Teaching Note—Social Work Serial: Using Video-Recorded Simulated Client Sessions to Teach Social Work Practice

Simulation, the use of trained actors as simulated clients, has gained empirical support as an effective teaching and assessment method in social work education. The associated costs involving the use of live simulation, however, often pose a barrier and prevent less resourced schools from implementing this pedagogical approach in the classroom. Social Work Serial is a pedagogical project that used video-recorded simulated client sessions as an alternative to live simulation. In this teaching note, we will describe step-by-step production and implementation processes involving the project and discuss the implications of video-based simulation for social work education.     

Paving Pathways Through the Pain: A Grounded Theory of Resilience Among Lesbian,Gay, Bisexual,Trans, and Queer Youth

This grounded theory study utilized interviews with 16 service providers and 19 lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ) youth to develop a substantive theory of resilience processes among LGBTQ youth. The core category, paving pathways through the pain, suggests that LGBTQ youth build on emotional pain inflicted by external adversities to carve out pathways to resilience. Youth employed the following resilience processes: (1) navigating safety across contexts, (2) asserting personal agency, (3) seeking and cultivating meaningful relationships, (4) un‐silencing marginalized identities, and (5) engaging in collective healing and action. Youth focused on particularly painful adversities and engaged intentionally in one or more of the resilience processes related to the origins of their pain.     

A Fake Smile Thwarts Cheater Detection

People can discriminate cheaters from cooperators on the basis of negative facial expressions. However, such cheater detection is far from perfect in real-world situations. Therefore, it is possible that cheaters have the ability to disguise negative emotional expressions that signal their uncooperative attitude. To test this possibility, emotional intensity and trustworthiness were evaluated for facial photographs of cheaters and cooperators defined by scores in an economic game. The facial photographs had either posed happy or angry expressions. The angry expressions of cheaters were rated angrier and less trustworthy than those of cooperators. On the other hand, happy expressions of cheaters were higher in emotional intensity but comparable to those of cooperators in trustworthiness. These results suggest that cheater detection based on the processing of negative facial expressions can be thwarted by a posed or fake smile, which cheaters put on with higher intensity than cooperators.     

Attending to Social Justice in Clinical Social Work: Supervision as a Pedagogical Space

Although social justice is a central professional value of social work articulated in ethics codes, clinical social workers have been long criticized for not clearly incorporating this professed commitment into practice. Supervision is an optimal space within which clinicians can develop knowledge and skills to attend to the issues related to social justice in their practice. A growing body of literature emphasizes social justice in the delivery of clinical services, yet there is a death of literature on how clinical supervision can promote social justice seeking clinical work. In this paper, we draw from existing literature to identify key elements involved in social justice seeking clinical supervision. Using Goodyear’s (Clin Superv 33:82–99, 2014) learning mechanisms of clinical supervision, which consists of modeling, feedback, direct instruction, and self-directed learning, we discuss a case composite to illustrate ways in which clinical supervision can serve as a pedagogical space to advance clinical social workers’ commitment to social justice.     

“It Gets Better” … but How? Exploring Resilience Development in the Accounts of LGBTQ Adults

As reports of bullying and suicide increase, research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth must expand its focus from vulnerabilities to resilience development. The purpose of this inductive qualitative study was to explore resilience development in the accounts of LGBTQ adults by analyzing videos posted for the It Gets Better social media campaign (n = 21). Four major themes emerged: (1) leaving hostile social environments; (2) experiencing “coming out” in meaningful ways; (3) remembering the social environment; and (4) turning challenges into opportunities and strengths. These findings suggest that, despite the campaign's premise, life did not automatically get better for the LGBTQ participants. Rather, the findings offer a nuanced look at the pathways to resilience development. Implications for social work practice are discussed.     

Responding to student mental health concerns in social work education: reflective questions for social work educators

In this paper, we explore ways in which social work educators might respond to students who report that mental health issues underlie their difficulty in meeting core competencies, or otherwise use the language of mental health to describe their struggles to succeed in social work programs. We discuss various trends in policy responses in Canada, the US, the UK, and Ireland. While there are general policy trends, it is clear that responding to these kinds of issues requires the development of highly flexible and situated policy processes that can respond to student realities, concern for students’ rights and privacy, and an awareness of potential discrimination against students. These processes also need to meet the specificities of practicums, particular institutional policies, the mandates of relevant professional bodies, and the precise local legislative framework that shapes these situations. Given these varying contexts, in this conceptual paper, we used a framework on disability that is informed by critical theory to engage existing school policies and propose a set of reflective questions that can guide schools of social work to create an overall responsive environment. These reflective questions are designed to help social work educators balance the rights and needs of students with the professional and institutional demands that students meet core competencies in their education.     

Queer Youth Space: A Protective Factor for Sexual Minority Youth

Physical, psychological, and social vulnerabilities of sexual minority youth are well documented. Yet factors that protect this population from these risks remain relatively unknown. Previous researchers suggest that (1) a sense of safety, meaningful relationships with others, and positive identity development are protective and (2) social support programs focusing on sexual minority youth (Queer Youth Space) have a positive impact. In this article, Queer Youth Space is explored as a program that may promote protective factors and mediate risks. Theories of attachment, self psychology, and social identity are applied to conceptualize Queer Youth Space and its protective roles. Implications for social work practice and research are discussed.     

Asymptotic theory for local estimators based on Bregman divergence

This article is concerned with asymptotic theory for local estimators based on Bregman divergence. We consider a localized version of Bregman divergence induced by a kernel weight and minimize it to obtain the local estimator. We provide a rigorous proof for the asymptotic consistency of the local estimator in a situation where both the sample size and the bandwidth involved in the kernel weight increase. Asymptotic normality of the local estimator is also developed under the same asymptotic scenario. Monte Carlo simulations are also performed to confirm the theoretical results. The Canadian Journal of Statistics 47: 628–652; 2019 © 2019 Statistical Society of Canada     

Can I Trust You? Laterality of Facial Trustworthiness in an Economic Game

People tend to turn their left or right cheek to express or conceal emotions, respectively. We examined the lateral posing bias for displaying trustworthiness during a trust game in which participants and their virtual partners cooperated or did not cooperate with their counterparts to earn a monetary reward. Right-handed participants (N = 81) were asked to pose for a photograph and then play the trust game. Participants showed an overall left posing bias (i.e., showing their left cheek to the camera). The left cheek bias was more stable for participants that cooperated very little in the trust game (non-cooperators) than for those that cooperated a lot (cooperators). In the rating experiment (N = 28 and 25), non-cooperators showing their left cheek were rated equally as trustworthy as cooperators. On the other hand, non-cooperators who showed their right cheek were rated as less trustworthy than cooperators. These results suggest that non-cooperators intuitively use the left hemiface to exploit others in social interactions.     

Social services for sexual minority youth: Preferences for what,where, and how services are delivered

As part of an internet-based study to investigate experiences of sexual minority youth in the U.S., 544 youth, ages 14–19, were surveyed about their need for services, where they preferred to receive these services, and their preferred method of service delivery. The survey was anonymous and youth were recruited from LGBTQ-specific listservs and venues as well as through social networking sites as a way of reaching youth often not represented in LGBTQ surveys. Youth highly endorsed many types of services, settings, and modes of delivery. Some subgroup differences emerged. Transgender youth and those uncertain about their gender identity expressed stronger interest than others in services to address stress, family issues, and self-defense, and in receiving support and guidance from LGBTQ adults. Few differences in service preferences along demographic lines such as race/ethnicity emerged; however, African American youth were more likely than others to prefer services offered in a place of worship. Contrary to predictions, geographic and community variables were not related to service type, delivery format, or location preferences.