Children's Views of Family Group Conferences

The note reports one part of a research study which looked atthe experiences of the first twenty families who participatedin a family group conference pilot project. The research reportsthe largely positive views of twenty children aged between sixand sixteen who were interviewed and/or returned questionnaires.Based on the experiences of the children in this project, children’sinclusion in family group conferences is generally to be encouraged.They mostly valued the experience of being consulted and welcomedopportunities for families to develop relationships and worktogether on issues, free from the attentions of social services.Nonetheless, although family group conferences can usefullyinclude children and have a clear role in child welfare practice,they are not necessarily the route to empowering practice forall children and families.     

Student Attitudes,Knowledge, and Skill Related to Research Training

Thirty-two first year graduate social work students were tested at the beginning and end of the academic year to determine the differences between those with undergraduate research courses and those with no past research instruction in terms of knowledge, skills, and attitudes, as well as changes in both groups. Results showed no significant differences in the amount of change between the two groups and past research instruction did not predict competency in research A positive change was noted in attitudes related to research knowledge, skills, and interest in the total group.     

Applying Critical Consciousness and Evidence-Based Practice Decision-Making: A Framework for Clinical Social Work Practice

Social work education is increasingly driven by the established movement of evidence-based practice (EBP) that drives the delivery of mental health care with the promise of providing treatments that work and greater efficiency. This emphasis on EBP coexists with the profession’s expressed commitment to social justice. Social work literature rarely addresses the complexities of EBP decision-making in relation to social justice. Rather, separate conversations either explore the commitment to social justice through a reflective approach to practice decision-making or take a positivist approach to scientific inquiry. This article offers a framework to apply critical consciousness and EBP decision-making that integrates reflective and positivist approaches to facilitate processes and outcomes that amplify social justice aims in social work practice.     

Teaching Human Behavior and the Social Environment to Enhance Students' Personal Epistemology

Current trends in education practices focus on student's personal epistemologies and their development. Two social work educators took specific steps to attempt to enhance the personal epistemologies of the social work students in their courses in human behavior in the social environment. One instructor repeated the trajectory of the reflective judgment model in her lectures, and the other gave a series of assignments that presented students with ill-structured problems to solve. Preliminary qualitative and quantitative data provided support for their subjective judgments that the teaching methods assisted students in moving toward more sophisticated personal epistemology. This article outlines the teaching methods and the data used and the current literature on personal epistemology.     

Contests for Professional Status: Community College Faculty in Sociology

Community colleges are playing an increasingly important and visible role in higher education in the United States. However, the additional attention to community colleges has not produced the same degree of recognition regarding the importance and needs of the faculty within those institutions, who make up about 27 percent of all faculty members nation-wide. This article examines factors influencing the professional status of community college faculty. We argue that understanding the position of community college faculty in higher education today depends upon understanding that professional status is a dynamic and contested terrain, rather than a series of static characteristics. Following Abbott’s (1998) analysis of the efforts of librarians to achieve professional status, we consider how the changing structure of higher education in the United States may impact community college faculty as professionals, both positively and negatively. As one example of community college faculty raising their issues within a discipline-wide professional organization, we examine the current state of community college faculty with the American Sociological Association (ASA). We consider potential status changes for community college faculty in sociology within the context of the broad threats to the professional status of faculty across the higher education landscape. Paradoxically, these threats might result in an opening for efforts by community college faculty to improve their professional status, perhaps in coalition with faculty in other sectors of higher education.     

Notebooks as Projects in a History Course

This article focuses on high school students' knowledge and notions of citizenship after taking the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Naturalization Test. The students' test results and responses show emerging support for the need to make changes to the test as well as the students' limited conceptions of citizenship. In addition, this study's methodological benefits and challenges are discussed with implications for future research and practice.     

Intergenerational Assimilation by Intermarriage: Hispanic and Asian Immigrants

Using multigenerational data, intermarriage rates were examined among non-White, non-European immigrants to test two competing assimilation theories: classic assimilation theory and segmented assimilation theory. Later generations of Asian and Hispanic immigrants were more likely to outmarry than their first-generation relatives, an outcome predicted by both theories. High achieving Asians were not more likely to engage in outmarriage, whereas educational achievement was positively correlated with outmarriage rates among Hispanics. Classic assimilation theory predicts outmarriage only after structural assimilation is achieved; therefore, this study provided more evidence to support segmented assimilation theory. However, low socioeconomic status Hispanics and Asians were not more likely to outmarry non-Whites, as segmented assimilation theory would suggest.