Teaching Group Work in the BSW Generalist Social Work Curriculum: Core Content

In this article, nine considerations associated with social work practice with groups are identified and discussed. These range from the importance of mutual aid and the role of the group leader to multicultural competence and practice skills needed in the beginning, middle, and ending phases of group work. Group work is only one of four modalities that must be taught in the undergraduate practice sequence. Therefore, the nine considerations represent the essential content on group work for the generalist practice curriculum. The author assumes that this content can be presented in a 7-week time frame. In a companion article, the author presents teaching strategies and techniques that assist the instructor in conveying the principles for practice discussed in the present article.     

Group Work Education: A Call for Renewed Commitment

Studies demonstrate steady decline in group work courses and concentration in graduate social work programs. This is attributed to the Council on Social Work Education’s recommendation, in 1969, for a generalist practice model; the growing interest of professional social workers in developing casework skills, including psychiatric casework; and the influence of perspectives from nonsocial work disciplines. This article proposes renewed efforts to strengthen social group work education and concerted collaboration between classroom and field. It focuses on essential course content, emphasizes social group work perspectives, and identifies core social group work concepts and tools for inclusion in curriculum and field education.     

Social Work Students' Perceived Knowledge of and Preparation for Group-Work Practice

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to identify factors relevant to social work students' perceived knowledge of and preparation for group-work practice. In addition, the experiences of students in the classroom and in the field are discussed in relationship to these variables. Although classroom and field experiences were significant, exposure to group in the field placement was a much stronger predictor of group-work knowledge. Students reported feeling most knowledgeable about the concepts of mutual aid, diversity, group culture, and group phases. Reported gaps in learning were related to research and legal issues associated with group work.     

“任务驱动法”在团体工作教学中的应用

任务驱动法是以任务为线索的探究式教学方法,其实践性、综合性、系统性等特点与团体工作的课程特点、教学目标和教学内容相适应。教师可根据团体工作教学三阶段,布置相应的课堂任务、实验任务和课外实训任务,让学生在完成任务的过程中掌握团体工作的理论、方法和实务技巧,全面提升专业素质。     

Mindfulness,meditation, and breathing exercises: reduced anxiety for clients and self-care for social work interns

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this article is to identify and describe a teaching tool that supports social work student success in the classroom and in field placement. The project introduced mindfulness, meditation, and breathing techniques to 2nd-year master of social work (MSW) students in a group classroom setting and engaged students as they applied those techniques in their internship settings with clients. Students were introduced to mindfulness, meditation, and breathing techniques through lecture, experimental exercises, video clips, and case studies and used the group setting to learn to use those tools to add trauma-informed mindfulness interventions to the clinical techniques they concurrently practiced in field placement. Students learned methods to incorporate those interventions into their psychotherapy/counseling sessions with clients and discovered that mindfulness-specific interventions also helped regulate their own autonomic nervous systems, contributing to decreased anxiety. Thus, mindfulness skills taught in social work programs have significant multidimensional benefits; engaging a group classroom setting to learn to utilize mindfulness, meditation and breathing techniques can reduce stress and anxiety for clients and promote adaptive self-care skills for MSW students.     

Crossing Boundaries: Comparing Group Work in the United States and Australia

ABSTRACT

This article compares the teaching and practice of group work in Australia and the U.S., including data on both students and practitioners, group work content in selected schools of social work, the types of groups offered and client populations served. Implications for cross-cultural social work are discussed as are areas of future international collaboration and research.     

Flipping the Equation: The Need for Context-Focused Group Work Education

For many students of social work, traditional group work curriculum promotes the development of mutual aid as the criterion for success in a group. However, a dichotomy exists between a reduction in agency-sanctioned mutual aid–focused groups and the expanded use of groups to deliver services. The contrast between MSW students' expectations and the practice realities they face is particularly challenging for classroom instruction. This article proposes a context-focused approach to teaching an elective in social group work, which links theories and skills to organizationally specific practice contexts. This approach encourages students to engage in critical reflection of practice through consistent interaction between foundational concepts and practice realities.     

Safety and Comfort,Content and Process: Facilitating Open Group Work with Men Who Batter

Based on the open group format of the McGill Domestic Violence Clinic this paper discusses four important concepts in treatment group work with men who batter: safety, comfort, content and process. This paper explores why men who batter might wish to avoid treatment groups as well as what might encourage them to attend these groups regularly. Interventive techniques such as "the comfort/discomfort level." "empathic projection," use of humor and the "process statement" are defined and highlighted by case examples. The paper concludes by suggesting what benefits the treatment group client takes with him when he moves on from the group.     

Coming Together: Factors that Connect Social Workers to Group Work Practice

Group work is an effective method to intervene with various populations in multiple settings. However, research has demonstrated that social workers are often not prepared for the realities of group work practice. In this study, the lens is turned on professional social workers that identify as group workers about the motivations and factors that contributed to their practice of group work. The goal of this research is to provide data and related insights that will enhance the preparation of social workers for the realities of contemporary group work practice. The study also identified factors that would enhance group work education in both the classroom and field education settings.     

The Faculty Field Liaison: An Essential Role for Advancing Graduate and Undergraduate Group Work Education

The faculty field liaison is responsible for representing a school’s social work program in monitoring agency internship sites and agency field instructors for an assigned cohort of the program’s BSW or MSW internship students. This article focuses on the faculty field liaison’s role in effectively monitoring the internship site and field instruction to ensure the internship experience is successfully providing the group work skills and knowledge the BSW or MSW student intern needs to be an effective group work practitioner. The field instructor role has been given a lot of attention in the social work literature, but the role of the faculty field liaison has been given little to no attention. This is despite the faculty field liaison’s significant responsibility of representing the BSW and MSW program by bridging the relationships between the program, the field instructor, and the internship student. This article identifies the importance of the faculty field liaison responding to concerns in group work education in the classroom and field setting. Practice vignettes illustrating the work of the faculty field liaison in monitoring group work assignments and field instruction supervision for graduate and undergraduate social work interns are provided.     

Group Work Education Today: A Content Analysis of MSW Group Work Course Syllabi

This article presents the results of a content analysis of MSW group work course syllabi in an effort to better understand the extent to which social group work education shows consistency with guidelines articulated in the Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups. This study aims to provide a current depiction and in-depth account of the state of group work education today through the lens of course syllabi.     

Teaching Social Work with Groups: Integrating Didactic,Experiential and Reflective Learning

Social work with groups can be taught in many ways, with literature identifying the use of didactic and experiential methods to encourage knowledge and skill development, and reflective learning that identifies group concepts as they emerge within the classroom dynamic. This teaching model rather than focusing on one of these methods integrates all three, ensuring that the course is structured and learning is layered in a way that allows the development of the class as a group to create a space of safety from which students can risk new behaviors, integrate knowledge, develop skills, and grow in confidence.     

Social Policy for Social Work: A Teaching Agenda

Though social justice is a central goal of the social work profession,the actual involvement of social workers in social change isvery limited. Moreover, training in social policy and policypractice in schools of social work is minimal. As such, practitionerslack the tools needed to analyse existing social problems andpolicies and to enable them to intervene in the policy processin order to better serve the needs of service users. This articleseeks to further social policy teaching within social work educationby engaging in a survey of the existing literature on the subjectand by offering a detailed programme for integrating this subjectinto the social work training system. The literature surveythat serves as a basis for this programme includes a reviewof studies on the dilemmas linked to social policy teaching,on the goals and content of social policy courses in socialwork and on preferred teaching methods in this field.     

Education for the Group Worker's Reality: The Special Qualities and World View of Those Drawn to Work with Groups

SUMMARY

Within the social work profession, one's world view, one's beliefs and values based on one's experiences, strongly influences one's practice and comfort with groups. This paper will examine some of the different ways of viewing the world held by practitioners and students in relation to the likelihood that they will be able to work effectively with groups. Such examination, and the identification of the differences among social workers that results from it has implications for both teaching and supervision in social work. These implications will be discussed and specific principles and techniques for teaching social workers, in education and in supervision, based on their world views will be described. This paper aims to enrich education for group work so that the community of social group work practitioners can grow and continue to thrive.     

Professional Social Work Education in End-of-Life Care

Abstract

Social work education in both BSW and MSW level courses is missing vital content about end-of-life care, palliative care, and bereavement. End-of-life care training opportunities through continuing education programs have also been limited. This deficit is significant because a vast number of social workers are already confronted with end-of-life issues on a daily basis in a variety of practice settings. Through the Project on Death in America, Social Work Leadership Development Awards initiative, many programs and models for professional social work education and training in end-of-life care have been developed and are presented in this article. These include: end-of-life care courses, symposia, training manuals, certificate programs and fellowships. Although the curricula continue to be refined, many of these programs are available to practitioners to advance their knowledge and skills and their curricular models are available to social work educators for possible replication.     

Group Work in Foundation Generalist Classes: Perceptions of Students about the Nature and Quality of Their Experience

Social group work education appears to be in trouble. The literature details a progressive disintegration of group work educational opportunities while highlighting an incremental increase in the use of groups in agencies. This makes for a concerning scenario. This article presents data from a national study of 1,360 first-year MSW students. The current study explored the extent to which students are exposed to group work content and knowledge in foundation classes. A discussion of implications and recommendations, using case vignettes, are provided to illustrate and amplify findings, as well as to highlight challenges that lie ahead for group work education and practice.     

Transforming Social Group Work Learning into Competencies for Interprofessional Teams

This article describes how social work and social group work strategies are used to enhance social work student participation in an interprofessional education program (IPE) that includes social work and five health care disciplines. Concurrently, social work students take part in a small group to assist them in the application of their social group knowledge to their IPE experience. Interprofessional collaborations between social work and health care can work toward alleviating health inequalities and poor access to health services. Social work has a crucial and significant role within these teams because of the profession’s focus on individual well-being, within the context of their social environment and support systems.     

Instilling the Soul of Group Work in Social Work Education

This article addresses the process of developing an educational model for teaching social work with groups in an undergraduate social work degree program in Israel. The model was developed against a backdrop of decreasing status of social group work within the profession and the consequent loss of its unique identity and power in the social work field. The model's aims are to provide the students with the basic principles of social group work, to ensure its place in their professional identity, and to awaken curiosity regarding its use in their future practice as social workers.     

Going to Camp Together: Lighting the Group Work Fire in a New Generation

This article describes the structure and process of Group Work Camp, an experiential training program sponsored by the International Association for Social Work with Groups (IASWG). The purpose of this 3-day event, which offers workshops and activities in a camp environment, is to transmit the skills, culture, and philosophy of social work with groups to students and new professionals. Camp also aims to connect participants to the group work community through interaction with skilled and enthusiastic professionals and educators. Participants live together as a large group and engage in ever-changing small groups. They learn primarily by experiencing group membership in the present moment, reflecting on this experience, and then discussing its implications. As the Chinese proverb says, “Tell me and I will forget. Show me and I will remember. Involve me and I will understand.” In the course of this experiential learning process participants develop strong connections with peers and mentors and become familiar with IASWG, a resource for support and stimulation that will be invaluable as they pursue group work practice in an environment likely to isolate them from group work peers. The article ends with a discussion of the implications of this model for group work education, supervision, and practice.