Distance education and international social work education

As a result of the development of new communication technology, distance education has become a rapidly growing area over the last few decades. Market and commercial pressures are major factors in its developing impact. Distance education has also been applied to social work education. Because it is a small field it may be both positively and negatively affected. Social work education requires face-to-face communication training. Educators need to respond to the limitations of distance education technologies and processes to provide for cultural and linguistic diversity, through openness to joint work across different cultures, anti-standardisation and -discrimination, reflexivity, user control and resources, and cultural and language translation.     

Authors and audiences: Towards a sociology of case recording

An important aspect of case recording is that it is a social relationship between authors and audiences, as well as a system of information storage and retrieval. From the sociological perspective, three aspects of case recording are reviewed: the social relationship between authors and potential audiences, power relations between them, and the interpretation of reality which takes place within the social relationship of case recording. Consequences of this perspective for case recording within social work and within agencies are reviewed. It is argued that a sociological perspective of case recording both explains and helps to analyse difficulties in the use of case recording in practice.     

Reality-play--experiential learning in social work training

A unique teaching model, called reality-play, arose as the result of the author's two concerns about how to teach students to integrate a theoretical model as a working tool in social work and how to prevent them from categorising people. In this teaching approach students have to go through a whole social work process by using their own real life challenges as learning material. The purpose is to learn social work from the perspective of a social worker, a user and an observer at the same time. The paper is divided into two parts. The first paper introduced the teaching model, showed how it built on an overall theoretical perspective of social constructionism, and on learning theories of adult, experiential and confluent learning to meet the concerns mentioned above. This second part presents a student evaluation of the teaching model in relation to three interwoven topics: involvement, integration of theory and practice, and awareness.     

Sleep among youths in foster care: Associations with potentially traumatic events,PTSD and mental health

Among maltreated youth in foster care, little is known about frequency of sleep problems and its association to potential traumatic events (PTEs) and mental health. Among youths in foster care, we examined: (1) sleep patterns, difficulties initiating and maintaining sleep (DIMS) and related functional impairment; (2) whether exposure to PTEs, symptoms of post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and general mental health problems are associated with DIMS and related functional impairment, controlling for age, gender and time in foster care; and (3) whether PTSD and general mental health problems mediate the association between PTEs and DIMS. Foster youths in Norway (n = 299) completed a survey on sleep behaviour, the Child and Adolescent Trauma Screen, and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire. Overall, 53.2% reported DIMS. For 82.1%, these sleep problems had lasted 3 months plus. Increased PTEs, PTSD and general mental health problems were all associated with increased DIMS score. Increased rate of PTEs was associated with decreased sleep duration. PTSD and general mental health problems partially mediated the association between PTEs and DIMS. Youth in foster care are at high risk of sleep problems, related to traumatic experiences and mental health problems. Treatment of PTSD may improve sleep problems among maltreated youth.     

在种族与国族之间:新加坡多元种族主义政策

本文在总结新加坡种族格局的形成的基础上,分析了该国的偶然独立造成的国族认同困境和新加坡政府40年来处理种族问题的主要政策,涉及住房、语言、教育、国防等方面。其经验和教训对中国有一定的借鉴意义。     

Edgeworth Expansion for Linear Regression Processes with Long-Memory Errors

This article provides an Edgeworth expansion for the distribution of the log-likelihood derivative LLD of the parameter of a time series generated by a linear regression model with Gaussian, stationary, and long-memory errors. Under some sets of conditions on the regression coefficients, the spectral density function, and the parameter values, an Edgeworth expansion of the density as well as the distribution function of a vector of centered and normalized derivatives of the plug-in log-likelihood PLL function of arbitrarily large order is established. This is done by extending the results of Lieberman et al. (2003 Lieberman , O. , Rousseau , J. , Zucker , D. M. ( 2003 ). Valid edgeworth expansions for the maximum likelihood estimator of the parameter of a stationary. gaussian, strongly dependent processes. it Ann. Statist. 31:586–612 . [Google Scholar]), who provided an Edgeworth expansion for the Gaussian stationary long-memory case, to our present model, which is a linear regression process with stationary Gaussian long-memory errors.     

Broadening the mind: Cross-national activities in social work

Cross-national activities in social work are claimed to be valuable because they 'broaden the mind' of participants. This paper argues that cross-national activities have as a result been uncritically valued, and proposes a more critical analysis. Drawing on examples of the authors' experiences, they argue that cross-national activity often misunderstands difference as cultural. Careful analysis of structural contexts, knowledge and process is crucial to evaluating cross-national work; this paper focuses on structure. Participants, their objectives and their power need to be examined: roles of stakeholders and 'ringmasters' distinguish different positions. To be successful, objectives need to progress towards more mutual, equal and committed participation of partners.