Student units for practice teaching in group care

In this paper, an attempt is made to summarize the British position with regard to the use of student units in social work education. The strengths and limitations associated with student units are evaluated with respect to a practice curriculum for people intending to work in the group care field (institutional care, residential group living and day services). Finally, four different models of student unit are identified in such a way as to show how supervised experience could be organised to improve training for group care practice.     

A business version of the prisoner’s dilemma: A teaching technique

The “prisoner’s dilemma” is an archetypal choice dilemma widely used for teaching and research in the social sciences. A version of the prisoner’s dilemma which set the problem in an ordinary business context was used as a pedagogic instrument with graduate business students, fully employed and aspiring to upward mobility, and nurses—both male and female—employed at various supervisory levels. The site was a college in metropolitan Detroit. The method engages students in verbal expression, explanation, and justification of their choices and thus departs from mainstream research which treats the prisoner’s dilemma mainly in mathematical terms, usually based upon experiments requiring many iterative choices. Also, whereas the prisoner’s dilemma places the subjects in the frame of mind of being prisoners, this version is of choice-making by free people, with the additional unspecified choice available of not to play the game. Replication outcomes were similar enough to support tentative generalization, although statistical analysis was not significant because of the small number of cases. Results suggest that the method may be useful to managers in their analysis of ethical choice situations and development of alternate scenarios. Vivid lessons regarding the ethical dimensions of business behavior can be learned from the use of the prisoner’s dilemma.     

Time,Rank, and Social Control*

Members of organizations treat time as something and scarce that may be possessed and traded and that is repeatedly the object of contracts. Observations in hospital Intensive Care Units show both formal patterns of greater time advantage for those of high rank and informal patterns of renegotiation and manipulation of time. Organizations can examine informal time use by members and select and promote those who willingly put in time for the organization. Putting in extra time for others can be used as an indicator of attitudinal conformity, which helps the organization assure behavioral compliance by the higher ranked, who are typically in less observable positions.     

Some Applications of Order Statistics to Multivariate Analysis II

ABSTRACT

Harter (1979) summarized applications of order statistics to multivariate analysis up through 1949. The present paper covers the period 1950–1959. References in the two papers were selected from the first and second volumes, respectively, of the author's chronological annotated bibliography on order statistics [Harter (1978, 1983)]. Tintner (1950a) established formal relations between four special types of multivariate analysis: (1) canonical correlation, (2) principal components, (3) weighted regression, and (4) discriminant analysis, all of which depend on ordered roots of determinantal equations. During the decade 1950–1959, numerous authors contributed to distribution theory and/or computational methods for ordered roots and their applications to multivariate analysis. Test criteria for (i) multivariate analysis of variance, (ii) comparison of variance–covariance matrices, and (iii) multiple independence of groups of variates when the parent population is multivariate normal were usually derived from the likelihood ratio principle until S. N. Roy (1953) formulated the union–intersection principles on which Roy & Bose (1953) based their simultaneous test and confidence procedure. Roy & Bargmann (1958) used an alternative procedure, called the step–down procedure, in deriving a test for problem (iii), and J. Roy (1958) applied the step–down procedure to problem (i) and (ii), Various authors developed and applied distribution theory for several multivariate distributions. Advances were also made on multivariate tolerance regions [Fraser & Wormleighton (1951), Fraser (1951, 1953), Fraser & Guttman (1956), Kemperman (1956), and Somerville (1958)], a criterion for rejection of multivariate outliers [Kudô (1957)], and linear estimators, from censored samples, of parameters of multivariate normal populations [Watterson (1958, 1959)]. Textbooks on multivariate analysis were published by Kendall (1957) and Anderson (1958), as well as a monograph by Roy (1957) and a book of tables by Pillai (1957).     

Student degree program and attitudes toward gays and lesbians in the military: is there a connection?

Individuals routinely experience discrimination based on sexual orientation. Since the implementation of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 1994, over 13,000 military personnel have been discharged from the U.S. military on the basis of sexual orientation. As helping professionals, social workers will often provide services to returning gay and lesbian veterans. Therefore, social work programs must ensure that students develop positive attitudes toward and understanding of the needs presented by this population. Little is known about whether a specific degree program can be a predictor of student attitude toward gay and lesbian individuals in the military. Eighty-nine graduate students completed the Attitudes Toward Homosexuals in the Military (ATHM) scale, and scores were compared between two graduate degree programs: Social Work and Business Administration. A statistically significant relationship was found between degree program and ATHM scores. Implications for policy, practice and research related to gay and lesbian veterans are discussed.     

Unaccompanied migrant children and indebted relations: Weaponizing safeguarding

UK statutory guidance for practitioners suggests that indebtedness is an area where safeguarding red flags should be raised and action taken to minimize the risk of exploitation. Yet, our research shows that unaccompanied migrant children have complex indebted relationships, which can range from extractive to connective. Drawing on interviews with unaccompanied children, we show that these indebted relationships can include financial debt to smugglers, responsibilities to support transnational families, as well as social obligations to peers and others. Their accounts present a nuanced understanding of the taboo nature of indebted relationships, not to be shared with the practitioners in their lives. This is due, in part, to the potential threat of reporting to the Home Office, which might jeopardize their immigration status. In response to this weaponization of social care, we demonstrate how children turn to peer networks of support, creating their own alternative forms of social protection. In so doing, we complicate critiques of adultification, which traditionally highlight the ways that racially minoritized children may be treated as adults—to their detriment. In so doing, we show that because indebtedness is normatively linked to adulthood, unaccompanied children's hopes and fears may be rendered unsayable and therefore unsupportable in social care, all in the name of safeguarding.     

We care about care: advice by children in care for children in care,foster parents and child welfare workers about the transition into foster care

Twenty children in foster care, ages 8 to 15 years, provided advice to children in care, foster parents and child welfare workers about ways to assist service delivery during the transition into foster care. The children discussed the importance of tending to experiences such as foster home expectations, the importance of time and information, the new foster/parent–child relationship, coping with stress, the ability to be engaged in decision‐making, the benefits of foster care and the need to build a trusting and personal relationship between children in care and their caregivers. The importance of listening to children's experiences of the transition into foster care and incorporating their advice into future research, policy and practice will be discussed.