Tomorrow's Social Needs and Social Work Education

This paper presents a rationale and educational plan for teaching statistical orientation (not statistics per se) by means of a series of practice questions that are, at the same time, basic statistical questions. These questions include, for example, measures of central tendency, “What can typically be expected of the client's problem behavior?” and measures of variability, “What range of variation from the typical is typical?” Set in a context of practice, these types of questions do not seem to provoke the hostility among social work students that often typifies their reaction to traditional statistics courses.