Assessing cases of child welfare requires the ability to engage with different sources of information systematically. This study examined how case-based learning (CBL) can be used to support social work students (N = 104) acquire knowledge crucial to assessing cases of child welfare and whether benefits of CBL could be maximized by structuring the…

The Circle of Insight is a dialectical, open, purposeful, and enlightening process that moves those engaged toward deeper, liberating insight. It is a pedagogical construct I created over the past 15 years that I have used in teaching and developing my social justice social work classes. It integrates a see, reflect, act cyclical process that is…

Social work is language work, and yet the profession has operated without a fully critical theory of language difference. Rather, a model of language as merely a neutral conduit of communication has prevailed, with the result that language issues have been addressed mostly as problems of translation. But a more rigorous approach to language as an…

Social work students are tasked with learning the meta and procedural competencies required of the profession while facing their own emotional responses to vulnerable populations and managing clients' difficult experiences. Social work educators can support students in exploring, understanding, and learning to tolerate, regulate, and manage their…

Privilege is one of the central constructs social work educators reference to increase self-awareness and concern about inequality, but it is often oversimplified. This article argues how the concept of privilege can be made more credible to learners by anchoring it to everyday business-as-usual decision making, stereotyping, and various…

Creation of a classroom environment safe enough for students to expess their perspectives, hear classmates views and engage in classroom dialogue remains a major challenge in social work teaching. Intergroup dialogue and Theatre of the Oppressed are two approaches that effectively meet these challenges. Intergroup dialogue offers a systematic…

The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program is an experiential learning program that involves teaching college courses inside correctional facilitates to classes that include incarcerated and nonincarcerated students. This teaching note describes the program and argues that its congruence with social work values makes it a valuable tool for preparing…

This article provides guidance in facilitating the development of culturally sensitive skills for working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) populations that take into account power and privilege. Social work faculty and students have an ethical obligation to be competent and aware of privilege. When working with LGBTQ…

There has been a call for social work programs to better prepare students for field education. This qualitative study examined an innovation titled Practice Fridays developed to enhance competence in MSW students in a classroom setting. Students (N=57) described what they learned through this simulation-based learning activity and the processes…

Social work practitioners increasingly use mindfulness techniques, and research into the impact of this practice is being explored by multiple related disciplines, such as psychology and education. Cultivating the potential benefits of mindfulness at multiple practice levels necessitates curricular integration of mindfulness training. This article…

This article presents data from a study of an intergroup dialogue (IGD) course in an urban Midwest MSW program guided by Derald Wing Sue's multicultural education model. IGD was used as an innovative pedagogy to meet the Council on Social Work Education mandate for cultural competence and social justice education. Results showed significant gains…

Social work educators are responsible for ensuring that future practitioners are culturally competent and have the ability to work effectively with people from different backgrounds. The purpose of this article is to address the current limitations in measuring cultural competence and to report the results of a qualitative study examining…

Although foundational practice classes play a key role in helping prepracticum students develop counseling skills, we know little about the effectiveness of this form of helping skills training. This study assessed the effect of helping skills training delivered in foundational practice classes on proximal indicators of counseling skills…

Social work literature provides analysis and strategies about teaching social work practice and its interrelationship with a diverse society. In this paper, we present a framework to aid instructors' understanding of and response to conflict in the classroom, which is unavoidable. We propose the "reflective practitioner paradigm" along with the…