Suicide is a major public health issue in the United States and schools of social work have an important role to play in educating future social workers in suicide prevention. This article describes the results of a survey of BSW and MSW practice instructors (N = 259) exploring the strategies used to teach suicide content, including resources used…

Grounded in a framework of high-impact educational practices, this article offers a model for incorporating Community Based Participatory Action Research (CBPR) into the social work graduate curriculum. The authors review the history of CBPR in social work and social work education and identify challenges and gaps when CBPR has been used in…

To prepare students for competent practice in increasingly technology-enabled settings, social work curricula must provide ample opportunities for developing digital literacy. Incorporating digital stories as course assignments offer educators one promising approach. Despite the fact that digital stories can provide a powerful teaching strategy…

Students who are admitted into social work graduate programs juggle multiple responsibilities: coursework, field practice, employment, and personal. Such competing responsibilities can increase stress levels. Integrating self-care strategies into daily practice routines may benefit students by improving well-being and decreasing the chances of…

Although pedagogical fundamentals of teaching with technology appear in the literature, the use of podcasting in the classroom is primarily documented outside of social work education. This study explored outcomes of an assignment in which students create podcasts meant for consumption by people besides the instructor. The authors theorized that…

Self-awareness is important in social work education because it promotes knowledge, skill, and value development. However, little is written about the ways in which educators facilitate this process. A project was undertaken to design a new self-awareness assignment (SAA) and examine its value. The SAA's development, which relies on role-plays, is…

Students from six countries collaborated on projects promoting social justice and aimed at international diplomacy. The collaboration included social work students in policy courses and international students in English courses. Students explored topics such as human trafficking and poverty. Students identified global strategies for addressing…

Building active learning strategies into courses can be risky, but the benefits to students often outweigh the concerns, as in the case presented here. The process began as an attempt to employ experiential learning, through the use of photovoice, to enhance the teaching of an undergraduate social work research course. In later courses it…

For decades, group work scholars have described a discrepancy between student preparation for group work practice and opportunities to work with groups in the field practicum and professional practice. Educators in related disciplines such as counseling and psychology have expressed similar concerns. This article reports findings of a study of MSW…

This article examines how to prepare professional social workers for real-world nonprofit leadership roles. A pilot course assignment that incorporates a quasi-organization fieldwork simulation developed by the author is described. Development and application of critical thinking skills are reviewed, the course objective is explained, and methods…

Service learning is a powerful pedagogical tool linking community service to academic learning. Several steps are necessary to implement service learning effectively into the curriculum. This study uses a case example as an exploratory study to pilot-test data on how service learning impacts student outcomes. The paper will (1) provide an overview…

Commentators find that education in social group work has diminished over the past three decades, creating a shortage in group work-trained field instructors. The role of instructing group work students may appear relatively easy; however, quality instruction requires careful planning, time, energy, and specialized knowledge. Without knowledge and…

Teaching about racism creates challenging issues for educators and students alike. Using experiential learning and a public-access curriculum to teach about racism and social inequality, graduate and undergraduate students participated in this elective course. The hybrid "minimester" course focused on affective responses to classroom activities,…

This article examines findings from three focus groups conducted about resolving ethical dilemmas in the area of domestic violence. The study's findings point to the need to increase content on domestic violence throughout the social work curriculum and provide educational opportunities for field instructors and local professionals. Helping…

As a second article in a series devoted to an ongoing evaluation of our antiracism field project, a controversial assignment rooted in our Smith College School for Social Work's antiracism commitment, this paper focuses on the review of 128 assignments completed between September 1998-August 2000. A thematic analysis of these projects revealed…