Integrating Group Dynamics Training and the Education and Development of Social Work Students

Summary This paper explores experience of the development of a groupdynamics workshop in a post-graduate course for student socialworkers. The background to the workshops is outlined with referenceto students, course staff and consultant staff. A brief summaryof different conceptual approaches to group dynamics trainingis offered in order to clarify terminology and methods. Importantconclusions concerning the design and operation of the workshopsare drawn and emphasis is placed on an analysis of the multiplerole situation of student social workers, choosing appropriatelearning designs, and making these explicit     

Pathway to Financial Success: Autonomy Through Financial Education in India

ABSTRACT

This study evaluates attitudinal outcome of financial education workshops on the financial autonomy of the participants (homemakers) in the state of Gujarat, India. A series of financial education workshops were conducted with 300 female homemakers. A pretest and follow-up (after 3 months) survey design was used to assess changes. The survey identified 3 types of autonomy outcomes (reflexive, emotional, and functional) using 15 variables. Data were analyzed using a paired t test, and significant results were obtained between the pretest and follow-up surveys. Specific findings may help financial education providers to design and implement such programs more effectively and may provide guidelines to assess their effect. Directions for future research are suggested.     

Differences in Problems Faced by Families with a Child Coping with a Serious Emotional Disorder or an Adult Member Coping with Mental Illness

Abstract

Examination of similarities and differences in the issues families face can help determine whether models for families with a child coping with serious emotional disorder (SED/behavioral disorder (BD)) warrant inclusion in, or adaptation of, interventions for families with an adult member coping with a mental disorder. Families attending psycho-education workshops identified problems faced in managing their family member's illness. Composite lists of problems generated by 175 participants were categorized and sorted, using previously established methods for determining reliability and validity. Fourteen categories were identified for children and fifteen for adults, with ten overlapping. Family members attending the child-focused workshops more often listed mood symptoms and problem behaviors. Family members attending the adult-focused workshops more often listed family issues, denial and noncompliance, and positive symptoms of psychosis. Problems identified by families with a child coping with SED/BD may be sufficiently distinct from those of families with an adult coping with mental illness to warrant separate and distinct interventions.     

Utilizing a Continuing Education Workshop to Increase Knowledge of Documentation Among Hospital Psychosocial Staff

ABSTRACT

Hospital-based psychosocial staff including social workers, mental health counselors, and marriage and family therapists utilize documentation skills to assess, treat, and manage patients admitted to inpatient settings. Little research exists that examines the impact of continuing education on documentation skills. This study examined changes in hospital-based psychosocial staff perceptions of their documentation skills after attending a two-part continuing education documentation workshop. The quantitative, pretest–posttest design utilized a convenience sample that included 32 staff members at pretest and 30 staff members completing the posttest. Results from the 51-item pretest and posttest survey indicate that the continuing education workshop statistically increased participants’ knowledge of progress notes and termination summaries. Findings did not indicate any differences when comparing knowledge, at the start of the workshop, for employees with prior documentation training, longer work experience, or different license groups. The authors discuss implications for practice, continuing education, and future research.     

The Cycle of Bias in Health Research: A Framework and Toolbox for Critical Appraisal Training

Recognizing bias in health research is crucial for evidence-based decision making. We worked with eight community groups to develop materials for nine modular, individualized critical appraisal workshops we conducted with 102 consumers (four workshops), 43 healthcare providers (three workshops), and 33 journalists (two workshops) in California. We presented workshops using a “cycle of bias” framework, and developed a toolbox of presentations, problem-based small group sessions, and skill-building materials to improve participants' ability to evaluate research for financial and other conflicts of interest, bias, validity, and applicability. Participant feedback indicated that the adaptability of the toolbox and our focus on bias were critical elements in the success of our workshops.     

Sheltered Workshops,Economic Policies and the Employment of the Handicapped

Economic aspects of schemes for employing the handicapped such as employment subsidies, quotas and designated employment are discussed in the first section. Given the existence of minimum wages and fixed conditions of employment, sheltered workshops and designated employment are seen as feasible and relatively efficient means for employing the handicapped. But, as illustrated from a survey of sheltered workshops in Newcastle, the costs of sheltered workshops could be lowered by increasing the number of handicapped persons working in existing workshops, by more cooperation and planning between workshops and by the sharing of some projects and the joint use of administrative personnel. Other economic problems of sheltered workshops and their implications for public policy are also considered.     

An agenda for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience

Young people who are currently or were previously in state care have consistently been found to have much higher rates of mental health and neurodevelopmental difficulties than the general youth population. While a number of high-quality reviews highlight what research has been undertaken in relation to the mental health of young people with care experience and the gaps in our knowledge and understanding, there is, until now, no consensus, so far as we aware, as to where our collective research efforts should be directed with this important group. Through a series of UK wide workshops, we undertook a consultative process to identify an agreed research agenda between those with lived experience of being in care (n = 15), practitioners, policy makers and researchers (n = 59), for future research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience, including those who are neurodiverse/have a neurodevelopmental difficulty. This consensus statement identified 21 foci within four broad categories: how we conceptualize mental health; under-studied populations; under-studied topics; and underused methodologies. We hope that those who commission, fund and undertake research will engage in this discussion about the future agenda for research regarding the mental health of young people with care experience.     

Media Images of the Poor

This article provides a comprehensive overview of research that has examined the content and prevalence of stereotypic media images of the poor. Research examining televised images and print media are reviewed. An analysis of media framing as well as classist, racist, and sexist imagery is provided. Additionally, to assess media depictions of the poor in the wake of welfare reform, 412 newspaper articles about poverty and welfare published during a 3-month period in 1999 were content analyzed. Although most articles were neutral in tone and portrayed the difficulties facing welfare recipients and the poor sympathetically, they did little to contextualize poverty or illuminate its causes. These findings are discussed in terms of their context and political function.     

Structural Deficiency or Cultural Racism: The Educational and Social Experiences of Arab‐Australian Youth

This paper discusses the cultural, attitudinal and structural factors that impact upon the social experiences and educational achievements of Arabic‐speaking background (ASB) students in three Melbourne secondary schools with high levels of cultural and linguistic diversity. The paper makes the case for and then outlines a multidimensional approach to multicultural education to better integrate ASB students and their families into the schooling environment. Key strategies developed and tested include a model of school‐community partnership, online and interactive teacher support material (TSM) as well as on‐going teacher professional development workshops on reflexive approaches to cultural diversity and intercultural tension.     

Sounding Out Vision

ABSTRACT

The late-twentieth century development of a range of digital imaging technologies has led to claims that we are in the midst of a transformation of representation. This essay takes two such technologies—ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)—and considers how their extraordinary mediation of the invisible using radio waves, magnetic fields and sound waves confounds the terms of reference which have governed the way we think not only about images, but about visual perception itself.

The nineteenth-century visual technology of the stethoscope, and its synaesthetic fusion of sound and image, is posed as a way of thinking through medical imaging technologies' sonic and haptic picturing of a world beyond light. Hegel's aesthetics, and his consideration of sound as a more ideal medium than light, is also used to consider the ways in which ultrasound and MRI images mediate the products of sound—the depth, interiority and identity of a body—into the realm of vision and the image.     

明清江南运河城市坊刊通俗小说的特点

明万历后，江南运河城市取代福建建阳成为全国的坊刻中心与通俗小说刊刻中心，所刻通俗小说从数量到质量，从形式到内容都较建阳时期有了很大的发展，透露出通俗小说发展的新的信息。从外在刊刻特点来看，江南运河城市书坊注重版刻质量，提高了通俗小说刻本的外在观赏性；刊刻通俗小说的书坊多与文人合作，多文人型书坊主，很多家刻转变为坊刻，家刻与坊刻合流，提高了坊刻小说的整体水平。从通俗小说自身的特点而论，江南运河城市坊刻的通俗小说流派众多，类型更趋多样化，极大地丰富和繁荣了通俗小说的表现领域与题材样式，通俗小说在创作自主性、内容题材、艺术水平上都透露出了新的信息，整体呈现出文人化的特征。     

员工学历、企业绩效与人均工资

随着高等教育的不断改革与发展,一大批获得高学历的人才进入社会,这将对经济发展起到重要作用。不过,目前的研究中很少涉及高学历人才对个体企业究竟能否起到预期中的作用。本文试图从生产率的角度解释员工学历对于企业经营绩效的相关影响,从企业角度研究员工学历对于人均工资的可能影响。运用2004年中国经济普查数据实证检验员工学历对于企业利润率与人均工资的可能影响,结论认为:(1)员工学历与企业利润率呈显著的正相关性,员工学历对于企业绩效可能具有积极影响,但是平均学历并未通过出口而增强对利润率的影响;(2)员工学历与人均工资呈显著的正相关性并且通过出口而增强,这从企业角度再一次证明了学历对于求职者以及工人的重要性。     

Keeping the Wise Blood:

Midlife and menopause can be a time of searching, transformation, and working on developmental tasks. Women are at risk of having their search and transformation shaped by ageist and sexist images. Groups provide an ideal environment-a personal counterculture-in which to construct diversity-respecting images with which women can identify. In this paper, a short term women's group designed to facilitate the construction of positive images of the woman's aging process is described.     

“Power together”: Professionals and parents of children with disabilities creating productive partnerships

Disparity of power and authority in the relationship between parents and professionals has been shown to be a major challenge in creating a successful partnership in caring for children with disability. The goal of this article was to evaluate workshops attended by professionals and parents of children with disability by raising awareness to barriers related to incompatible expectations and role definitions. The research explored the experiences of the participants in order to identify factors that facilitated or impeded their collaborations. Data were collected from three workshops attended by 22 mothers of children with disability and 24 professionals (most of them are social workers). This qualitative research used interpretative phenomenological analysis to investigate the participants' experiences. Findings showed that parents and professionals joined forces to create a productive working relationship by taking advantage of power over and power together relationships. This mutual process required participants to be aware, empathic, and respectful of one another's needs and limitations; acknowledge the contribution of experiential and professional knowledge; and co‐operate in overcoming the effects of ineffective bureaucratic service systems. Interventions geared to contain emotional burden, acknowledge differential knowledge and experience, and structure the use of power are suggested.     

Risk preferences and changes in background risk

We present two theorems that yield necessary and sufficient conditions for first- and second-degree stochastic dominance deteriorations of background risk to increase risk aversion with respect to foreground risk. We require that any change in a foreground risk that is undesirable remains so after a background risk changes in a way that is either unfair, undesirable in the sense of reducing expected utility, or undesirable in the sense of increasing expected marginal utility. Our results thus characterize utility functions that are, respectively, vulnerable, proper, or standard with respect to changes in background risk.

Imagining contact reduces prejudice in preschool children

We examined the effectiveness of an imagery‐based strategy designed to reduce prejudice in preschoolers in Italy. Three studies involving different target groups (disabled children, Black children) were conducted within Italian preschools. Children (4–6 years) were asked to imagine and draw meeting an outgroup member (Studies 1 and 2) or to imagine writing a letter to an outgroup member (Study 3). Results revealed that preschoolers in the experimental condition, relative to a control group, reported less intergroup bias in the form of contact intentions and resource allocation as well as greater behavioral inclusiveness; effects were mediated by improved intergroup attitudes. Our findings are important in understanding ways that promote positive intergroup relations in ways that align with the interests of young children.     

The psychiatric revolution in Quebec, 1950-1962. From asylum to community psychiatry and the open door

Psychiatry opens to the world at a time when the very basis of psychiatric practice, namely the asylum, is called into question. Studies appear in Quebec and Canadian journals concurrent to the introduction of new formulas for care, such as the delivery of psychiatric services in general hospitals and clinics, that allow patients to be treated outside the walls of psychiatric hospitals. In addition, postwar psychiatry takes an optimistic view toward the future of children with impairments through the creation of specialized schools and workshops. From the mid-20th century onward, the thinking in psychiatry centres on the open door.     

宋代时节诗的生态感悟与物理言说

在理学兴盛的思想背景下,宋代文人士大夫喜言理,这一点在时节吟咏之诗中有着鲜明的表现。他们感物色之动而发于诗歌创作,热情吟咏春季的蓬勃生机,并在意象营造的基础上融入哲理的意味,叹造化之奇,究天地之理。这类诗歌既讲求形象性,又能体现作者深厚的哲学修养和理性探寻的精神,在诗坛上呈现出别样的艺术风貌。     

Using Remote Sensing to Evaluate Environmental Institutional Designs: A Habitat Conservation Planning Example

Objective. Satellite-based remote-sensing analysis is a beneficial, yet underused, tool for environmental policy, planning, and evaluation. We identify its benefits and costs to encourage social scientists to consider the use of remote sensing as a tool for planning and evaluating environmental institutions. Methods. We analyze two multispectral Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite images to evaluate a habitat conservation plan (HCP) implemented pursuant to the Endangered Species Act. Results. Image analysis provides useful broad spatial scale information on HCP performance that is not discernible to the naked eye or through other methodologies. Conclusions. Satellite image analysis should be considered as a tool for planning and evaluating environmental institutional designs—despite the financial costs and requisite technical training. These images provide ecological and land cover change information that may not be available elsewhere. We provide lessons learned to help make analysts cognizant of some important issues surrounding the use of satellite-based imagery for environmental institutional analysis.