and child care. It compares the value of the support supplied by the tax/benefit packages of 15 countries. The article defines support for wifely labour as the difference between the net disposable income of a single person and a couple with the same earnings. In analysing the data, three models are used: the “traditional” model where the wife is economically dependent on her husband; the “modern” model where the wife remains outside the labour market while she has young children; and the “dual breadwinner” model where the mother of young children is in full- or part-time employment. Much of the analysis is concerned with patterns of social policy in which support for wives is associated with support for children. While the evidence shows that welfare states do provide support to wives, both with and without young children and engaged in paid as well as unpaid work, the levels of support vary greatly between welfare states. The variations are not associated with the generally discussed categorizations of welfare state types.     

Service users' knowledges and social work theory: conflict or collaboration?

Summary So far, service users have not been systematically involvedin social work theorizing. However, disabled peoples's movements,mental health service users/survivors and other service usershave developed their own knowledges based on direct experienceand they have generated their own conceptual frameworks andbodies of theory. There are fundamental problems in social workseeking to interpret service user knowledges. Their developmentsand interpretation require the direct involvement of serviceusers and their organization in social work theorizing. Thereare strong practical, philosophical and political argumentsfor involving the knowledges and theories of service users andtheir organizations in the process of social work theory-building.This paper considers an inclusive approach to social work theorizing.While highlighting the importance of service users and theirorganizations being effectively included in social work theorizing,it also argues the need for them to have support and opportunitiesto develop their own prior and separate discussions about theory,including social work theory.     

Collective Action—and Then What?

Two aspects of the social psychology of collective action are of particular interest to social movement organizers and activists: how to motivate people to engage in collective action, and how to use collective action to create social change. The second question remains almost untouched within social psychology. The present article delineates research from political science and sociology concerning variables that moderate the effectiveness of collective action and maps these variables against intergroup research. Within intergroup social psychology, there is a theoretical literature on what needs to be done to achieve change (e.g., changing identification, social norms, or perceptions of legitimacy, stability, permeability). The article considers possible testable hypotheses concerning the outcomes of collective action which can be derived from intergroup research and from the synthesis of the three disciplines. For theoreticians and practitioners alike, a program of research which addresses the social-psychological outcomes of collective action and links these to identities, norms, intentions, and support for social change in bystanders, protagonists, and opponents has a great deal of interest.     

Bridging the Researcher-Practitioner Divide in Intergroup Relations

Editors' introduction: Walter Stephan's interest in intergroup relations grew from his early involvement in intercultural relations. He spent substantial time in Latin America as well as Vietnam during his college years. These experiences influenced his choice to study social psychology at the University of Minnesota. His first foray into intergroup relations came with his move to Austin, Texas, in 1971. A Court mandate ordered schools to be desegregated, and Stephan examined the effects of school desegregation there on students' self-esteem and intergroup attitudes. His field research on the effects of desegregation as well as classroom interventions to improve intergroup relations was complemented by his laboratory research on intergroup biases, intergroup threat, intergroup anxiety, and empathy. Stephan brings this lifetime of involvement in both basic and applied research, and deep concern for effective practice and humanistic philosophy, to his commentary. He opens the commentaries with an elucidation of the difficulties in, and benefits of, the central thrust of this volume: the researcher-practitioner collaboration. He paints portraits of practitioners, researchers, and practitioner-researchers, and classifies articles in this issue accordingly. He notes the difficulties among the various parties interested in improving intergroup relations, spanning from simple lack of knowledge to lack of contact to lack of meaningful ways to interact. However, potential benefits of collaboration are abundant for all parties, and Stephan proposes a number of ways in which such partnerships could be actualized.     

For Emergence: Refining Archer's Account of Social Structure

The question of social structure and its relationship to human agency remains one of the central problems of social theory. One of the most promising attempts to provide a solution has been Margaret Archer's morphogenetic approach, which invokes emergence to justify treating social structure as causally effective. Archer's argument, however, has been criticised by a number of authors who suggest that the examples she cites can be explained in reductionist terms and thus that they fail to sustain her claim for the independent causal effectiveness of social structure. This paper offers an alternative argument to support the emergentist claim for the causal effectiveness of social structure, and shows how this argument refutes a representative critique of social emergence.     

基于生态系统理论的儿童个案实践及反思

本个案是基于生态系统理论视角,运用儿童社会工作专业方法和技巧从案主生活的环境入手,为案主提供支持性和补充性服务,以帮助案主适应环境,改善亲子关系,解决学习障碍,改善偏差行为以及消除心理障碍等,并达到了预期的效果。通过此案例反思生态系统理论对儿童社会工作实践的意义,兹此推动儿童社会工作的发展。     

Using critical social theory to develop a conceptual framework for comparative social work

This paper sets out a conceptual framework for comparing and contrasting social work within nation-states and across international boundaries. The framework is "situated" theoretically within a (late)modernist understanding of events within advanced capitalism and draws primarily on Habermas' critical social theory. The authors apply this framework to explicate the development of social work in Northern Ireland, a region in which high levels of political conflict mark it out as a site of local, national and international interest. It is suggested that the ideas developed from the case study have relevance for the social professions in other countries, particularly where social conflict is in evidence.     

Social work involvement in end of life planning

This cross sectional study examined the factors associated with social workers' involvement in end-of-life (EOL) planning using a random sample of NASW members in health and aging. Of the 390 social workers who worked in EOL planning, the majority were involved in health care proxy discussions and counseling with patients. Respondents tended to see barriers to proxy completion as client-related. However, some system barriers were correlated with overall involvement. Factors that predicted social workers' involvement with the health care proxy included age, attitudes, perceptions of barriers, and perceived physician support. Social workers need to attend to the systems in which they operate as well as to client concerns.     

Disney’s modern heroine Pocahontas: revealing age-old gender stereotypes and role discontinuity under a façade of liberation

Disney’s animated heroine Pocahontas has been touted as a new type of protagonist differing from her predecessors whose lives revolve around men. Pocahontas’ romance eventually does become subordinate to her role in protecting the social fabric of her village. Yet in placing the needs of her community before her own personal desires, she fulfills societal expectations of today wherein young women are supposed to progress from selfish absorption in relationships to selfless dedication nurturing others. Pocahontas, then, models the submersion of a young woman’s desires to allow a commitment to selfless altruism.     

Affirmative Reaction: The Influence of Type of Justification on Nonbeneficiary Attitudes Toward Affirmative Action Plans in Higher Education

It is popularly believed that justifying an affirmative action plan (AAP) through emphasizing the advantages that diverse students can bring to a college campus will increase nonbeneficiary support for the program. However, there has been little empirical support for this proposition, perhaps because previous research has not directly articulated to participants the value of a diverse student body. As such, the current study sought to determine how the explicit framing of an AAP influences subsequent reactions. Both quantitative and qualitative data from 216 White undergraduate participants revealed that the utilitarianism justification that highlighted the benefits of the AAP to both minority and majority students, was the most effective means of increasing support for the plan.     

In Their Own Words: Elders' Reactions to Vision Loss

Understanding how persons over 70 years of age cope with the stresses of living is of central interest to gerontologists, service providers and policy makers. Their family life has been studied as an indicator of quality of life. Frequently there has been an implicit assumption that the family is, or should be, a sufficient informal resource system. In 1987-88, 520 elderly persons living in Vancouver were interviewed in their homes regarding their general and dental health and support systems. Information was obtained on interaction with family, friends, neighbors and formal caregivers. To determine respondents' appraisal of her/his social resources, they were asked to whom respondents' would turn if she had problems. To establish reciprocity, they were asked who would turn to them for help with the same problems. Significant differences by gender and marital status are found as to whom one perceives to be available to meet personal care, instrumental and emotional needs. Expected reciprocity is low except for instrumental needs with neighbors and emotional needs with friends.