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Volume 6, Number 2 Spring 2001 |
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Baccalaureate Social Work Student Attitudes toward Older Adults This study investigated the attitudes of baccalaureate social work students concerning older adults using the instrument constructed by Sanders, Montgomery, Pittman, and Balkwell (1984). That instrument assesses respondents' attitudes on 20 distinct characteristics of older women and men in three age categories, the young-old (65-74), the old-old (75-99), and centenarians (100+). Data were obtained from 204 students from an accredited undergraduate social work program in a major south Florida university in the spring semester of 1999. The data revealed that the minority of students (93.8%) had not taken any gerontology classes. Only 6.9% of respondents indicated that they were definitely planning to do their field practicum in a geriatric setting, and 4.0% indicated that they definitely intended to work with older adults. Overall student attitudes toward older adults were generally in the neutral range, however, those attitudes were more negative toward older age categories. Female student attitudes were more positive than male student attitudes. Older women were more positively regarded than their male counterparts. Students who indicated that they were close to older adults and who took gerontology classes had more positive attitudes. Future research and implications for social work education are discussed. Teaching Practice Wisdom: What Can We Learn from Family Medicine? This article examines the similarities and differences between family medicine and social work, their histories, principles, and relationships with the scientific community, in an attempt to establish a context for the discussion of teaching practice wisdom. The author discusses the conflicts between the empirical versus heuristic aspects of our discipline and how those have impeded our pedagogical progress. Four strategies used by family medicine are described: role modeling, mentoring, precepting, and peer teaching. Suggestions are given for how those can be better utilized in undergraduate social work education. A feminist postscript urges social work to honor its tradition as a female-dominated profession and to respect different ways of knowing. Baccalaureate Social Work Licensure: Its Effects on Salary and Use of Job Titles Texas' social work licensure statute limits the use of social work titles to licensed social workers. Yet the statute provides a loophole that allows human service agencies to employ unlicensed social workers, provided that those individuals do not use licensed titles. This study, which explored the relationship between social work licensure, job titles, and employment salary in an accredited undergraduate program, found that only half of the 1991 and 1996 graduates were licensed. Additionally, survey respondents (whether licensed or not) received comparable salaries, and the majority were assigned generic job titles including caseworker, casemanager, and other nonlicensed titles. Licensure exemptions at the baccalaureate level in Texas and elsewhere may pose a threat to the future viability of baccalaureate social work education. Compassion Fatigue Among Undergraduate Social Work Educators This study examines the extent of compassion fatigue among undergraduate social work educators. A modified version of the Compassion Fatigue Self Test (Figley, 1995a), along with questions relating to sources of support and stress, were sent to 195 undergraduate social work programs. The results indicated relatively low levels of compassion fatigue. However, faculty teaching field courses reported higher levels of compassion fatigue, as did faculty who claimed administrators and other faculty as their primary sources of stress. Implications of these findings for social work education are discussed. Listening to Student Voices: An Essential Element in Social Work Education Assessment This article reports findings from a qualitative research project that analyzed responses to open-ended questions on 363 exit surveys from four BSW programs. The questions related to student perceptions of department strengths, weaknesses, and field experience. The four participating schools used the same program monitoring model or package. Analysis of the data in its original form points to the importance of listening to student voices as part of educational assessment. Whereas input can be gained from Likert-scale questionnaire items, the nature of information stemming from narrative responses to open-ended questions reveals that students are informed partners in their knowledge of social work education. Their insights also point to areas that social work educators may not routinely consider as affecting the learning experiences of BSW students. Exploring the Effectiveness of Teaching Techniques with Lesbian and Gay Content in the Social Work Curriculum This study investigated the levels of homophobia before and after a single lecture on the topic in one undergraduate and two graduate social work classes. Using the Index of Attitudes Towards Homosexuals (IAH), pretest levels of homophobia were found to exceed the cutting point of 50 for 75% of the students in the undergraduate class. Although pretest-posttest mean scores were not found to be statistically significant, the percentage of students exceeding the IAH cutting score decreased in all three courses following a single lecture. The effect of two additional teaching units in the undergraduate course is discussed as well as recommendations for future research. Teaching Social Work Writing This article presents an approach to teaching social work writing within the core social work curriculum. Writing is recognized as being critical to effective professional practice and as an essential social work skill. Writing is also presented as a strategy for teaching social work knowledge, values, and skills. The authors share what they have learned and developed on the basis of their own teaching experiences with baccalaureate social work students. They identify nine purposes of social work writing, linking assignments with each purpose and discussing how the assignments can be used to teach social work writing skills concurrently with other core social work skills.
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