Integrating Student Research Across the Social Work Curriculum: A Photovoice Case Study

2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justine McGovern
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Client Outcomes ◽  
Research Experiences ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Workforce Preparedness ◽  
Skill Building

Beyond reviewing ways to make research experiences available to undergraduate social work students, this article provides a step-by-step guide to implementing a one-semester qualitative research project adopting a photovoice design. Research in the classroom is a high-impact pedagogy with outcomes that support student success in the classroom and beyond. When applied to the social work curriculum, research experiences stand to improve client outcomes as well by improving workforce preparedness. Beyond providing a guide to implementation, this article reports on an evaluation of a project that advocates providing a wide range of research experiences to social work students to promote workforce preparedness through practice and research skill building and to improve client outcomes as a result.

The Dynamics of the Social Worker-Client Relationship

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Social Service Agencies ◽  
Field Placements ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Many

While the effectiveness of direct social work practice always requires one’s competence in providing a variety of intervention modalities, outcomes are also dependent on the social worker’s ability to develop and maintain constructive relationships with clients. This book describes in depth the many ways that such relationships can be developed with clients who display a wide range of presenting problems in many types of social service agencies. Each chapter focuses on a particular challenge that social workers may encounter in that process, including the benefits and limitations of theory selection, boundaries, the use of self, the working alliance, relationship ruptures, special issues presented by children and adolescents, terminations and transfers, clients about whom a social worker experiences highly positive or negative feelings, the uses of touch and humor, working with psychotic clients, and the uses of technology. The book is filled with case studies written by students to illustrate how relationships can be formed and challenges can be resolved. The book is targeted to social work students in their field placements, although it can also be useful for practicing professionals.

scholarly journals An educational intervention focused on teaching Qualified Empathy to social work students in Finland

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Eija Raatikainen ◽  
Leigh Anne Rauhala ◽  
Seija Mäenpää
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Educational Intervention ◽  
Research Question ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Emotional Reaction ◽  
Content Type ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Education

PurposeThe main goal of the one semester long intervention for first-year Bachelor of Social Services students was to enable them to increase their awareness of a variety of cultures and practices encountered in social pedagogical work and to support the development of their ability to interact empathically with clients.Design/methodology/approachThe aim of this article is to describe an educational intervention focused on teaching Qualified Empathic skills to social work students in higher education at Metropolia University of Applied Sciences in Finland. We introduce the concept of Qualified Empathy to describe professional empathic working skills and define it as: Qualified Empathy requires compassion for empathic action and it includes the ability for professional self-reflection, emotional skills and a healthy set of boundaries. Qualified Empathy encompasses the ability to tell the difference between sympathy and empathy, as it includes the capacity to use compassion to act in an empathic way in professional contexts (Raatikainen et al., 2017). The study was a case study, designed to explore the students' experiences of their one semester long educational intervention (n = 20). Our research question was: How do students construct Qualified Empathy as a dimension of their own professional expertise?FindingsThe results of the study demonstrate the progress areas of the students' Qualified Empathy skills. The development stages in the three progress areas are: (1) from emotional reaction to emotional response, (2) from understanding to empathic acting and (3) from client perspective to a more systemic approach. Implications of the results for Social Services students are discussed.Research limitations/implicationsIn this study, as in all studies, some limitations need to be taken into account. One limitation of this study is the size and “nature of data”. Secondly, challenges with the concept of Qualified Empathy need to be addressed and more research is needed to define it more concretely. Even so, as it is a new concept, we need more discussion on the differences in the definition of empathy and Qualified Empathy. However, this study offers one new perspective for discussion which is the need for empathy training, in social work education practices and in the field. An important ethical aspect of research emphasizes that its implementation must not be to the detriment of the people being researched (Juuti and Puusa, 2020, pp. 168).Practical implicationsOur findings demonstrate that educational interventions can improve students' empathy skills to more qualified skills. We emphasized that maintaining the skill demands continuous reflection as a lifelong process. This article provides an overview of an educational intervention to improve students' Qualified Empathy skills and suggests a definition for educators to frame the teaching of professional empathy or empathy in a professional context – especially in the social work context. Furthermore, with this educational intervention in social work, we offer a way to support the students to – not only – have a more professional approach to empathy but also to find a way to establish a more emotionally sustainable environment for professionals in social services. It is essential for social work education to focus on the growth of Qualified Empathy in students through supervision and guidance which supports their professional competence. By doing so, we contribute to the development of more sustainable working environments in the social work context.Social implicationsProfessional empathy is seen as an important factor in building a socially sustainable society from the perspectives of employees, clients and patients. We noticed that it is important to allow time and space for the learners to internalize the concept of Qualified Empathy. When we allow for this, students begin to recognize and assign more value to it and, as we suggest, they become more adept in their interactions and work with clients.Originality/valueThe study was a case study, designed to explore the students' experiences of their one semester long educational intervention (n = 20). Our research question was: How do students construct Qualified Empathy as a dimension of their own professional expertise? The results of the study demonstrate the progress areas of the students' Qualified Empathy skills. The development stages in the three progress areas are: (1) from emotional reaction to emotional response, (2) from understanding to empathic acting and (3) from client perspective to a more systemic approach. Implications of the results for Social Services students are discussed.

Social Design for Services Framework

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie SARANTOU ◽  
Satu MIETTINEN
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Sustainable Development ◽  
Research Group ◽  
Design Research ◽  
Service Design ◽  
Social Design ◽  
Practical Action ◽  
The Social ◽  
The World

This paper addresses the fields of social and service design in development contexts, practice-based and constructive design research. A framework for social design for services will be explored through the survey of existing literature, specifically by drawing on eight doctoral theses that were produced by the World Design research group. The work of World Design researcher-designers was guided by a strong ethos of social and service design for development in marginalised communities. The paper also draws on a case study in Namibia and South Africa titled ‘My Dream World’. This case study presents a good example of how the social design for services framework functions in practice during experimentation and research in the field. The social design for services framework transfers the World Design group’s research results into practical action, providing a tool for the facilitation of design and research processes for sustainable development in marginal contexts.

From converts to cooperation: Protestant internationalism, US missionaries and Indian Christians and ‘Professional’ social work between Boston and Bombay (c. 1920–1950)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Michael Phillipp Brunner
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
North America ◽  
Social Gospel ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Historical Approach ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Concerns ◽  
High Phase

Abstract The 1920s and 30s were a high phase of liberal missionary internationalism driven especially by American-led visions of the Social Gospel. As the missionary consensus shifted from proselytization to social concerns, the indigenization of missions and the role of the ‘younger churches’ outside of Europe and North America was brought into focus. This article shows how Protestant internationalism pursued a ‘Christian Sociology’ in dialogue with the field’s academic and professional form. Through the case study of settlement sociology and social work schemes by the American Marathi Mission (AMM) in Bombay, the article highlights the intricacies of applying internationalist visions in the field and asks how they were contested and shaped by local conditions and processes. Challenging a simplistic ‘secularization’ narrative, the article then argues that it was the liberal, anti-imperialist drive of the missionary discourse that eventually facilitated an American ‘professional imperialism’ in the development of secular social work in India. Adding local dynamics to the analysis of an internationalist discourse benefits the understanding of both Protestant internationalism and the genesis of Indian social work and shows the value of an integrated global micro-historical approach.

scholarly journals Dynamics of assertive behavior in the social work students

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (28) ◽  
pp. 14-21
Author(s):  
Anton Stoykov
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Social Worker ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Educational Process ◽  
Life Situation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Assertive Behavior ◽  
Personal Skills ◽  
Main Components

The article deals with the dynamics of assertive behavior in the Social Work students as assertiveness is one of the most important personal skills needed for the successful interaction between them and their Clients who face a difficult life situation. The characteristics of assertiveness have been theoretically determined paying special attention to the specifics of its manifestations in the interaction between the Social Worker and the Client. On the basis of the conducted empirical study involving Social Work students, analyzed is the dynamics of their assertive behavior based on some of its main components and on their integrity as a personal quality. Considering the research results, justified is the need of including in the educational process specially elaborated programmes with a main focus on the development of assertive behavior.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and the Five Stages Model In Selected Social Work Textbooks

2020 ◽  
pp. 105413732093230
Author(s):  
Charles A. Corr
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Human Services ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Educational Programs ◽  
The Social ◽  
Provision Of Care ◽  
Hospice Palliative Care

Professional social work is a discipline in which practitioners often find themselves engaged in addressing issues related to illness, crises, and loss. Professional social work is also a discipline with links to many associated disciplines, especially those in the social sciences such as psychology, sociology, and gerontology, as well as provision of care in such fields as hospice/palliative care, bereavement support, and counseling. Exploring some aspects of educational programs for professional social workers may help illuminate how professionals are prepared to function in many of these disciplines and areas of human services. This article offers a critical analysis of one limited but important aspect of the education offered to social work students, namely how the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and her five stages model are presented in five recent social work textbooks. In each case, there is a description and critical analysis of what authors of these five books write about these subjects. These analyses lead to suggestions concerning how these subjects should or should not be presented in educational programs for students and as guidelines for practice in social work, associated disciplines, and related areas of human services.

scholarly journals Digital Environmentalism: A Case Study of PM2.5 Pollution Issue in Chinese Social Media

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 76
Author(s):  
Yanshuang Zhang
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Air Pollution ◽  
Environmental Discourse ◽  
Social Actors ◽  
Discursive Strategies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Civil Discourse ◽  
The Common

The emergence of social media over the last decade has substantially altered not only the means people communicate with each other but also the whole online ecosystems. For the common public in particular, social media enables and broadens the social conversation that anyone interested can engage in on urgent social problems such as environmental pollution. In China, the ever-thickening air pollution smothering most urban cities in recent years has provoked a nationwide discussion, and popular social media like Weibo has been fully utilised by various social actors to participate in this “green speak”. This paper examines the civil discourse about the deteriorating air pollution on China’s largest microblogging platform-Sina Weibo, and seeks to understand how different social actors respond to and reconstruct the reality. Through a discourse analysis aided by a text analytics/ visualisation software—eximancer, this paper investigates the civil discourse from three angles: the demographics, the discursive strategies and the potential social effect. The result suggests that proactive civil engagement in this issue has produced an environmental discourse with a wide range of topics involved, and that the benign interactions between social actors could give rise to a proactive interactional mode between Chinese state and civil society which would definitely be beneficial to the democratisation process in contemporary China.

Israeli-Palestinian social work encounters

2020 ◽  
pp. 146801732094936
Author(s):  
Edith Blit-Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Minority Groups ◽  
Special Kind ◽  
Social Work Students ◽  
Field Work ◽  
Structural Factors ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
Case Study Analysis ◽  
East Jerusalem

Summary This study deals with the encounters of Arab social work students who are citizens of Israel, with Palestinian clients from East Jerusalem. The study was based on interviews with social work students who carried out their field work in East Jerusalem. This article discusses a special kind of transcultural practice in social work on the basis of a case study analysis of the dynamics and strategies reported by 15 Arab Israeli citizens students regarding their practice with Palestinian Arabs from East Jerusalem. Findings The findings indicate two themes: (1) The encounters aroused inner-personal conflicts regarding the students’ identity. (2) The students noted the importance of creating a dialogue with the clients as a way of coping with the difficulties entailed by their work. Applications This case study calls attention to the importance of embracing a transcultural perspective in practice theory. A transcultural perspective needs to go beyond the conceptualization of culture and ethnicity to include other relevant contextual variables such as structural factors, power relations, and an understanding of the political context. In addition, academic institutions need to develop culturally sensitive training programs while creating a safe space to discuss cultural challenges and while clarifying different identities faced by social work students from minority groups who share similar backgrounds with their clients.

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