From the Editor—Social Work Education for New Times

I wrote my previous editorial in October, several weeks prior to a very surprising election outcome. If I were prescient, I might have constructed that editorial somewhat differently. The United States inaugurated Donald Trump to the presidency on January 20. My fears about the administration of the 45th president of the United States are likely common to those of many readers, but my infrequent but intrustive sense of helplessness is neither productive nor adaptive. It is time for social work, as a profession, to rise to the occasion.

U.S. Representative Karen Bass, of California, a social worker herself, addressed a large group of attendees at the January meeting of the Society for Social Work and Research in New Orleans and said, “The incoming administration gives us so much to work with, it’s like drinking from a fire hose” (personal communication, January 3, 2017). She urged the audience not to succumb to the temptation to respond in kind to the disrespect emanating from the new administration (“civility is contagious”). Bass also urged her fellow social workers to engage with our elected officials, educate the people we serve and the policy makers, interpret for others the implications of policy changes, and advocate as effectively as we can for the most vulnerable members of society. The National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics (2008) demands that we protect the disenfranchised and work to ensure their access to health care, nutrition, housing, education, and other resources.

The ethical underpinnings of the social work profession make it uniquely suited to prevent or ameliorate the detrimental outcomes of a regressive administration. Although at least some social work educators (Specht & Courtney, 1994) have argued that we focus too much on the microlevel of social work, social workers historically have intervened on macro-, mezzo-, and microlevels. Our accreditation standards (Council on Social Work Education, 2015) demand that we prepare students with the competencies to do so. As social work educators, we need to engage a new generation of social workers in the knowledge and skills necessary for competent practice at all levels of intervention on behalf of vulnerable members of our society. We need to reexamine our curricula to ensure a balance of micro-, mezzo-, and macrolevel skills, and we need to develop new pedagogies for new times.

This issue of the Journal of Social Work Education (JSWE) contributes in many ways to addressing these needs. There are five research articles in this issue, including Begun and Carter (“Career Implications of Doctoral Social Work Student Debt Load”), who present findings related to career implications of the debt load experienced by many social work doctoral students. Watson et al. (“Social Work Faculty and Mental Illness Stigma”) examine the attitudes of social work educators about people with mental illness, including social work students, and raise important ethical questions about how we treat students with mental illness. Shapira, Enosh, and Havron (“What Makes Social Work Students Implement Evidence-Based Practice Behaviors?”) examine the roles of attitudes, familiarity with evidence-based practice, and feasibility of implementation in predicting whether students will use evidence-based practice. Segal and Wagaman (“Social Empathy as a Framework for Teaching Social Justice”) examine the relationships between interpersonal empathy, social empathy, political affiliation, and policy positions on issues related to social and economic justice with a sample of social work students. Finally, Mirick and Davis (“Making Meaning of MSW Students’ Statistical Abilities: The Role of Self-Efficacy and Knowledge-Based Assessment”) explore the relationship between self-efficacy, self-reported ability, and demonstrated statistical knowledge among a sample of MSW students, and find that the relationship between statistical self-efficacy and ability to apply statistics to a practice-based example is weaker than we might hope.

There are also three evaluations of social work educational innovations in this issue, including one from Dessel and Rodenborg (“An Evaluation of Intergroup Dialogue Pedagogy: Addressing Segregation and Developing Cultural Competency”) who evaluate the use of intergroup dialogue pedagogy to develop cultural competency in social work students and to motivate them to address issues of social justice. Wong (“Evaluating a Teaching Module on Ethically Responsible Evidence-Based Practice Decision-Making in an Advanced Micropractice Course”) evaluates a module on evidence-based practice decision making that incorporates community-based and emic approaches appropriate for work with ethnic minority populations in addition to research evidence, and Senreich, Ogden, and Pastan Greenberg (“Enhancing Social Work Students’ Knowledge and Attitudes Regarding Substance-Using Clients Through SBIRT Training”) evaluate the introduction of Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) content into MSW and BSW curricula.

Five articles in this issue discuss conceptual models for social work education. LaRocque (“Group Work Education in Social Work: A Review of the Literature Reveals Possible Solutions”) examines the evidence base and offers a framework for competency-based education for group work. Spector-Mersel (“Life Story Reflection in Social Work Education: A Practical Model”) presents a case for the application of life story reflection to improve reflexivity among social work students, and Theobald, Gardner, and Long (“Teaching Critical Reflection in Social Work Field Education”) discuss teaching critical reflection in field education to assist students to become more critical in their understandings and actions. Pugh (“A Model of Comparative Ethics Education for Social Workers”) compares and contrasts approaches to ethics education in medicine and social work and proposes a new model for teaching social work ethics, and Wallace, Thielman, Cimino, and Adams Rueda (“Ethics at the End of Life: A Teaching Tool”) examine ethical decision making in end-of-life contexts and make a case for additional content on end-of-life decisions in social work curricula.

This issue of the JSWE also offers three teaching notes. Slayter (“Teaching Note—‘By Any Means Necessary!’ Infusing Socioeconomic Justice Content into Quantitative Research Course Work”) presents a model for infusing socioeconomic justice content into research course work using a data-driven interpretation of existing quantitative research to derive implications for social justice. Giesler (“Teaching Note—Theatre of the Oppressed and Social Work Education: Radicalizing the Practice Classroom”) uses Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed to focus on self-awareness, empowerment, empathy, and social change in a BSW curriculum. And Remis, Moore, Pichardo, Rosario, and Moore (“Teaching Note—Description and Preliminary Evaluation of a Modified College Experience for Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities”) describe the implementation and preliminary evaluation of a modified college experience for adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities at a small liberal arts college.

Finally, this issue contains an interesting point counterpoint in the form of a letter to the editor from Brady et al. about Caputo, Epstein, Stoesz, and Thyer’s (2015) article on postmodernism and a rebuttal from Caputo et al. about the contributions of postmodernism and the nature of science. Enjoy!

As editor of the JSWE, I urge my colleagues to think about what gaps there may be in the evidence base for social work practice and social work education and to share their work to develop and implement this new evidence through submissions to JSWE. Those of us in social work will rise to the occasion and help ensure continued and improved access to resources for those at risk.