Contract grading provides graduate-level students with greater control and autonomy within the learning process. The contract grading approach requires students to take greater responsibility for achieving course learning outcomes as well as allowing learners to adjust the style and focus of assignments to meet their own unique needs and desires.…

Research suggests that most college and beginning graduate students lack the cognitive complexity required to engage in effective practical and ethical reasoning. Studies on cognitive development support the view that how people approach complex problems varies significantly depending on the underlying epistemic assumptions they use to guide their…

In a postcolonial context, the influences of South African colonial and apartheid history are still visible, and much has been written about the need to decolonize learning and teaching practices. However, student protest movements point to a general dissatisfaction with the higher education context in a postcolonial and postapartheid society. In…

Cultural competence and cultural humility dominate discourses on practice across difference within social work and other helping professions. Despite their prominence, they remain contested constructs, thoroughly critiqued within the literature, and fall short in providing guidelines for intersectional practice across myriad differences. This…

Cultural immersion is a critical educational activity for developing greater cultural responsiveness. Analyzing journal entries written by students throughout their cultural immersion, we identified students' motivations, learning processes, and outcomes. Findings suggested developmental pathways that may assist counselor educators in stimulating…

The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on people's professional and personal lives is ongoing. The transition to remote teaching has particularly affected social work education due to its experiential methods incorporating a direct experience whereby students "learn by doing." This study examined the impact of the global pandemic and the…

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…

Counseling embraces creativity. As counselor educators, creativity is an opportunity to model vulnerability, identity, integrity, and connectedness (Palmer 2017) for students. McCarthy "Journal of Asia Pacific Counseling," 7(1), 37-45 (2017) posited questions about the infusion of creativity into the counselor education classroom. This…

In the 21st-century sociotechnical context where humans are steeped in information, approaches to social work education that foster students' capacities to critically consume and be well poised to reflexively apply information are critical. This article presents findings from a qualitative study designed to deepen understanding of social work…

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…

Disciplines that incorporate field education into their curriculum face similar challenges around fidelity and tracking of the integration of course work, field learning, and attainment of educational competencies. In social work curriculum, field education is identified as its signature pedagogy (CSWE, 2015), underscoring the importance of…

The action research describes the process of how the Counselling Self-Efficacy Scale for Teachers (CS-EST) was developed and explores its suitability as a teaching and learning tool using a pilot study of 178 students at Tallinn University, Estonia. The study integrated action research, interdisciplinary project-based learning, scale development…

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…

Peer observation of teaching has been adopted as a method to improve the quality of teaching. It involves observers providing descriptive feedback to their peers on learning and teaching practices. However, although extensively described in the literature in the education field, its use as a tool for development beyond teaching skills has not been…

The scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) has become a significant social movement. The newest "Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards" of the Council on Social Work Education explicitly identify SoTL as important in advancing social work education. This article considers social work education's role, relationship, and…