Non-government organization study awards: enhancing successful completion of social work qualification

ABSTRACT

The current study used a sequential, exploratory mixed-method design to explore how a social work study scholarship implemented in Aotearoa New Zealand impacted on recipients’ qualification completion and their professional and practice competence. Phase one involved 13 individual interviews with past award recipients which described how the study award impacted on their qualification completion. Thematic analysis was used to extract themes. These themes were examined in the second phase through a quantitative battery completed by 107 past recipients to examine their professional and practice competence. The findings from interviews showed the award enabled recipients to complete their studies and improve their social work practice without causing undue stress or financial pressure on the recipient and their family. Quantitative analysis corroborated and extended these findings to demonstrate that the award contributed to lifting the level of social work knowledge, competence, and skills in the recipients. Accompanying the successful qualification completion, these qualified social workers were equipped with essential skills, promoting social work values and competence to contribute and safeguard the benefit of children, families, and communities. The awards offered a ‘wrap around’ support and was not limited by age or ethnicity but provided a support system to achieve qualification completion.     

A sociology of bullying: Placing youth aggression in social context

In this paper we review the sociological literature on peer aggression among adolescents and demonstrate how it can form the basis of a new subfield in sociology on the subject of bullying. Although sociologists have mostly avoided the term bullying in classic works on adolescent aggression, these studies suggest that institutional social control, status hierarchies and social inequalities provide important social context for youth aggression. While historically they have not been in dialog with each other, when taken together sociological research on youth status relations and social networks, systemic bias, school culture and social ecology can lay the foundation of a sociology of bullying. We suggest that if sociologists see this work as shedding light on issues of bullying, they can begin to play a larger role in the shaping of the national conversation on bullying and influence anti-bullying programs in schools to take better account of the social dimensions of bullying.     

‘James always hangs out here’: making space for place in studying masculinities at school

All learning is emplaced. It happens somewhere and it involves material things. It is located and situated. This paper focuses on spaces and places outside of the classroom where lessons about ‘self’ and ‘other’ are learnt. Drawing on recent research (‘Space, place and the making of masculinities in primary schools in Ireland’, O Donoghue, Journal of Curriculum and Pedagogy, 2006, volume 3), the paper analyses the stories/narratives of a group of ten and eleven year old boys, stories that tell of how they learn to speak, act and perform masculinities in school spaces and places. These performances, ‘naturalized’ through repetition and regulation, happen in spaces that exert significant effects on boys by opening up/closing off certain behavioural possibilities. The paper makes visible processes of doing and re/presenting research into masculinities and schooling in, with and through art. It argues that a research approach drawing on theories and processes of contemporary art practice offers much for conceptualizing, doing and representing research and provides opportunities that other research methods close off.     

Book Review: Scott L. McLean,David A. Schultz,and Manfred B. Steger (eds.), Social Capital: Critical Perspectives on Community and Bowling Alone,New York University Press,New York, 2002, 292 pp., foreword,index, $18.50 (paper), $55.00 (hbk)

VOLUNTAS: International Journal of Voluntary and Nonprofit Organizations -     

Colonial and post-colonial aspects of Australian identity

Since the 1988 Bicentennial and the 2001 centenary of federation celebrations colonial images have flourished in Australia, highlighting the roles of convicts and free settlers during early colonization. Old sites, such as Port Arthur have been re-invigorated, and in 2004 Tasmanians celebrated the bicentenary of 'white' settlement. However, social scientists have given little attention to the role of colonial and post-colonial figures and myths as aspects of Australian national identity. We seek to address this issue by examining how convicts, free settlers, bushrangers and ANZACs are associated with contemporary identity in Australia. We examine evidence from the 2003 Australian Survey of Social Attitudes and find that historical figures such as the ANZACs and post-World War II immigrants comprise important aspects of national identity. A substantial majority of Australians judged ANZACs to be important, countering recent claims of the 'demise of the digger'. Sporting heroes are also at the core of Australian identity. Colonial figures appear to be far less important, although views on national identity vary according to social location. In particular, left-wing, university educated, younger, postmaterialist Australians view convicts and bushrangers as relatively important, indicating the salience of the larrikin in Australian identity.     

The National Social Distance Study: Ten Years Later

The Bogardus social distance scale, which measures the level of acceptance that Americans feel toward members of the most common ethnic and racial groups in the United States, was administered six times nationally between 1920 and 2001. Replicating the most recent study with its revised list of ethnic and racial groups, the authors of this study analyzed a stratified random sample of 3,166 college students, making it the largest national social distance study ever conducted. The findings indicate an increase since 2001 in the mean level of social distance toward all ethnic groups, as well as in the spread between the groups with the highest and lowest levels of social distance. Further, a consistency between studies in group preferences reaffirms the relevance of the similarity‐attraction bond in accepting those who are racially and culturally different. Mean comparisons and analysis of variance tests also showed that gender, birthplace of respondents and/or their parents, race, and year in college are all significant indicators of the level of social distance toward groups.     

The “Replacement Child”: On Adoption,Haunting, and the Unlived Life

What does it mean to live in the shadow of an older sibling’s unlived life? This study draws on notions of haunting, guilt, fantasy, and envy to explore the experience of the “replacement child.” Art Spiegelman’s (1986) Maus tells the story of what it was like to occupy the place of his older brother, who died during the Holocaust. This is intertwined with my own account of adoption and replacement. The dead sibling is perceived as a ghostly presence, shaping the possibilities of who and what the “replacement child” will become.     

Social Housing Policy Challenges in Tasmania

This paper considers the social policy discourses that senior public housing and Non‐Government Organisation (NGO) housing managers employ to articulate and explain changes in social housing provision in Tasmania. We suggest that the Tasmanian social housing reform agenda is reflective of reforms in other Australian states. The period 2003–10 marked a time of policy change affecting social housing supply and policy discourse, which were influenced by neo‐liberal practices favouring multi‐actor governance models and financing. Interviews reveal that contradictory values and discourses were commonplace. Divergent views centred on the social goals and the efficiency elements of the new social policy focus, the Affordable Housing Strategy (AHS) and its eventual key delivery organisation, Tasmanian Affordable Housing Limited (TAHL). Despite constrained application, neo‐liberal processes remained strong within accounts of new social housing governance practices. We suggest that neo‐liberal practices have extended economic considerations into areas of social housing provision that were previously sheltered from market concerns.     

Challenging the Authority of the Medical Definition of Disability: an analysis of the resistance to the social constructionist paradigm

This article attempts to explain why the social constructionist paradigm has failed to replace the medical model in American disability theory. The social movement led by American disability activists attempted to reframe the definition of disability using a minority group model based on the social constructionist paradigm. This paper argues that the disability movement was unable to successfully advance the social constructionist paradigm because the activists accepted the Americans With Disabilities Act (1990) despite its ideological basis in the medical model of disability, and the social constructionist theory does not adequately account for the importance of structural constraints to redefinition.     

Citizenship,Civic Engagement and Property Ownership

In this paper we examine the relationship between citizenship, civic engagement and property ownership in Australia. We draw upon nationally representative survey data to examine this relationship by focusing upon empirically accessible issues. We examine the civic implications of different housing tenures, or what Troy (2000) refers to as the level of ‘citizen competence‘, and the tension between (private) ownership and (public) engagement in terms of membership and participation in a range of clubs and organisations. Lower levels of participation in charitable organisations among mortgage holders compared to people in other housing tenures questions the link between home buying (that is equated with private ownership), and a strengthening of community life. However, low participation rates in a clubs and organisations by public tenants, indicates that levels of social exclusion are higher in ‘residual’ public housing communities.