Is Social Work Research Distinctive?

What makes social work research distinctive? And how is our answer linked to how we do social work research? Drawing on UK research council statements about social work research as a starting point, I argue that it makes some degree of sense to ask what is distinctive about social work research. But the more significant question is what might make social work research distinctively good? I suggest six benchmarks. These address the case for methodological excellence; inquiry marked by rigour, range, variety, depth and progression; active conversation with the social science community; consistency with broader social work purposes; attention to aspects of the research enterprise that are close to social work; and taking seriously aspects of the research mission that seem on the face of it far from social work. However, social work and social work research will be the poorer if we over‐emphasize the distinctives at the expense of commonalities in fostering and assessing best practice and best purpose.     

Litigating Change? Social Movements and the Court System

Social movement actors increasingly turn to the law and pursue litigation in their efforts to bring about social change. Our article provides an overview of scholarship on collective and politicized litigation, drawing from sociolegal studies, political science, and sociology. We consider scholarship that illuminates why activists turn to litigation tactics in the first place and circumstances in which a social movement litigation strategy can be successful. We also consider additional impacts of movement litigation. Given that social movement researchers in sociology have, to date, paid only limited attention to activist litigation, we encourage scholars in the discipline to investigate further this important form of social movement mobilization.     

Approved Social Work Training in Northern Ireland: Using Research to Examine Competence‐based Learning and Influence Policy Change

This article reports on how research activity helped describe and analyse ASW (Approved Social Worker) learning experience as well as acting as a catalyst for change and development in policy and practice in Northern Ireland. The paper contextualizes the study by outlining the legislation, the main features of the ASW role and the approach to ASW training in Northern Ireland, and by reviewing the literature on the efficacy and value of competence‐based learning. While the findings do not provide conclusive evidence that a competence‐based approach is inherently more effective than previous courses, they do indicate that candidates who were trained in this way were moderately more satisfied than those who had participated in non‐competence based programmes. The research also highlights the importance of the interrelationship between training, practice experience and support in developing and sustaining competence. The paper concludes with a review of the recommendations arising from the study and an analysis of the developments in training and regulations relating to practice experience and re‐approval of ASWs since publication of the research. The study is of contemporary interest given the proposed changes to the role of ASWs/Mental Health Officers in the context of the reviews of UK mental health law.     

New Approaches to Agricultural Research?

Book reviewed in this article: Agricultural Research and Technology Transfer. By I. Arnon Farmer First: Farmer Innovation and Agricultural Research. Edited by Robert Chambers, Arnold Pacey and Lori-Ann Thrupp Gender Issues in Farming Systems Research and Extension. Edited by Susan V. Poats, Marianne Schmink and Anita Spring Extension Science: Information Systems in Agricultural Development. By Niels Röling     

Research Note—Is Social Work Education a Form of Social Work Practice?

ABSTRACT

The inclusion of social work education as a form of practice has been missing from the debates on the need for a unified definition of social work practice. This Research Note reports the findings from interviews with 20 social work educators who were asked whether social work education is a form of social work practice and were encouraged to elaborate on their response. The qualitative data were analyzed using thematic analysis and revealed five themes. The findings contribute to the debate on the need for clarification among social work authorities in shaping the definition of social work practice and the need to provide a clear stance on the extent to which social work education is a form of social work practice.     

Can Lessons Be Drawn From Trade Policy Research?

Book reviewed in this article: Liberalizing Foreign Trade. Edited by Michael Michaely, Demetris Papageorgiou and Armeane M. Choksi     

How Can Curriculum Action Research be Used to Promote Post Qualifying Practice Teaching Award Candidates' Interest in Research Articles?

The General Social Care Council (GSCC) Post Qualifying Practice Teaching Award requires candidates to access and evaluate research as well as local and national polices. However there can be resistance from social workers to accessing and using research despite the recent emphasis on evidence based practice. The author used Curriculum Action Research, whilst undertaking the Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education, as a tool to make manageable changes to her teaching practice, by routinely introducing secondary research articles in every teaching session. This approach encouraged the candidates' learning and enabled their completion of their research assignment on their chosen topic, whilst also supporting or challenging their existing attitudes to the role of research in social work practice.     

Do High School Gifted Programs Lead to Later-in-Life Success?

This paper investigates the effects of participation in gifted education programs, and offers several contributions to existing research. First, this paper studies the effects of high school programs, as opposed to the more commonly-studied elementary and middle school versions. Second, this paper considers impacts of gifted programs on later-in-life socioeconomic success, including college graduation and eventual employment, as opposed to short-run standardized test outcomes. Third, this paper uses sibling fixed effects, coupled with a recently-proposed decomposition method, as an identification approach. The main conclusion is that gifted programs tend to include students who possess traits that already correlate with later-in-life success. After controlling for those traits, gifted programs, per se, show little statistical relationship to later-in-life outcomes.     

50?Years and the Future of Agency-Based Clinical Social Work Practice: Introduction to the Special Issue

This special issue is a celebration of the Silver School of Social Work??s 50th Anniversary in 2010?C2011. The articles in this issue celebrate the School??s distinct reputation for excellence in clinical social work. They also celebrate the school??s current mission, which includes knowledge development for social work practice, with an emphasis on urban problems, poverty and social justice, and agency-based practice. The majority of the submissions focus on contemporary and future social work practice. This paper concludes with a discussion of several issues that confront the future of clinical social work practice including workforce trends, technology, and the scientific basis for practice, wealth disparity and race as contemporary American issues that affect clinical social work, the globalization of social work and mental health services, and education for tomorrow??s clinical practice.     

Can advising lead to meaningful relationships?

Schools have increasingly implemented advising programs as a means of linking students with caring adults. Although this approach is promising, its success depends on adequate funding; the full commitment of administration, staff, and parents; and a thoughtful definition of the procedures for achieving the goals.     

Social Work Training or Social Work Education? An Approach to Curriculum Design

Population ageing, economic circumstances and human behaviour are placing social welfare systems under great strain. In England, extensive reform of the social work profession is taking place. Training curricula are being redesigned in the context of new standards of competence for social workers—the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF). Students must be equipped on qualifying to address an extensive range of human problems, presenting major challenges to educators. Critical theory suggests an approach to tackle one such challenge—selecting the essential content required for areas of particular practice. Teaching on social work with older people is used to illustrate this. Habermas' theory of cognitive interests highlights the different professional roles served by the social work knowledge base—instrumental, interpretive and emancipatory. Howe's application of sociological theory distinguished four social work roles corresponding to these. It is suggested that curriculum design decisions must enable practitioners to operate in each. When preparing students to work with older people, educators therefore need to include interpretive and emancipatory perspectives, and not construct social work purely as an instrumental response to problems older people present. This approach provides one useful rationale for curriculum design decisions, which is applicable to other areas of practice, and to contexts outside England.     

CSWJ Forum: Is Clinical Social Work a Profession? Preliminary Considerations

Clinical social work, as it currently exists, is rooted in the formation of a professional association which represents the interests of professionals primarily concerned with direct practice. A diverse group of practitioners now describe themselves as clinical social workers, and clinical social work is increasingly being described as a profession. This article reviews the history of professions, and employs commonly accepted sociological criteria to begin to evaluate clinical social work's current standing as a profession.     

Can Social Media Use Produce Enduring Social Ties? Affordances and the Case of Katrina Bloggers

Can previously unacquainted, grieving individuals who use social media to organize and participate in decentralized mobilizations build strong, lasting social ties? If so, how? What is it about particular social media technologies and platforms that might explain the strength and longevity of their social ties? Drawing on a case study of New Orleans bloggers who took part in a variety of contentious and non-contentious mobilizations after hurricane Katrina, we find that people who mobilize through social media like blogs can form strong and lasting social ties. We argue that this is partly because of the types of communication and interaction that blogs afford. We identify two types of affordances, mechanical and cultural, as distinct qualities of social media like blogs, and illustrate how they enable the building of strong, digitally mediated social ties among grieving people.     

Does Intercultural Education Lead to More Cultural Homogeneity and Tolerance?

Intercultural education is often assumed to lead to more tolerance towards other cultures. It may also entail an acculturation process that will lead to more cultural homogeneity. The European School system provides an interesting experiment in intercultural and multilingual education, which can help us answer these questions. A value survey among European Schools alumni showed that a "European School effect" does indeed seem to exist. Students staying longer at a European School and entering the European Schools system at a younger age form a somewhat more culturally homogenous group. There are also strong indications that European Schools' alumni are much more tolerant towards people from other nations and cultures than their average compatriots. However, it is not completely possible to rule out the possibility that this is caused by a sampling effect.     

Utilizing Web‐based Databases to Introduce Social Work Content in Research Statistics Courses

Masters level statistics is often not a course of choice for social work students. Teaching it in such a way that students' anxiety is reduced while facilitating their recognition of the importance of empirical knowledge in their social work practice and their need to have fundamental research skills, can be quite challenging. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a pedagogical tool used in a course on bivariate statistics that involves students throughout the semester in the process of developing and testing their own hypotheses regarding fluctuations in reported hate crimes/capita by states (as reported by the Federal Bureau of Investigation). This technique provides continuity throughout the semester and is easily adapted to other issues equally important to social work. The data's unintuitive findings that disagree with most students' hypotheses also challenges students to consider methodological issues and the validity of the data. Because most students do not have a strong knowledge base of hate crimes, students often have to grapple with how their own preconceptions might bias their understanding of an issue and potentially their work with a client or client system. From an instructional standpoint, the method is contained and manageable, and the data are easily accessible.     

Can Changes to Gender Equality Be Sustained?

The aim of this paper is to discuss how changes to gender equality in organizing can be made sustainable. Numerous studies have reported on projects which have not succeeded in their efforts to implement gender equality. In this paper, we analyse the results from two programmes which aimed to increase equal opportunities among private and public sector organizations. Theoretically, the study is based on the framework of doing gender, which is combined with insights from studies using the translation model of organizational change. The translation model of organizational change enables investigation of formal and informal processes within an institutionalized setting. By studying those aspects that were stabilized into an institution within these two programmes, as well as those which were not, the approaches that had become sustainable for the programmes in the long term could be discerned. When comparing the two programmes, it became apparent that complications arose at the point at which the theoretical aims of gender equality were translated into actions. The analysis of the outcomes of these programmes indicates, however, that, even though the formal goals were not reached, equal opportunities within the participating organizations did benefit from these programmes.