The Social Work Dimensions of Diversity Library Guide
One of my favorite parts of teaching social work is watching students discover the connections between theory and practice, especially those moments when social justice moves from abstract ideas to meaningful frameworks for understanding the world. Finding the right learning resources, such as a book, movie or podcast, to facilitate those discoveries hasn’t always been easy.
Like many of you, I’ve spent countless hours searching for materials that do more than just acknowledge diversity. I wanted resources that helped students understand how systems of power and privilege actually shape people’s lives, materials that centered the voices of those most affected by oppression. I also realized that if I, as a full-time educator, was spending a lot of time finding these resources, our adjunct faculty might be struggling too. Given that the Council on Social Work Education’s 2022 Educational Policies and Accreditation Standards (CSWE, 2022) now embeds requirements for diversity and equity content throughout social work curricula, I wanted to find a way to curate and share resources.
This idea led to an exciting collaboration with Dana Hettich, a reference librarian at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Libraries. Together with help from Lana Turner, MSW Student and soon-to-be UAB alumnus, we developed the Social Work Dimensions of Diversity Library Guide, a project that has become more than just a teaching resource. It’s evolved into a living, collaborative space where students, faculty, and librarians work together to build something meaningful.
Call for Contributions: Help Us Expand the Community-Engaged Learning Toolkit
My colleagues, Drs. Nathalie Jones, Melanie Sage, and I are excited to invite submissions for an expanded edition of the Professionalism for Community-Engaged Learning Student Workbook and a new Educator’s Guide. This expanded resource will enhance teaching and learning by offering structured assignments, reflective activities, and instructional strategies that prepare students for professionalism in community-based learning.
About the Project
The Professionalism for Community-Engaged Learning Student Workbook is part of the Professionalism for Community-Engaged Learning Toolkit. This Toolkit provides resources and learning activities emphasizing the practical skills and knowledge necessary for novice student learners to thrive in community-engaged learning projects (such as volunteering and service learning) in higher education.
Drawing from Social Work Education and applicable to other fields, this workbook is designed to assist student learners in developing the knowledge and skills essential for a professional demeanor during community-engaged learning projects, concentrating on behavior, appearance, and communication in oral, written, and electronic formats. The workbook includes three sections:
Key Components for Effective Social Work Assignments
As social work educators, we create assignments to give our students opportunities to learn about the profession and develop competencies needed for social practice. Assignments also offer a way to assess if students are growing in their understanding of how to be professional social workers. Assignments can range from reading a chapter in the course textbook to a 20-page research paper and more. I have shared many assignments on this blog that I have used in various classes. What I have learned over the years is that it takes effort and structure to create a quality assignment that will help students connect what they are learning in the classroom to their field experience and beyond. In this blog post, I share my thoughts on how to structure an assignment that is clear and contextualized for the social work profession, using three simple questions – Why?, What?, and How?
The Power of Words: Using Poetic Analysis in a Social Work Research Course
Editor’s Note: This blog post was written by Amber Sutton, LICSW, ABD, a social work instructor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, in collaboration with students from her undergraduate social work research course during the Spring 2022 semester. The students are (in alphabetical order): Iva Burdette, Jackie Chavez-Martinez, Jennifer Dussich, Courtney Kramer-Williams, Katie Kramer, Hannah Marsh, Rachel Shunnarah, Natalie Trammell, Ahmia Vain, and Ella Wolfe. In this blog post, Amber and the students share how they used poetic analysis to answer some age-old questions – What does it mean to be a social worker, and what is research? You can also read their two poems.
When agreeing to teach SW 320 Research Methods to BSW students at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), I knew I wanted to highlight alternative ways to conduct research that add an element of humanity to the data and encourage the students to use research to share power.
We started the class by reading Ann Hartman’s 1990 article, The Many Ways of Knowing. This article remains just as relevant today as it did then and has played a fundamental role in developing my relationship with research. Hartman’s editorial essay calls on social workers to recognize that each contribution adds to our knowledge and deepens our understanding. She boldly states, “there are many truths, and there are many ways of knowing” (p. 3). This article served as the foundation of the course because I wanted the students to understand that quantitative and qualitative methods are an integral part of social work research. Our profession misses out when we center on quantitative research as the only valid way of knowing.
During our very first class, I provided large post-it notes and markers. Then, allotting 20 minutes, I asked the students to answer these two questions in a way that felt most comfortable to them (words, drawings, etc.):
- What does being a professional social worker mean to you?
- How do you define research?
Two Ways to Decolonize a Social Work Research Course
Editor’s Note: Dr. Amy Werman, DSW, LCSW, is a Lecturer in Discipline at the Columbia School of Social Work, with over 20 years of teaching experience in social work education. In this blog post, she shares two practical suggestions for social work research courses, focusing on ways to decolonize traditional content and integrate an anti-racist/anti-oppressive approach to teaching about research methodology.
For the past 20 years, I have been educating MSW students. The first course I ever taught was Research Methods, an “interesting” initiation into the field of teaching considering that most students would never choose to take this first-year course were it not required. How do I know this? It is a question on a survey that I give my research students at the beginning of every semester. And, consistently, 50% of students say that, given a choice, they would not take the course.
It’s understandable. If we’re being completely honest, social workers are in the business of “doing,” whether that’s providing concrete services, administering programs, writing policy, or ameliorating a host of micro-level to macro-level problems on the local and global level. Students struggle to comprehend how studying research relates to their endgame of “doing.” Moreover, many students report having a fear of research, viewing it as something to get through. Incoming students offer words like “boring,” “overwhelming,” “statistics,” and “intimidating” when I ask them to free-associate to the term “research.”
Re-Capping Teaching & Learning in SWK for 2021
One of my academic favorites is Dr. Katie Linder who produces a podcast called You’ve Got This, where she offers advice and examples for other academics as they navigate the world of higher education. Frequently, Katie talks about goal setting and how she works to accomplish her own goals. As I listened to her end-of-the-year podcast about her 2021 goals, all I could think about was my blog.
You see, every year, I set goals for this blog, and rarely do I accomplish these goals. Here is some of the evidence:
Review of Teaching & Learning in Social Work for 2019
Review of Teaching & Learning in Social Work for 2018
Review of Teaching & Learning in Social Work for 2017
Review of Teaching & Learning in Social Work Blog Posts for 2016
I even tried to set goals for the first quarter of 2020 and publish only seven blog posts. Sigh! Here they are:
Teaching & Learning in Social Work by Laurel Iverson Hitchcock is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License
