Widening the Lens: The Efficacy of the Case Method in Helping Direct Practice MSW Students Understand and Apply Mezzo and Macro Dimensions of Practice

This study tested the effectiveness of the case method as a teaching and learning tool to help direct practice (micro) graduate students to more fully incorporate the mezzo and macro dimensions in clinical situations. Participants for this study included 115 MSW students enrolled in a second‐year clinical concentration who, as a requirement of the program, took an integrative seminar that was taught using the case method. Students completed a pre‐ and post‐test that measured the importance students placed on selected mezzo and macro dimensions of practice. The study also assessed whether the case method influenced students' perceived capacity for critical thinking, vertical integration of first‐ with second‐year content, and understanding the program's theoretical model. Results showed significant increases in several areas assessed. The paper begins by tracing the historical and contemporary writings in the social work literature on integrated learning, and discusses the impact of these trends on the learning process. Ideas on how to build integrative opportunities or methods of instruction into the social work curriculum are then explored. The case method is advocated as a viable tool in teaching with empirical evidence presented to support its efficacy.     

Promoting Deep Learning: A Teaching,Learning and Assessment Endeavour

The need for social workers to develop expertise in critical reflection is now a dominant theme in the literature. How this expertise is achieved, however, remains under‐explored in an environment increasingly focused on outcomes, evidence of performance and teachers' preoccupations with curriculum content and assessment. Students' understanding of critical reflection and how, if at all, their social work education assists in developing this capacity, continue to be under‐represented.

Applying a ‘deep‐learning’ framework, this article outlines an attempt to engage final year social work students in a teaching, learning and assessment exchange that promotes critical reflexivity. It presents the thinking behind the evolution of a unit focused on social work in public welfare and health settings. Using their final assessment exercise in which they are asked to review their learning, it then offers students' responses to that unit. In particular, the paper highlights the personalised practice visions offered by students as they seek to locate themselves, personally and professionally, before making the identity‐challenging transition from student to qualified practitioner.     

Perceptions of Readiness for Legally Literate Practice: A Longitudinal Study of Social Work Student Views

Law is a prescribed element of the curriculum for the social work degree. Research and development work have included a systematic review, practice survey and curriculum building; however, little evidence exists about the outcomes of teaching and learning of law in social work education, although students report increasing levels of satisfaction. Moreover, doubts remain about how far students acquire legal knowledge and skills in its implementation.

This survey of social work students in seven UK universities measured their law learning and their confidence in using this knowledge. Concept maps and a self-audit questionnaire were used to capture students' understanding and perceptions of this knowledge domain and self-assessments of their legal knowledge and skills. A large sample was achieved across first, second and final year students.

The interface between the legal rules and practice is a site of anxiety and perceived difficulty. In some areas students offer relatively confident self-assessments of their legal knowledge and skills for practising law. However, levels of confidence in other areas of their law learning raise doubts about the degree to which they can advocate for, and protect, service users. Conclusions are drawn about the effectiveness of students' law learning.     

Silver Inflation and the Senate in 1933

Along with the ever-increasing racial/ethnic diversity in U.S. schools, researchers began to investigate the impact of racial/ethnic identity on young people's understanding of the nation's history. Compared to other racial minorities, Asian American students have received little academic and educational attention. This article seeks to address this gap through a qualitative study on Korean American youth. Drawing from in-depth interviews with twenty Korean American high school students, this article examines how Korean American youth make sense of U.S. history and how their sociocultural backgrounds affect their historical perspectives as well as their ideas and experiences of learning history historical perspectives.     

What Culturally Diverse Students Say About Emotion:

The statements of culturally diverse students suggest the need for continuing consideration of professional acculturation strategies. Formulated through agency-based work with field interns from baccalaureate and associate degree programs, this qualitative study captures students' words and offers a context for understanding their meaning. Findings include diverse views of professionalism, engagement, and emotional exchange. Through examination of the cultural context of the social work profession, students' reports can be linked to cultural diversity rather than simple educational naivete. In addition to identifying areas for further research, the study supports the development of multicultural consciousness in designing and evaluating student learning experiences.     

Kashmir and the Kashmir Impasse

Social studies educators are responsible for successfully teaching students the knowledge, skills, and values necessary to be effective citizens. The National Council for the Social Studies urges educators to design technology-enhanced experiences that address social studies content and prepare students for effective citizenship. In this paper, we give examples from a piratical unit designed for a fourth-grade social studies classroom to highlight the role digital technology can play in enhancing social studies teaching and learning. We use Internet workshops as structures for students to meaningfully research social studies content, and we use blogs as technological tools to publish and showcase authentic student work, and ultimately, to develop students' higher order thinking skills and creativity.     

Students' dreams for the future and perspectives on resilience-building aspects of their lives: The view from East Greenland

This study explores how perspectives from students can increase knowledge of how teachers and school authority can support students in building up resilience as a response to social challenges in the community. A locally flexible methodology using structured drawings (including classroom observation), semi-structured interviews, and semantic coding and situated analyses in a case study in East Greenland provided the following results: The students' aspirations were mostly about getting an education and a job and becoming socially successful. The students' motivation for attending school and doing educational assignments often depended on the social interaction with their teachers, and the students requested more involvement in decision-making processes at school to create more meaningful educational practices. If schools are to support the processes of building resilience and motivation for education, schools should include students' perspectives and encourage students' agency by listening to what they have to say.     

Adult learning styles: Implications for practice teaching in social work

This paper focuses on the current aspiration to further the process of continuing professional development in social work. It contends that knowledge from the field of adult learning theory may be helpful in sign-posting some tangible ways forward here. The particular emphasis is on critically assessing the usefulness of identifying learning styles as indicators of preferred ways of learning. Knowledge of learning styles is explored as one way of promoting students' learning on practice placements. A small-scale qualitative research study with a group of practice teachers and their students is presented as a vehicle for exploring this new terrain in social work. The findings of this research build on key themes identified by the current literature in this area. The author's findings suggest that information about learning styles has direct practical application in the social work practice teaching arena. The data points to the potential value of using such information to guide students' learning on practice placements and has relevance to considerations of their continuing professional development. Suggestions are put forward to highlight how practice teaching and Diploma in Social Work programmes could facilitate this process. The paper stresses the over-riding need to view students as actors in a broader social context, however, and highlights how information regarding learning styles needs to be utilised in this context.     

The Significance of the Wealth of Nations for Economic Education

Students' understanding of history may be shaped less by their social studies teachers than by the powerfully ubiquitous, historically themed media images they passively consume outside of school. In this article, the author describes two strategies conducted during a classroom-based action research study designed to explore how historically themed film can be used to scaffold activities that encourage middle school students to conduct inquiries of the past and critically evaluate feature films and documentaries. Data collected from student surveys, focus group discussions, assignments, and classroom observations suggested that students benefit from well-structured activities that encourage them to compare historical accounts with cinematic portrayals of the past. In particular, the Know-Wonder-Learn and anticipation guide strategies can encourage critical critical viewing and thinking about how film accounts are created.     

Blaming Me,Blaming You: Assessing Service Learning and Participants' Tendency to Blame the Victim

This study uses a comparative case study to explore the effect of service learning on the political socialization of participants and, in particular, on participants' patterns of blame attribution. Although numerous scholars have acclaimed the benefits of service learning, others have suggested that involving students in service learning may actually reinforce their tendency to blame victims of social problems for their own conditions. Little research has considered the role of service learning in the political social-ization of America's youth and how it might relate to the political intolerance that characterizes the current era. The study suggests that two different approaches to service learning have very different impacts on students' attitudes toward the poor and how they explain the associated conditions and stresses the need for structure in service learning activities. The author discusses the possible implications of these findings for contemporary research on adolescent political socialization.     

Training for Civic Leadership

In this article, the authors offer social studies educators a way to deepen students' understanding of civil disobedience as a democratic and nonviolent means of instigating social change. The authors explore the concept of civil disobedience from a historical perspective and examine the justifications and ramifications of each historical example. In addition, they provide several examples of events that are often mistakenly categorized as civil disobedience. Through these examples, the authors develop a sound definition of the concept, while explaining its application to contemporary society. In actualizing the significance of civil disobedience in the secondary social studies classroom, the authors use five components: the historical importance of civil disobedience, the concept of civil disobedience, the argument for civil disobedience, the argument against civil disobedience, and teaching about civil disobedience. They also incorporate civil disobedience into a lesson plan.     

A Teaching Framework for Transformative Multicultural Social Work Education

Abstract

A major challenge in multicultural social work education is fostering meaningful learning experiences for students by matching educational methods and content to students' individual learning needs and characteristics. Building upon transformative learning theory developed by Jack Mezirow, this paper proposes a teaching framework for transformative multicultural social work education that addresses students' individual learning needs and characteristics. This framework uses the dimensions of cultural knowledge and cultural sensitivity to represent four potential stances of cross-cultural learning in students. The paper provides a detail discussion regarding the learning needs and learning foci of students at each stance, and useful teaching strategies and activities that enhance students' transformative learning process so that they develop integrative knowledge about self and others in a dynamic multicultural society from multiple perspectives.     

Comfort Women: Enhancing Students’ Global Awareness through Human Right Education

Abstract

Teaching about the comfort women of World War II offers a compelling case study for the social studies classroom and human rights education. The topic will educate students to become knowledgeable about the larger world and its dark histories that have been omitted or scarcely mentioned in U.S. history textbooks. This article provides high school social studies teachers with the historical background of comfort women, rationales for including this topic in social studies curriculum, and teaching strategies and resources that teachers can use in their classrooms.     

Academic Civic Mindedness and Model Citizenship in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme

This study uses interview and survey methods to describe the International Baccalaureate (IB) Diploma Programme's (DP) development of students' “academic civic mindedness” and “model citizenship” at four public schools in California. Results indicate that the DP pedagogy enables students to develop many of the skills that are necessary for civic advocacy and that the DP places a strong emphasis on students' knowledge of issues related to public policy. The DP develops students' citizenship through promoting their awareness of political and social issues and required active engagement with a local or global issue. Most IB students and teachers feel that the DP develops students' academic civic mindedness and model citizenship to a considerably greater extent than other curricular alternatives. Finally, teachers feel that the strongest limitation to their prioritization of students' citizenship development is their lack of clarity on how to frame the civic implications of what they teach.     

Student Constructions of Resilience: Understanding the Role of Childhood Adversity

Resilience is a desirable attribute for social work and human services (SWHS) graduates. A history of childhood adversity may have led students to develop resilience, which is transferable to SWHS practice. Limited research has been conducted with students as to how resilience is formed and conceptualised. This survey of 265 SWHS students is the first Australian research to survey students about their conceptualisation of resilience and childhood adversity. Within the study, students resoundingly viewed resilience as a process that occurred often due to childhood adversity but also from the protective factors of family. Students' experience of childhood adversity allowed them to develop independence and determination, which led to the development of resilience giving them greater ability to cope with the stresses of SWHS courses. Exploration of students' conceptualisation of resilience and its formation provides an insider voice as to how we can assist emerging practitioners in their development of resilience for future practice.     

Not the Israel of My Elementary School: An Exploration of Jewish-Canadian Secondary Students' Attempts to Process Morally Complex Israeli Narratives

The following article presents data from a mixed-methods practitioner research study that focuses on understanding how Jewish secondary students learned about controversial topics in Israel's history and how these topics impacted their connection to the country. The responses that were provided by the students showed that the material forced students to conceptualize Israel in new ways and that the material— learning from Palestinian and Israeli texts about events that happened in 1947 and 1948—was disruptive to their preconceived notions of Israel. With the passing of time, the students were able to reflect on the real difficulty they had with learning about the topics but were able to synthesize the disruption into their Israel narrative to arrive at a new understanding. The integration of this new material into existing schema is understood within the context of dangerous memories, and how learning about controversial moments in nationalist narratives can impact the way students learn and relate to a topic. A further finding was that some students expressed resentment at previous educational experiences for not being fully transparent about historical events.     

Speed Mentoring in Teaching and Learning: Young people with experience of the care system mentor social work students

The value of listening and talking to young people with experience of the care system has been recognised as a vital and positive contribution to social work students' learning. A model of co-production was used to develop a series of speed mentoring events whereby social work students placed in local authority children and family settings were mentored by young people with experience of the care system. This tentative review of this small-scale project shares the authors' critical reflections on the value and reliability of this model, for evaluating the outcomes of co-productive mentoring relationships between young people and social work students. The reversal of the power dynamic between student and service user contributed to the unsettling of assumptions about each other and empathy for each other's role. The student authors reflect on learning about the child's experience that has influenced their practice. The mentor authors welcomed the opportunity to participate in the development of ‘young people friendly’ social workers. Suggestions are made as to how this model could be developed to contribute to a more systematic approach to the role of service users in mentoring, advising and contributing to the supervision process of students and social workers.     

Book reviews

This article reviews the development of an experiential learning exercise at Kingston University, designed to involve service users and carers in assessing students' readiness to practise. The new social work degree places increased emphasis on practice learning and equipping social workers with the knowledge, skills and tools for the job. This article draws out some of the strengths and advantages of involving ‘experts by experience’ in helping students to develop awareness of self, their impact on others and effective communication skills, ultimately promoting an understanding of reflective practice early in their training. It also acknowledges some of the problems and dilemmas in providing an equitable experience for all students. The students are provided with this learning/assessment experience as part of a module in the first year of the undergraduate social work degree programme and have to pass this element of the module, in addition to the academic component, in order to progress to level two.

The terms ‘service users’ and ‘carers’ and ‘experts by experience’ are used interchangeably in this article. The Steering Group at Kingston University, involved in the development of the exercise discussed, are aware of the power and impact of language and have expressed preference to being referred to as ‘experts by experience’.