From the Editor—In This Issue

This issue of the Journal of Social Work Education (JSWE) begins with a guest editorial from Editorial Advisory Board member Elissa Madden and two coauthors, Monica Faulkner and Donna Aguiniga. They argue that we are moving into a post–Roe v. Wade reality, when legal abortion may become less available and adoption is not the panacea for unintended pregnancies as proposed by many Pro-Life organizations. Given the effect of this potential abortion policy change, they argue that it is even more essential that social work students develop adoption competency informed by the needs of all members of the adoption triad and the tools to protect the rights, dignity, and autonomy of expectant parents. This editorial offers context for social work education and ethical adoption practices.

Next, this issue of JSWE offers three articles that report on results of three cross-sectional surveys of social work students or practitioners. The first, by Davis and Mirick, reports on a large survey of Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) students and their experiences with microaggressions during their social work education in “Microaggressions in Social Work Education: Learning From BSW Students’ Experiences.” These findings elucidate specific instructor behaviors that emerged from qualitative data as microaggressions, offering important information and implications for preventing these experiences in the classroom. The second survey, by Park, Torres, Bhuyan, Ao, Graves, and Rundle, reports on social workers’ attitudes toward immigrants in “Social Workers’ Perceptions of Structural Inequality and Immigrant Threat: Results From a National Survey.” Findings of this very large national survey highlight the challenges that social work education continues to face in educating social work students about immigrants and the structural barriers they experience. The third survey across five schools of social work was reported in “Individual Characteristics Associated With Color-Blind Racial Attitudes in Master of Social Work Students” by Becker, Leffler, and McCarthy. Results report on individual characteristics negatively and positively associated with color-blind attitudes and offer implications for social work education, such as ways to foster critical self-awareness of racial blind spots.

The next three articles in this issue report on various aspects of social work education. In “Does Distance Learning Facilitate Diversity and Access to MSW Education in Rural and Underserved Areas?,” Richwine, Erikson, and Salsberg report on an analysis of internal program graduate data to assess whether distance learning leads to increased diversity of social workers and practice in rural or underserved areas. Findings suggest that distance learning does achieve these outcomes, and implications for social work education are discussed. Keesler and Presnell report on a qualitative evaluation of a service-learning project offered in a first-year graduate research methods course in “Research-Centered Service-Learning: MSW Student Reflections on Interviewing Incarcerated Individuals.” They found this opportunity deepened student learning of research and the issues targeted with the research study. In “Social Justice Emphases on MSW Program Websites and in Their Curricula: A Mixed-Methods Study,” Rubin and Mytelka report on an analysis of Master of Social Work (MSW) program websites for content with a social justice emphasis, with supplemental semistructured telephone interviews with faculty members from programs with observed discrepancies between website content and course titles. Findings from this study and implications for social work education are discussed.

The next article, “Preparing Students for Complex Humanitarian Contexts,” by Townsend, describes the Preparation for Complex Humanitarian Contexts for Pre-Service Social Work Students education framework and reports on an autoethnography of the author’s experiences as a humanitarian worker and university academic faculty member supporting students during field education. Next, Ross, Traube, and Cederbaum describe the Social Work in Health Impact Model orientation to social work practice and discuss ways that it can be applied to problems of child abuse and neglect in “Applying the Social Work Health Impact Model to Child Maltreatment: Implications for Social Work Education.” This article offers specific strategies for adopting this model in clinical practice, and recommendations for U.S.-based social work education and training in child abuse and neglect prevention. The final article, by Sampson, Parrish, and Washburn, “Behavioral Health Training to Address the Needs of Adolescents: Outcomes of the GLOBE Youth Program,” describes the outcomes of a specialized graduate social work training program to prepare social work students to work in integrated/interprofessional behavioral healthcare settings with youth. This training program was associated with increased interprofessional competence and self-reported readiness to work in interprofessional settings with diverse youth and emerging adults with behavioral health needs. Implications for social work education are discussed.

The issue rounds out with five teaching notes and one research note. The first teaching note, by Malka, describes an innovative teaching approach in “Creative Place Making: An Interdisciplinary Meeting Point Between Social Work and Art Studies.” Implications for promoting interdisciplinary perspectives in social work education with this method are considered. Domyancich-Lee, Cleeland, and McCleary then present their teaching approach with graphic novels or comics in the classroom in “Comics in the Classroom: Teaching With Graphic Novels.” Specific graphic novels and their use in BSW and MSW classrooms are described, and implications for their use in social work education are discussed. In the teaching note “An Ecological Conceptual Framework for Preparing Social Work Students for Practice With Refugee Populations,” Hagues and Cecil propose a model for teaching social work students to practice with refugees using Bronfenbrenner’s ecological model. Next, Jackson analyzes prior Council on Social Work Education program meetings over 12 years to determine the frequency of sessions offering information on multiracial individuals and families in the teaching note “Challenging Monocentricity in Social Work Education: Creating Critical Counterspaces of Multiraciality.” Findings suggest minimal content, and this teaching note discusses the importance of such content and implications for social work education. Next, Pritzker, Lozano, and Cotlone describe an educational model implemented by a social work program that integrates voter engagement with education about systemic barriers that affect voting among marginalized populations in the teaching note “Preparing Students to Engage Voters Through the Lens of Political Justice.” This note discusses the connection of political justice to the social work Code of Ethics and discusses potential benefits of this educational experience. The research note “Equity and Justice in the Social Work Explicit Curriculum,” by Woo, Cano, and Pitt-Catsouphes, reports on the analysis of online school of social work course descriptions and syllabi for equity and justice-related content within the explicit curricula of 19 programs in the United States. The authors discuss results and the need to increase consideration and content of information on disparities and inclusion, as well as equity and justice.