Gatekeeping in Graduate Social Work Education: Should Personality Traits be Considered?

To begin to systematically determine what qualities may be most useful for social work students and developing practitioners from a gatekeeping standpoint, this study explored the relationship between personality traits among first-year MSW students and performance in the field and classroom. Results indicated that there is a relationship between some personality traits and performance in the field and classroom. Findings from this study support previous research in allied disciplines indicating that personality traits are relevant to professional training and occupational success. They also lend support to recent literature in social work, which has recognized personal characteristics or attributes as critical to success in practice. Implications regarding gatekeeping, the US Council on Social Work Education's implicit and explicit curricula, and signature pedagogy are discussed.     

Family involvement in decision making in child protection and care: four types of case conference

Since the early 1980s the child protection and care system of Victoria, Australia, has seen the elaboration and diversification of decision making forums, with variable levels of participation by parents and older children. This paper identifies four forums which occur at different stages of the protective process and are held under different auspices and with different membership and purposes. This paper describes and compares these mechanisms with a view to clarifying their distinctive contributions and commonalities, and elaborates issues relating to how 'family' is conceptualized, underlying tensions in protective worker-family relationships, the process of participation, and the management of multiple case planning processes. The paper discusses problems that arise as multiple mechanisms become institutionalized within the same child protection system, and some limitations of participatory case planning in producing systems change.     

An intensive reunification program for children in foster care

While the Intensive Family Preservation Services (IFPS) model is widely used in preventing out-of-home placement, its application to reunifying foster children with their families has produced mixed results. This pilot project combined elements of the IFPS model with foster care-related services that included foster parent training and support, foster parent-parent linkage, and frequent parental visiting. Of 42 participating foster children, 79% were successfully reunified. At follow-up one year after their exit from the project, 91% of reunified children were still living with their family. Reunification was significantly associated with several characteristics of the families studied.     

Perceived Power and Physical Violence in Marital Conflict

Relations among perceived marital power, the demand/withdraw interaction pattern, and self-reports of the use of verbal aggression and physical violence were examined in a sample of 42 married couples. Couples completed several self-report questionnaires and discussed two areas of marital dissatisfaction, one identified by the wife and one identified by the husband. These interactions were rated for the use of the demand/withdraw interaction pattern. Regression analyses revealed that lower levels of perceived power by the husbands and higher levels of perceived power by the wives were associated with the use of verbal aggression and violence by husbands and wives, the husband demand/wife withdraw interaction pattern was associated with husband's use of verbal aggression, and the wife demand/husband withdraw pattern was associated with husband's verbal aggression and violence and with wife's violence.     

Pathological Gamblers: Inpatients’ versus Outpatients’ Characteristics

Several researchers and clinicians have questioned the advantages and disadvantages of inpatient and outpatient treatment for people suffering from pathological gambling. This study compares the characteristics of pathological gamblers seeking inpatient and outpatient treatment. A total of 233 pathological gamblers (inpatients = 134, outpatients = 99) participated in the study. Results show that inpatients have more severe gambling problems than those receiving outpatient services. Similar results were obtained on most other related variables such as anxiety, depression, alcohol consumption, and comorbidity. These results are discussed in terms of the costs and benefits of these two treatment modalities.     

Visualizing the landscape and evolution of leadership research

Complementing prior quantitative and qualitative reviews of the leadership literature, we conduct a bibliometric analysis of leadership articles. Our bibliometric review provides a different perspective by portraying the landscape and developmental trajectory of leadership research over time via co-citation and co-occurrence analyses. Using a scientific visualization tool CiteSpace and 6528 leadership works collected from the Web of Science database from 1990 to 2017, we detect and visualize the landscape of leadership research and track how this landscape has evolved. After mapping the landscape, we discuss the insights gleaned from our bibliometric review, with a focus on open questions, future research directions, and implications. In doing so, our review provides readers with a systematic understanding of the development of the leadership field and a roadmap to spark leadership research and move this literature forward.     

Sino-liberalism: the socialist market and the neoliberal concept of freedom

The very notion of China’s ‘socialist market economy’ presents us with numerous paradoxes, such as the way it challenges former distinctions made between democratic and Communist systems. This paper examines the rhetorical dimensions of Milton Friedman’s seminal text, Capitalism and freedom (1962), and demonstrates how literary analysis can make an important contribution towards our understanding of the formation of neoliberal ideology. Drawing on critiques of Chinese capitalism mounted by Zhu Wen in his 1994 short story ‘I Love Dollars’, and the essays in Yu Hua’s China in ten words collection (2011), I show the extent to which the perceived discordance between neoliberalism and socialism is grounded in bi-polar Cold War formations. This examination of neoliberal ideals across three literary genres highlights the layers of fiction, and truth, that are present equally within those designated categories of prose, non-fiction, and economic tract.     

‘Roots and wings’: an exploration of intergenerational play

Play is an important part of life, not only during childhood but also into adulthood and later life. While scholars have emphasized the physical, social, psychological, and cognitive benefits of play for children, few researchers have explored the role of play in later life. One context in which aging adults find opportunities to play is with their grandchildren. This qualitative study employed visual and text analyses to explore the experience of intergenerational play from the perspectives of grandchildren and grandparents. Findings indicated that both groups of participants were motivated to engage in play together, negotiated constraints to experience play, and received various benefits from playing with their grandparent or grandchild. Recommendations are provided to assist professionals in programming for intergenerational play and for further exploration of the motivations, benefits, and constraints associated with intergenerational play.