Social workers need to possess professional skills and personal qualities, often referred to as "soft skills," along with disciplinary knowledge, to be successful and to deliver high-quality client services. This study reports on the importance US social work faculty place on soft skills, the extent to which these faculty incorporate…

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…

Engaging in diversity and difference in practice is an essential skill for all social workers. The Council on Social Work Education emphasizes the importance of the development of these skills in social work education. The aim of this research was to influence best practice teaching standards and outcome measures for this competency. Self-study…

Academics at Griffith university envisioned a complementary learning and supportive relationship could be developed between Bachelor of Information Technology (BAIT) students and Master of Social Work (MSW) students. Discussions between discipline specific staff highlighted that each discipline had strengths and expertise that could assist…

Social work education is an academic discipline that prepares students to support individual, family, and community wellbeing, and to advance policies for social equity. Despite the increasing use of online education for social work, many social work faculty believe that online Master of Social Work (MSW) programs do not adequately prepare…

Little of social work literature provides evidence of best teaching practices for preparing social work students to work with clients from historically excluded racial and ethnic groups. A systematic literature review was conducted to assess studies published in the United States during the 10-year period (2007-2016) that examined: (1) social work…

This paper aims to interrogate some of the processes and tensions I faced in establishing a feminist space in a higher education institution in the UK context. The students I worked with needed to develop an understanding of social justice concepts such as anti-discrimination and anti-oppression in order to progress from their undergraduate…

The relevance of the problem under investigation is due to the high significance of preventive work with juvenile delinquents to society. The article aims to study the problems arising while developing students' competencies in professional activities for the prevention of the infringing behavior of juvenile delinquents, as well as the…

To strengthen students' preparation for engaging in field learning, an innovation was implemented to teach and assess foundation-year students' performance prior to entering field education. An Objective Structured Clinical Examination informed the final evaluation of students' performance in two companion courses on practice theory and skills.…

The current study sought input from a national sample of social work (SW) and criminal justice (CJ) educators ("N" = 276) to explore characteristics of those who use service learning in the two disciplines, differences in the conceptions of and beliefs about service learning, and distinctions in how it is used and implemented. This study…

The literature reveals scant research on self-care practices among social work students; yet self-care is vital as students prepare to be practitioners who are not only effective in working with all aspects of the clients' total selves, but who are themselves healthy. They are not prepared to be good practitioners unless they have first learned to…

Human Behavior in the Social Environment (HBSE) is an ideal location in which graduate social work students can enhance their critical reflection and writing skills while integrating social work theories with practice, research, and policy. A writing-intensive, learner-centered model using specific strategies is described via a framework of…

It is self-evident that we live in the age of inquiry where the negative impact of risk has been examined through numerous formal processes. In the wake of such scrutiny, there have been repeated recommendations for better training of the professionals charged with safeguarding the welfare of vulnerable individuals. Yet there has been very little…

Critical thought is a necessary element for proficient practice in social work at both the micro and macro levels. For this reason, social work educators must seek to integrate critical thought in BSW and MSW curricula. This article provides a method for achieving this integration in the social welfare policy course. The method includes the four…

Social work students enter the field of social work for many reasons--from wanting to become clinicians to wanting to advocate for a more socially just world. Social policy classes can be the ideal courses to provide instruction on conducting research on current policy issues. Teaching students about policy advocacy can lead to a class rich with…