From the Editor—Message From the New Editor-in-Chief: Hope and Possibility on the Horizon

I am deeply honored to have this opportunity to serve our profession over the next 3 years as the new editor-in-chief of the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Journal of Social Work Education (JSWE), beginning with this first issue of 2020. As a member of the JSWE editorial board over the past 3 years and as associate editor over the past 6 months, I have witnessed the tremendous work and dedication of the outgoing editor-in-chief, Joanne Yaffe. I am fortunate to be stepping into this role during a time when her vision and steadfast commitment to the JSWE has increased the efficiency and structure of the publication process, decreased the lag to publication, and increased the impact factor of the journal. Her high-quality editorials are also widely appreciated for addressing important contemporary issues in the field of social work education. I have looked up to Joanne for some time, and I am humbled and honored to have her as a mentor over the past few years. Thank you, Joanne, for your dedication to this journal and for your ongoing support as I move into this new role. Yaffe will continue to serve as editor-in-chief emeritus over the next 6 months. In July 2020, I will announce the new JSWE associate editor.

I am quite aware of the big boots I am stepping into and the tremendous responsibility of assuming the helm of our profession’s premiere teaching journal. I am grateful for the work of our numerous former editors-in-chief, who have laid the groundwork for this journal’s success over the past 55 years. As the new editor-in-chief, I hope to build on this success by continually striving to identify ways to further reduce the lag from acceptance to online and print production with the CSWE’s publications manager, Elizabeth Simon, CSWE’s production editor, Mia Moreno-Hines, and Taylor & Francis. In addition, I would like to explore the possibilities of increasing the formal social media dissemination of the JSWE’s published manuscripts to the CSWE membership and other social work or human services educators. I hope these efforts will increase the impact and reach of our published articles while also increasing the reputation of the JSWE.

I am also fully committed to supporting the CSWE’s mission to “[ensure and enhance] the quality of social work education for a professional practice that promotes individual, family, and community well-being, and social and economic justice” (CSWE, n.d.-a). I plan to uphold this mission by encouraging the submission of rigorous, innovative, and meaningful empirical and conceptual manuscripts that will move the field vertically to improve the quality and outcomes of social work education. By meaningful, it is my hope that the JSWE manuscripts disseminated over the next 3 years will provide practical empirical findings and teaching approaches that will have a profound impact on the ways we think about teaching and how we teach. Through these efforts, I am hopeful that social work education can truly affect society in a positive way by producing well-trained, competent graduates who are prepared to work in a changing, diverse world.

There is no better time than now to start thinking outside the box and to grow as a profession and as social work educators. There is much to reflect on about these unprecedented past 3 years, during which the current U.S. administration has continuously threatened the values of our profession. What can our profession learn from our reflections on this period and our teaching? How will we move forward and repair what has been broken and work across the divide in a polarized society to achieve meaningful change for vulnerable populations while working to dismantle unjust policies? How have we balanced our commitments to science and the training of competent professionals while fighting so hard for our values? What are the best methods for teaching our students to achieve social justice in our current political environment? How do we train students to recognize propaganda and improve their abilities to think critically? It is critical for our profession, which deeply values social justice, to identify research-informed, effective ways to achieve such change and prepare our students for this changing world.

Another anticipated development during the next 3 years is the 2022 revision of the CSWE’s (2015) Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Over the past 2 years, the CSWE’s Commission on Educational Policy has engaged in an environmental scan of key issues and challenges in the field and in social work education more broadly. Based on this review, the commission has identified five priority areas for evaluating the current standards: technology and information literacy; diversity, equity, and inclusion; data-driven standards; field education and the changing practice context; and changes and challenges to higher education. A draft of proposed changes is currently available on the CSWE’s (n.d.-b) website for review. The development of this revision is open to comment and feedback over the next 2 years. Therefore, I encourage social work educators to prepare manuscripts for the JSWE that inform these changes and contribute to this professional discourse.

For readers planning to submit manuscripts to the JSWE in the new year, please take note of the changes in the seventh edition of the the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2019). Some welcome changes include a chapter with guidelines for writing without bias. For example, there are recommendations for the use of singular gender-neutral pronouns (they or their) and the use of more sensitive phrases when describing populations in research (e.g., people who have been homeless instead of the homeless). Many of the other stylistic changes appear to be more author friendly, thankfully. For example, a range of fonts are acceptable, and the classic running head is no longer used. It will probably take some time to make the transition to the new style in the new year. However, please be sure to check the “Instructions for Authors” (CSWE, 2019) section of the JSWE’s website to ensure you are using the correct version of the publication manual for your submission.

The JSWE is only as good and efficient as its reviewers and dedicated editorial advisory board members. We anticipate at least two vacancies on the editorial board this year, and we are always in need of high-quality reviewers who provide timely reviews. I welcome readers to consider applying for open spots on the Editorial Advisory Board during the CSWE call for volunteers in 2020. For readers interested in serving as a reviewer, please stay tuned for periodic calls for reviewers from the JSWE.

In closing, I would like to express my gratitude to my JSWE Editorial Advisory Board colleagues for their hard work and contributions to the JSWE. The Editorial Advisory Board provides essential support to the JSWE by providing necessary and timely peer review when needed, feedback to the editor-in-chief with regard to special issues and ways to improve the journal, and critical input in the selection of the best articles and best reviewer each year. Specifically, I am grateful for the hard work and contributions of Tanya Brice, Frances Nedjat-Haiem, Cristina Mogro-Wilson, and Elizabeth Pomeroy. It has been a pleasure working with all of you, and I appreciate your ongoing support of the JSWE. I am also grateful to the dedicated and talented cadre of JSWE reviewers, whom we rely on so heavily for high-quality, timely feedback for our authors. Finally, I am grateful to the JSWE’s editorial staff, Elizabeth Simon and Mia Moreno-Hines, for their support as I move into this new role. I am excited to work with all of you over the next 3 years. I am also quite hopeful about what we will be able to accomplish together.

In this issue

This issue of the JSWE provides a diverse array of conceptual articles and teaching notes. The first conceptual article by Sewell, “Examining the Place of Emotions, Affect, and Regulation in Social Work Education,” focuses on helping students develop skills to regulate their emotions when working with populations experiencing difficult circumstances by drawing on research from neuroscience Next, Hall and Valdiviezo use an autoethnography to explore issues of language identity and power differentials that exist in language choice when working with social work clients in “The Social Worker as Language Worker in a Multilingual World: Educating for Language Competence.” Gottlieb and Shibusawa then report on a cross-sectional study of MSW students in “The Impact of Self-Compassion on Cultural Competence: Results From a Quantitative Study of MSW Students,” which explores the relationship between self-compassion and cultural competency. They conclude by discussing the implications of teaching the skill of self-compassion as a part of teaching cultural competency more broadly.

Several conceptual, quantitative, and qualitative articles in this issue focus on contemporary challenges related to teaching social justice and diversity in social work. In “The Challenge of Integrating Social Justice Content Into Social Work Education: Making the Abstract More Concrete,” Funge, Crutchfield, and Jennings conducted a national survey of U.S. social work educators to assess their perceptions of the integration of social justice content into their teaching, with findings highlighting the need to make this abstract concept more concrete for students and to consider the educational context as relevant. Next, Lerner uses Johari’s window as a theoretical framework in “‘Social Workers Can’t Be Republicans’: Engaging Conservative Students in the Classroom” to explore the challenges and possibilities of engaging and teaching more conservative students in an era when moderate politics has all but disappeared. In “Examining Relationships Among Student Empowerment, Sense of Community, and the Implicit Curriculum: A Multigroup Analysis of Race and Ethnicity,” McMahon, Peterson, Farmer, and Miller report on a multigroup path analysis of secondary quantitative data comparing White students, non-Hispanic students, and students of color to explore the differential effects of the implicit curriculum on professional empowerment. They conclude by providing implications for facilitating empowerment among social work students and ways to enhance the implicit curriculum to accomplish this. In “A Pathway for Native American Students to Access a Mainstream University for Social Work Education,” Bordelon and Atkinson report the results of their qualitative study in which Native American students, faculty members, and administrators of a tribal college were interviewed to elucidate perspectives and pathways for students receiving associates degrees to continue their social work education at a mainstream university.

The final five articles cover unique topics for social work education. The first, “Diversity and Inclusion in Social Service Organizations: Implications for Community Partnerships and Social Work Education,” by Cano, focuses on the state of diversity and inclusion initiatives among social service organizations. Based on the results of this online cross-sectional study with field placement social service agencies, Cano suggests that although diversity initiatives have been broadly implemented, a need remains for greater inclusion-focused initiatives. In “Thinking and Thinking About Thinking: A Qualitative Study of Learning in a Process-Centric Teaching Model,” Miller and Topple report on a qualitative study that examined the approach of 52 human behavior in the social environment students to critically consume and reflectively apply information and an emerging conceptual framework to guide the development of process-centric approaches to social work education The next article by Huttar and BrintzenhofeSzoc, “Virtual Reality and Computer Simulation in Social Work Education: A Systematic Review,” reports on a thorough review of the extant literature focused on the ways virtual reality and computer simulation are being used to train social workers and their effectiveness. In “Development and Validation of a Field Evaluation Instrument to Assess Student Competency,” Rowe, Kim, Chung, and Hessenauer report on the development and validation on a 69-item, 9-scale measure to assess student competency in field placement based on the CSWE (2015) competencies. Finally, we have an article on a mixed-methods study, “Social Work Dissertation Committee Chairs’ Perceptions of Their Role,” by Mirick, Davis, and Wladkowski, that focuses on doctoral education. This article examines the perceptions of 150 dissertation committee chairs’ perceptions of their roles and their preparation for such a role. Implications for doctoral education are provided.

This first issue concludes with three teaching notes and two field notes. The first teaching note by Gilster, Kleinschmit, Cummings, and Ronnenberg, “Pick Your Platform: Social Media Advocacy Skill Building,” reports on the evaluation of an educational effort to teach graduate social workers professional social advocacy skills using social media. In the second teaching note, Shelton and Dodd describe the ways cisnormativity can perpetuate the marginalization of transgender, gender queer, and nonbinary populations, and provides recommendations for recognizing cisnormative practices and creating transgender-inclusive classrooms in “Beyond the Binary: Addressing Cisnormativity in the Social Work Classroom.” The final teaching note, by Smoyer, “Taking Social Work Undergraduates Inside: The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program,” reports on an innovative experiential learning program whereby incarcerated and nonincarcerated students take classes inside correctional facilities and the impact of the program’s pedagogy on students and faculty. The first of two field notes, which is by Shea, “Engaging Social Work Interns in Reflective Practice: A Specialized Training Series for Field Instructors,” describes a six-session training series for field instructors focused on an introduction to reflective supervision strategies for use with social work interns and the trainees’ feedback from this training program. The final field note by Capous-Desyllas and Bromfield describes the use of arts-informed journaling in social work field seminars, with illustrations of some examples of this work in “Exploring the Use of Arts-Informed Journaling in Social Work Field Seminars.” I hope this first issue of 2020 provides useful perspectives and findings that inform your teaching and offers hope and possibility for the new year.