迈向社会建构性的专业化方向——关于中国社会工作专业化道路的反思

从20世纪80年代中期,中国开始恢复和重建专业化的社会工作体系,当中一直存在着的本土性工作和西方专业化工作的争论,社会工作教育和社会工作实践分离。进入21世纪以后,社会工作专业化进程开始加快,表现在社会工作教育体系迅速扩大,社会工作职业资格和注册制度开始出现,社会工作实践领域在扩展。当前,社会工作界的担心已经由如何发展转变为如何规范的问题。或者说,专业化进程已经进入到规范设定界限的状态,关注社会工作的专业纯洁性、社会地位和职业声望。本文从社会建构主义的角度,提醒在专业化初期,大家的关注重点应该由专业化规范回到拓展专业实践领域上来,推动务实的社会工作专业发展。      

论高校勤工助学管理工作体系中的教育功能

勤工助学是解决家庭经济困难学生生活困难的一个重要渠道,并有越来越多的大学生接受并参与到勤工助学工作中,其管理工作成为高校学生工作中的一个重要内容。文中对高校勤工助学管理工作进行了定位分析,得出学生思想教育和素质教育是勤工助学工作的立足点和归属点的结论,并就强化高校勤工助学体系的思想教育、素质教育功能提出了看法。     

加强和改进高校思想政治工作的思考

随着高教事业的改革和发展,新形式下的高校思想政治教育很多方面的情况都发生了深刻的变化,对思想政治工作提出了新课题。针对目前高校现状和思想教育变化的情况,从体系构建、动态队伍建设、工作方法和制度保障等四个方面,提出相应的加强和改进思想政治教育相应的实施对策。     

Scaling Back and Finding Flexibility: Gender Differences in Parents' Strategies to Manage Work–Family Conflict

Studies show that fathers report work–family conflict levels comparable to mothers. The authors examine gender differences in work‐related strategies used to ease such conflicts. The authors also test whether the presence of young children at home shapes parents' use of different strategies. They address these focal questions using panel data from the Canadian Work, Stress, and Health study (N = 306 fathers, 474 mothers). The authors find that mothers with young children are more likely to scale back on work demands when compared with fathers with young children, but mothers and fathers with older children are equally likely to pursue these strategies. Furthermore, women with young children and men with older children are more likely to seek increased schedule control as a result of work–family conflict when compared with their parent counterparts. The authors situate these findings in the vast literature on the consequences of work–family conflict.     

The Times They are A’changing: Multigenerational Family Simulations

Multigenerational households are increasingly affecting both the individual and family as well as community organizations and social policies. Social work and other family studies students can profit from educational modalities that use adult learning applications through a systems life-course perspective, the whole family aging over time. Family simulation software—addressing multigenerational families, such as two or more adult generations living together—builds on a previous paper (Marriage & Family Review, Feb. 2015). Social class, among other demographic and environmental variables, is emphasized. Agent-based family social network simulation of multigenerational families can facilitate experiential learning. An automatically generated life events report, based on both factual data and specific family characteristics, can be used as a classroom case study for role playing and assessing.     

No Room for Respectability: Boundary Work in Interaction at a Shanghai Rental

This article examines the dramaturgical challenges of doing boundary work for a group of college women living with non‐college women at an overcrowded rental. To regulate tenant conduct and maintain their sense of self‐worth, the college women engaged in defensive othering and constructed their identity as “high‐quality” people on the basis of their characterization of their less‐educated roommates as “low‐quality” people. Their strategy of gaining self‐worth at their roommates' expense violated basic rules of social interaction that require participants to give face to gain face. This study shows that, in addition to weakening group solidarity and reproducing social inequalities, defensive othering also undermines subordinates' effort to gain self‐worth in the co‐presence of other subordinates. A video abstract is available at http://tinyurl.com/yath4o65     

She persisted: the pursuit,persistence, & power of African American women in social work graduate programs at Historically Black Institutions (HBI)

Social work graduate programs have long grappled with ways to attract and retain students at the intersection of race and gender. The central structure of this analysis is a hermeneutic phenomenological qualitative study on the pursuit and persistence of African-American women in graduate Social Work programs at a Historically Black Institution (HBI). The data in this article were derived from the responses of 13 participants written in their own words. The themes that emerged around the pursuit of a social work degree were (a) service to Black communities, (b) resistance to misrecognition, and (c) a seat at the table. After sharing the salient characteristics of the findings, the article opens a discussion around the significance of HBIs in educating social workers to work in urban communities and the implications for policy and practice.     

Professional discretion and length of work experience: what findings from focus groups with care managers in elder care suggest

ABSTRACT

Research has explored how care managers in elder care – who often function as ‘street-level bureaucrats’ – regard professional discretion. The way in which length of work experience affects care managers’ use of professional discretion remains, however, unexplored. This article present findings from 12 focus groups with 60 care managers. By bringing attention to how care managers experience the needs assessment process, this article sheds light on how these ‘street-level bureaucrats’ struggle when they try to balance their clients’ needs against institutional frameworks and local guidelines. Length of work experience seems to play a role in how care managers claim to use professional discretion. Experienced care managers describe how they deviate from the guidelines at times in order to create an increased scope of action in their decision-making process. Those with less time in the profession describe greater difficulties in this respect. Findings suggest that research should explore if length of work experience plays a role in the actual way in which care managers assess needs and make decisions. As such, they contribute to our understanding of how needs assessment processes are navigated by professionals while also pointing towards the nature of professional discretion in gerontological social work.     

Initiative in work teams: adaptation and validation of the Personal Initiative at Group Level Scale / Iniciativa en los equipos de trabajo: adaptación y validación de la Escala de Iniciativa Personal a nivel Grupal

In this study, we conceptualize personal initiative as a collective construct and adapt and validate a scale to evaluate it with a sample of 308 Spanish participants belonging to 91 work teams. Personal initiative at group level is a behavioural syndrome in which the team shows an approach to work that is self-initiated, proactive, persistent, capable of modifying the atmosphere and pro organization. As a predictive variable, we analysed the climate for initiative as well as personal initiative at group level. The resulting variables that were analysed referred to organization and team performance, with the team productivity and innovation as the criteria, analysing radical innovation. The scale has suitable psychometric properties. The results show that there is a relationship between the two predictive variables. Furthermore, personal initiative at group level is related to team productivity, while the climate for initiative is related to innovation.