Field education in crisis: experiences of field education coordinators in Canada

Significant multi-layered challenges with delivering quality practicum experiences to social work students have led field education coordinators to release a joint statement that social work field education in Canada is in a state of crisis. This article presents the results of a two-year mixed methods study that sought to investigate and describe the challenges in order to enhance understanding of the crisis from the perspective of Canadian social work field education coordinators. The results indicate that social work education programs in Canada face four key challenges in regard to field education that can be further divided into two sections: (a) the social work practice field and (b) social work field education administration. The two key challenges associated with the social work practice field are: (a) social work practice contexts and realities and (b) practicum shortages and saturation. The two key challenges associated with social work field education administration are: (a) practicum procurement and field instructor recruitment and retention; and (b) expectations and workloads of field education coordinators. To address these challenges, collaborative development of a multi-level strategy aimed at moving beyond the current state of crisis toward a sustainable model of social work field education in Canada is recommended.     

Infants Discriminate the Affective Expressions of their Peers: The Roles of Age and Familiarization Time

Research examining infants’ discrimination of affect often uses unfamiliar faces and voices of adults. Recently, research has examined infant discrimination of affect in familiar faces and voices. In much of this research, infants were habituated to the affective expressions using a “standard” 50% habituation criterion. We extend this line of research by examining infants’ discrimination of unfamiliar peers’, that is, 4‐month‐olds, dynamic, facial, and vocal affective expressions and assessing how discrimination is affected by changing the habituation criterion. In two experiments, using an infant‐controlled habituation design, we explored 3‐ and 5‐month‐olds’ discrimination of their peers’ dynamic audiovisual displays of positive and negative expressions of affect. Results of Experiment 1, using a 50% habituation criterion, revealed that 5‐month‐olds, but not 3‐month‐olds discriminated the affective expressions of their peers. In Experiment 2, we examined whether 3‐month‐olds’ lack of discrimination in Experiment 1 was a result of insufficient habituation (i.e., familiarization). Specifically, 3‐month‐olds were habituated using a 70% habituation criterion, providing them with longer familiarization time. Results revealed that using the more stringent habituation criterion, 3‐month‐olds showed longer habituation times, that is increased familiarization, and discriminated their peers’ affective expressions. Results are discussed in terms of infants’ discrimination of affect, the role of familiarization time, and limitations of the 50% habituation criterion.     

Why have relative rates of class mobility become more equal among women in Britain?

In a previous paper it has been shown that across three cohorts of men and women born in Britain in 1946, 1958 and 1970 a gender difference exists in regard to relative rates of class mobility. For men these rates display an essential stability but for women they become more equal. The aim of the present paper is to shed light on the causes of this trend—or, that is, of increasing social fluidity—among women. We begin by considering a refined version of the perverse fluidity hypothesis: that is, one that proposes that part‐time work leads to increasing downward worklife mobility among women that also entails downward intergenerational mobility and thus promotes greater fluidity. We do in fact find that the increase in fluidity is very largely, if not entirely, confined to women who have had at least one period of part‐time work. However, a more direct test of the hypothesis is not supportive. We are then led to investigate whether it is not that part‐time working itself is the crucial factor but rather that women who subsequently work part‐time already differ from those who do not at entry into employment. We find that eventual full‐ and part‐timers do not differ in their class origins nor, in any systematic way, in their educational qualifications. But there is a marked and increasing difference in the levels of employment at which they make their labour market entry. Eventual part‐timers are more likely than eventual full‐timers to enter in working‐class positions, regardless of their class origins and qualifications. Insofar as these women are from more advantaged origins, they would appear not to seek to exploit their advantages to the same extent as do full‐timers in order to advance their own work careers. And it is, then, in the downward mobility accepted by these women—who increase in number across the cohorts—that we would locate the main source of the weakening association between class origins and destinations that is revealed among women at large.     

Continued childbearing among women who were pregnant as adolescents

Conclusions The data presented in this paper and the earlier one in this series suggest that the effects of special comprehensive programs for school age mothers are seen most clearly in delay of the first pregnancy subsequent to the programs, as originally indicated by Klerman and Jekel (1973). Rather than terminating childbearing after the second pregnancy, those young mothers who had one subsequent pregnancy usually went on to become pregnant again rather quickly.A question can be raised about the generalizability of the finding from this study which is based on a rather small, black, poverty-lever sample. Although Furstenberg's (1976) results support those of this report in a population with similar characteristics, additional studies of white and non-poverty populations receiving a variety of services are critically needed if the country is to understand the phenomenon of adolescent pregnancy and find effective ways of minimizing its consequences.This study was supported by Grant #MC-R-090357 from the Maternal and Child Health Service, Public Health Service, Dept. of Health, Education and Welfare.     

Perceiving the Real World: Infants' Detection of and Memory for Social Information

Research on infants' perception and memory for social information are discussed with respect to the concept of ecological validity. We argue that the use of dynamic, multimodal displays in familiar contexts is critical to understanding infants' developing perception. We also discuss the importance of generalizing appropriately from experimental to real‐world contexts and of using converging methods in the investigation of infants' capabilities.     

Public Perceptions of Risk and Preference-Based Values of Safety

This article reports the results of two studies aimed at estimating preference-based values of safety in three contexts—namely rail, domestic fires and fires in public places—relative to the corresponding value for roads using matching (or equivalence) questions. In addition, both studies included a variety of questions intended to shed light on respondents' perceptions of risk and attitudes to safety in the various contexts. While the two studies were, to all intents and purposes, identical in the procedure that they employed, the essential difference between them was that the first study took place in late 1998, whereas the second study was carried out in early 2000 in the aftermath of a major rail accident at Ladbroke Grove near London's Paddington station which occurred in October 1999 and in which 29 passengers and 2 train drivers died. In addition, the second study sample was deliberately weighted to contain an above-average proportion of regular rail users. These studies demonstrated how certain factors which have been shown to affect people's perception of risk (see Slovic, P. (1992). In S. Krimsky and D. Golding (eds.), Social Theories of Risk, Westport, CT: Praeger, pp. 117–152) also affected our respondents' priorities over safety programs. The results also showed however, that the impact of these perceptions upon the trade-offs between preventing deaths in different hazard contexts was a good deal less pronounced than has been suggested by the value differentials that are currently implicit—and in some cases, explicit—in public policy making.     

The expression of mourning in an eight-year-old girl

This is a case of a just-turned eight-year-old girl whose mother was murdered on September 18, 1983. Since the child was already in treatment, the mourning process started immediately and continued until the end of June 1984. The case is distinctive because of the relative ease with which this child was engaged in the process and educated to it. Unconscious feelings readily emerged because they had been so recently repressed. The mourning was accomplished mainly through the process of interpretation of her play and behavior, although at times she would bring things up directly. The focus of therapy remained on the mourning during the entire nine months of treatment.