Research Knowledge Assessment: A Study of MSW Students’ Acquisition and Retention of Research Knowledge

ABSTRACT

In response to the need for meaningful data about student learning in research courses, we developed and implemented the Research Knowledge Assessment instrument to measure MSW student acquisition, application, and retention of research knowledge over a 3-year period across the research curriculum. Initial findings indicated that students entered the foundation research methods course with little research knowledge, gained some knowledge during the course but not at an acceptable level, and lost 22% of the gain by the beginning of the concentration research course. The greatest knowledge acquisition was in sampling and the least in theory and question development. Knowledge acquisition was associated with not having a BSW and not having adjunct faculty as a research instructor.     

Students’ Vocational Choices and Voluntary Action: A 12-Nation Study

Previous research on student involvement suggested that business and engineering students manifest lowest rates of voluntary action. Similarly, it was thought that social science students are the most involved in voluntary action, with students of natural sciences and humanities in the middle. However, there were very few studies that empirically compared these assertions. Furthermore, these assertions were not investigated from cross-cultural perspectives. Based on a study of students in 12 countries (N = 6,570), we found that even when controlling for background variables, social science students are actually less engaged in voluntary action than other students. Engineering students are higher than expected on voluntary action while students of humanities are the most involved in voluntary action. When studying these differences in the 12 selected countries, local cultures and norms form different sets of findings that suggest that there is no universal trend in choice of academic field and voluntary action.     

Racial–Ethnic Socialization and Transracial Adoptee Outcomes: A Systematic Research Synthesis

Transracial adoptees face unique challenges when it comes to being socialized with their race and culture. Ethnic identity and parent racial–ethnic socialization are two important variables that have been studied in the transracial adoption literature. Additionally, transracial adoptee outcomes of racial–ethnic socialization have been analyzed in multiple studies. However, few reviews have focused on synthesizing empirical studies that include the variables of both racial–ethnic socialization and transracial adoptee outcomes together. Therefore, the purpose of this systematic research synthesis was to examine studies with variables of parent practices of racial–ethnic socialization and transracial adoptee outcomes, and transracial adoptee experiences of racial–ethnic socialization and adoptee outcomes. Thirteen studies were included in the synthesis, and collective findings suggest that racial–ethnic socialization is associated with healthy adoptee outcomes in multiple studies. Implications and limitations about the need for transracially adoptive parents to be educated about racial–ethnic socialization, and resources that adoptive agencies can provide are discussed.     

Beyond PowerPoint™: Using Learning Objects to Enhance Social Work Courses

Faculty use of information and communication technologies (ICT) in social work courses has the potential to transform social work education, including increasing student engagement and accommodating different learning styles. Learning objects are reusable digital resources with a pedagogical purpose that may be used in online, hybrid, or face-to-face social work courses to achieve these and other pedagogical benefits. This article defines and provides an overview of the concept “learning objects.” Guidelines for locating and incorporating existing learning objects and for creating learning objects for use in social work courses are detailed. Finally, examples are provided.     

Teaching Note—Creating an Integrative Research Learning Environment for BSW and MSW Students

ABSTRACT

Research courses are often the least popular among BSW and MSW students because the connection between social work practice and research is not always evident. This teaching note introduces the structure of the Social Work integrative Research Lab (SWiRL), which was implemented in a social work program without a doctoral program at a large public university. SWiRL offers students opportunities to engage meaningfully in a variety of social work research projects using a framework of nested mentoring. Students gain hands-on research experience while they develop confidence, leadership, and mentoring skills within this structure. The authors discuss recommendations for other social work programs that do not have doctoral education or an established research environment.     

Practice Learning and the Development of Students as Critical Practitioners—Some Findings from Research

This article reports some findings from an ESRC‐funded research project which has been examining the development of criticality in undergraduate students, taking social work and modern languages as contrasting disciplines. This twin‐track study aims to develop the conceptualisation of ‘criticality’ in the context of empirical research. This article examines the development of criticality in final year social work students, where the practice learning experience is predominant. The analysis is framed by the project's developing theoretical conceptualisation of criticality.     

Political Participation and Late-Life Learning: A Cross-Cultural Study of Older People’s Participation in Seniors’ Interest Organisations in Australia and Spain

Understanding what older people learn from their civic participation is of critical importance both for individuals and organisations. This link has been neglected in prior research, and the evidence across diverse cultural contexts is particularly limited. However, the political context of older people’s life experiences and participation is important in their participation. The intent of the present study is to explore the learnings experienced by older people through participation in seniors’ interest organisations, across Australia and Spain. Participants included 52 active members of political organisations focused on issues for older people. A questionnaire was used for data collection; participants’ responses to an open-ended question regarding what they have learnt from their participation in seniors’ interest organisations are analysed here. Participants’ answers were subjected to a multi-stage thematic analysis. Findings show three key themes relating to learnings about themselves, such as self-improvement or skills or knowledge; learnings about others, such as cooperation with others and understand that people have different views; and learning about society, such as inequality and the need to fight for injustice. The findings suggest some interesting similarities and differences across contexts, which appears to reflect the different political contexts of the two countries.     

Parents’ Health and Adult Children’s Subsequent Working Status: A Perspective of Intergenerational Transfer and Time Allocation

This paper frames how parents’ health problems may affect a child’s subsequent working status. Parental health problems occurring in their prime working years undermine an adult child’s resources and tend to affect the child’s preferences over time-allocations among leisure, market- and non-market-labor. Empirical applications in this paper focus on a situation with pervasive health problems, lack of social safety network, and a substantial gender gap in labor market return. Exploiting Russia Longitudinal Monitoring Survey (RLMS) for the period 1994–2004, empirical results indicate that a father’s poor health status is a significant predictor of lowering a daughter’s educational attainment and working probability during her subsequent, adulthood years.     

Single Parenthood,Parental Involvement and Students’ Educational Outcomes in Hong Kong

Analyzing data from the Programme for International Student Assessment Hong Kong 2009 and 2012 (n = 7,669), we examined the differences in socioeconomic characteristics of fathers and mothers and levels of parental involvement between two-parent, single-mother, and single-father families in Hong Kong. We found that parents from single-mother and single-father families fare differently in terms of sociodemographic background and parental involvement at home. We also investigated the differences in students’ academic performance among these families. Past studies failed to find any significant effect of single parenthood on students’ academic performance in Hong Kong. We found negative effects of single fatherhood, but not single motherhood, on educational outcomes. The disadvantages of single fatherhood are partially explained by the poorer sociodemographic background and lower levels of parental involvement.     

Enhancing Volunteer Engagement to Achieve Desirable Outcomes: What Can Non-profit Employers Do?

Engagement is a positive psychological state that is linked with a range of beneficial individual and organizational outcomes. However, the factors associated with volunteer engagement have rarely been examined. Data from 1064 volunteers of a wildlife charity in the United Kingdom revealed that both task- and emotion-oriented organizational support were positively related to volunteer engagement, and volunteer engagement was positively related to volunteer happiness and perceived social worth and negatively related to intent to leave the voluntary organization. Consistent with theory, engagement acted as a mediator between these factors. The implications for future research and the relevance of the findings for voluntary organizations are discussed.     

Learning from Mental Health Lived Experience and the Influence on Students’ Practice

This study explored how learning from mental health lived experience influenced Australian social work students’ practice during their first fieldwork placement. Involvement of mental health consumers in social work education is gaining momentum, yet little is known about how this type of learning informs students’ practice. Ten social work students participated in semistructured interviews and one focus group. Findings suggest that learning from lived experience promoted social work practice that honoured the expertise of mental health consumers and privileged personal recovery. Factors such as organisational culture and supervisor attitudes were found to mediate the students’ attempts to privilege lived experience.     

Research Note—Multiple Time Point Course Evaluation and Student Learning Outcomes in an MSW Course

ABSTRACT

Evaluation methods play a key role in measuring student learning outcomes. Yet traditional assessments focus on assessing student satisfaction with instructors or courses rather than their progress toward competencies. In addition, the common pretest-posttest assessment is problematic because of response-shift bias. Although multiple time point assessment is suggested, very little is known about its application and potential in social work education. This research note examines how student self-assessments of their progress on core competencies in an MSW-level social work course change across three time points (pretest, posttest, retrospective test). The findings suggest that students underrated and overrated their competencies at the pretest. We argue that using multiple time point self-assessment addresses this internal validity threat and should be considered in social work course evaluation.     

Authoritarian Learning and Authoritarian Resilience: Regime Responses to the ‘Arab Awakening’

The spread of protests throughout the Arab world can be viewed as the product of social learning by Arab citizens—a wave effect facilitated by the rapid diffusion of ideas, discourses, and practices from one country to another and their adaptation to local contexts. Yet it less commonly recognized that Arab regimes' counter-revolutionary strategies have also been shaped by processes of learning and diffusion among regime elites, especially among those where protests began later in the sequence of events that constitute the Arab awakening. Accordingly, there have been two parallel processes at work in the unfolding and the potential unraveling of the Arab awakening: one at the level of Arab societies and the other among authoritarian regimes. Initially, the first of these processes worked to the advantage of protestors. As regimes adapted to the repertoires of contention developed by protesters and assessed the direction of regional and international trends, the advantage shifted in their direction. Several incumbents in the region became increasingly persuaded that their best bet lay in strategies of repression, and, in essence, in hunkering down and pursuing a range of measures to ride out uprisings which themselves seemed to confront diminishing probabilities of success.

La difusión de protestas a través del mundo árabe puede verse como un producto de aprendizaje social por ciudadanos árabes—un efecto de oleaje facilitado por la rápida difusión de ideas, conversaciones y prácticas de un país a otro y su adaptación a contextos locales. Sin embargo, es menos reconocido que las estrategias contrarrevolucionarias de los regímenes árabes se hayan formado por procesos de aprendizaje y difusión entre regímenes elitistas, especialmente entre aquellos a donde las protestas empezaron más tarde en la secuencia de eventos que constituyen el despertar árabe. En consecuencia, ha habido dos procesos paralelos en función de la revelación y desenredo potencial del despertar árabe: uno al nivel de las sociedades árabes y el otro entre los regímenes autoritarios. Inicialmente, el primero de estos procesos trabajó en ventaja de los manifestantes. En cuanto los regímenes se adaptaron a los repertorios de opinión desarrollados por los manifestantes, y evaluaron la dirección de tendencias regionales e internacionales, la ventaja cambió en su dirección. Varios de los mandatarios en la región aumentaron su persuasión de que su mejor opción radicaba en estrategias de represión y fundamentalmente en refugiarse y perseguir una serie de medidas para superar los levantamientos que ellos mismos parecían hacerle frente, disminuyendo las probabilidades de éxito.

遍及阿拉伯世界的抗议浪潮可被视为阿拉伯各国公民进行社会学习的产物——一种由观念的迅速扩散、演讲、从一国到另一国的实践以及对当地环境的适应等助推下的波浪效应。然而人们较少认识到,阿拉伯各国政权反革命的策略已经由政权精英之间,尤其是那些在构成阿拉伯觉醒的事件序列中较晚出现抗议的政权之间的学习和扩散过程塑造成形。相应地,在展现着的和潜在瓦解着的阿拉伯觉醒中,有两个平行的进程：一个是阿拉伯社会这一层面的进程,另一个是统治政权中间的进程。起初,第一个进程有利于抗议者。当各政权适应了抗议者提出的各种论争并评估地区和国际趋势的方向后,有利地位就转到了它们一边。该地区一些现任领导人已日益相信,他们最好的办法是实行镇压策略,根本上说是着手控制并采取一系列措施,以平安渡过这些起义,而它们自身似乎也面临成功概率下降的问题。     

Older Adults’ Gambling Motivation and Problem Gambling: A Comparative Study

Gambling participation rates among older adults (65+ years) have been increasing in recent years. Very few studies have compared older and younger gamblers on gambling motivation and problem gambling. This study compared 41 male and 63 female older gamblers (66-87 years; median 73) to 20 male and 85 female younger gamblers (17-34 years; median 20) in New Zealand on gambling involvement, gambling motives and number of gambling related problems in the previous 12 months. The questionnaire included the Gambling Motivation Scale (GMS) and the Revised South Oaks Gambling Screen (SOGS-R) of current problem gambling. There were between-group age differences but no significant gender or gender by age interaction effects. While older adults had significantly lower scores on all the measures, except they gambled more frequently, for both groups frequency of gambling, number of activities, largest amount spent in a single session and all motives were correlated with SOGS-R scores. Preferences for electronic gaming machines and bingo were related to SOGS-R scores for both age groups. Hierarchical regression analysis showed that after statistically controlling for age, gambling involvement and other motives, tension release uniquely predicted SOGS-R scores. For both age groups, increasing severity of problem gambling is more likely to be associated with releasing tension than with winning money or seeking sensation.     

Intergenerational Relationships and the Life Course: Children-Caregivers’ Relations in Ethiopia

Drawing on three rounds of survey and qualitative data of the Young Lives study in Ethiopia among children born in 1994 and their caregivers, this article investigates intergenerational relationships by means of the life course perspective. With the expansion of modern education and children’s exposure to different experiences outside the family, many of them contest parental values, norms, and expectations. Competing agents of socialization have contributed to increased intergenerational conflicts and negotiations. In the context of rapid social changes, intergenerational relationships are becoming dynamic and the life course perspective needs to adapt to understand the changing features of such relationships.     

Research Note—Testing for Gerontological Competencies: A Pilot Study

This article reports on the pilot delivery of an evaluation method to gauge student learning of gerontological competencies. Using a pretest and posttest design, data were collected on 46 students over 3 classes. Results indicated significant improvement in how students rated or perceived their competencies skill level between pretest and posttest scores (p < .01).     

The Role of Learning Context in High School Students’ Financial Knowledge and Behavior Acquisition

Using social construction theory, associations between student and classroom characteristics and high school students’ financial knowledge and behavior acquisition after studying a financial planning curriculum were examined. Prior to curriculum study, Whites, those growing up in a farm family business, and those who were working had higher financial knowledge; male and female knowledge differed by content. After curriculum study, females, those not growing up in a farm family business, and those who were not working gained most from curriculum study. While Whites, those who were working, and males exhibited more positive behaviors prior to curriculum study, after curriculum study, students living in states having financial mandates and those who did not grow up in a farm family business increased their positive behaviors most.     

Civic Engagement and Civic Literacy Among Social Work Students: Where Do We Stand?

Civic engagement is pivotal to the survival of the social work profession and to our historic role in shaping the social contract. Recent studies report declining rates of civic engagement and civic literacy among Americans. This article, which was presented at the Policy Conference 2.0, examines civic engagement and civic literacy among social work students at a medium-sized program in the western United States. Findings from this study indicate that these students are more likely to be engaged in volunteering and fundraising than in politically oriented activities. Results suggest that understanding of government and democratic processes lead to more civic engagement.