From the Editor—A Note of Gratitude to Our JSWE Reviewers and Ms. Moreno-Hines

As we approach almost 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic in a time of racial reckoning in the United States and abroad, I would like to express my deep gratitude to our valued Journal of Social Work Education (JSWE) reviewers. Despite these challenges, our JSWE reviewers have continued to provide valuable high-quality, constructive, and timely reviews for our authors. This service is not often rewarded in tenure or promotion cases or in merit reviews, but it is such a critical part of ensuring the publication of high-quality scholarship on social work teaching innovations and research for JSWE.

The efforts of our reviewers have not only been challenging during these twin pandemics, but also because the number of submissions has increased substantially over the last 2 years (we averaged 200 manuscripts in 2019 vs 400 in 2020). We have then asked more of our reviewers during an already stressful time when they were asked to go above and beyond in other roles. The contributions of our JSWE reviewers and guest reviewers for our Special Issue on Teaching, Field Instruction, and Administration in the Time of Pandemic and Natural Disaster (which drew more than 90 submissions) are quite notable and so appreciated.

As JSWE continues to grow in submissions, we welcome new reviewers with broad expertise and a commitment to providing constructive, high-quality, ethical reviews consistent with the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE; Hames & COPE Council, 2013). While JSWE is the journal of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), CSWE membership is no longer required to serve as a reviewer. The JSWE Editorial Advisory Board (EAB) welcomes reviewers with broad expertise in all aspects of social work education; qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods research; and/or statistical methods. We also welcome reviewers from different disciplines with rigorous interdisciplinary methodological training. Individuals with recent peer-reviewed publications and a consistent record of publication are invited to apply by submitting a curriculum vitae to [email protected].

If you are a reviewer or author, you have most likely started to notice our new peer review rating system. This has been added by our EAB to ensure consistent, clear, and thorough appraisal of each manuscript. This is also helpful in addition to reviewer comments in making editorial decisions given our growing number of submissions. In the spirit of transparency for our authors, each empirical manuscript is rated on a 5-point scale from weak to strong in the areas of introduction/literature review, methods, conceptual soundness, results, discussion/conclusion, clear writing, and contribution to new knowledge. Conceptual articles will be rated using the same scale and criteria, except for methods and results. All reviewers are asked to rate the manuscript’s priority for publication in JSWE on a 1–5 scale from high to low priority. Given the number of submissions we continue to receive and our current limitations in the production schedule, authors are strongly encouraged to ensure the first draft submitted is well-edited and ready to be fully considered for publication.

If you have frequently read JSWE or contributed as an author, please consider joining our team as a reviewer. It is up to us, as a profession, to provide this important service for one another.

Finally, if you are an author or reader of JSWE and plan to attend the Council on Social Work Annual Program Meeting this year, or you happen to receive an e-mail from Ms. Mia Moreno-Hines, JSWE’s production editor, please send her a note of appreciation for all her hard work behind the scenes. In my editorial role, I have come to realize how much Ms. Moreno-Hines does for JSWE and how difficult it can be to quickly secure reviewers. As she is often working diligently to secure reviewers for our growing number of submissions, I am quite sure she receives hundreds of e-mails a day from authors. She also balances numerous other production roles at CSWE, including the CSWE Compass publication and a similar role for the Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work. I have never seen Ms. Moreno-Hines in any moment without the highest levels of grace and diplomacy. Your service as a reviewer – promptly picking up reviews and sending in thoughtful, constructive reviews – will make her job so much easier and our shared and valued journal run more smoothly.

Remembering Marion Bogo

Professor Marion Bogo, a prominent leader and educator within the social work community, passed away on September 26, 2021. She was deeply committed and quite successful in advancing social work education, especially in the ways practice competency is assessed. She was also a valued JSWE reviewer and an active scholar, having published more than 100 journal articles and book chapters and several books. She was appointed to the Order of Canada in May 2015. She also received CSWE’s 2013 Significant Lifetime Achievement in Social Work Education award. Most recently, Professor Bogo received the Ontario Association of Social Workers’ Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020. All her JSWE articles can be viewed at the following link, along with CSWE’s tribute to Professor Bogo (https://cswe.org/News/General-News-Archives/Remembering-Marion-Bogo). We look forward to receiving 3 invited tribute articles to Professor Bogo’s work from Kenta Asakura, Karen Sewell, Cheryl Regehr, and Faye Mishna in the coming months.

This issue

This issue begins with a letter to the editor by Lee, Kim, and Kawamoto titled, “Social Work Perspectives on Anti-Asian Racism,” which highlights important considerations regarding the need to address and teach anti-Asian racism in our profession. This eloquent letter provides important guidance for social worker educators during a time of heightened anti-Asian racism, hate crimes and incidents. As a profession, we must stand against and act to reverse the harm resulting from the inflammatory language of numerous political leaders and members of the media.

Younes, Goldblatt Hyatt, Witt, and Franklin address a timely issue regarding reproductive rights and social work education in their article titled, “A Call to Action: Addressing Ambivalence and Promoting Advocacy for Reproductive Rights in Social Work Education.” As state legislatures continue to pass controversial abortion bills – many of which now directly impact social work and other helping professions – it is important that social workers are prepared for the effect of these laws and advocacy to protect the self-determination of the women affected. One example is the recent Texas law that allows any individual to sue a woman’s family member, organization or funding source, rape crisis counselor, or any other helping or medical professional up to $10,000 for helping a woman who elects to get an abortion after 6 weeks.

Self-care is more important than ever within the social work field given the continued and lasting effects of the twin pandemics of COVID-19 and racism. It has also become an important part of the revised National Association of Social Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics (2021). Grise-Owens and Miller, in their invited article, “The Role and Responsibility of Social Work Education in Promoting Practitioner Self-Care,” provide the rationale and also integrate self-care into CSWE’s accreditation standards required by all social work programs.

In “The Unexamined Identity: Students’ Conservative Ideology, Perspectives of Poverty, and Implications for Practice,” Toft and Calhoun report on a study of social work students’ political ideology and related views of poverty and discuss the implications of these findings for social work student graduates within varied political ideologies within the context of the social and economic justice mission of social work.

Davis, Barrick, and Talley report on a follow up study of student satisfaction of image-only PowerPoint lectures, with attention to the reasons for race-based differences that were initially identified. The findings of this study, reported in “‘What Does This Have To Do With Me?’ Black Student Perspectives of Image-Based PowerPoints in BSW Classes,” suggest that Black students do value image-based PowerPoint lectures when the images represent positive Black role models and culture, otherwise the images lack personal connection.

In “An Encore in Social Work? How Our Schools Can Become More Age Inclusive,” Halvorsen and Emmanuel suggest a need to recruit and retain encore social work students (those over 35 years of age) and discuss ways that social work education can be more age inclusive.

Huang, Sherraden, Johnson, Birkenmaier, Loke, and Hagemen report on the results of a national online survey of social work faculty that examined financial and economic content in the curriculum in “Preparing Social Work Faculty to Teach Financial Capability: Where We Stand.” They found that a much larger proportion of social work faculty found this information to be useful than those who were actually teaching it. Huang and colleagues discuss the implications for social work education and future research.

In “Correlates of Attitudes Toward Evidence-Based Practice Among MSW Students Preparing for Direct Practice,” Oh, Poola, Messing, Ferguson, and Bonifas report on a survey of MSW students from an advanced research methods course in a large university. The findings have important implications for the need to expand early training in the evidence-based practice (EBP) process and empirically supported treatments to increase the perceived feasibility and use of EBP.

Lynch, Meshelemiah, and Casassa describe a multisite field internship model that was implemented at a large Midwestern university to address human trafficking in “A Multisite Field Placement Approach for Social Work Interns in the Antitrafficking Arena: An Innovative Model at a Midwestern University.” This article also describes the benefits and challenges of such a model and considerations when trying to replication this model.

Teixeira, Lombe, Figuereo, Chu, Wang, Bartholomew, Rosales, Perez-Aponte, McRoy, Rambo, and Mayes describe lessons learned from a Boston-based university and its community agency research partnership to inform opportunities for the personal and professional development of social work practitioners, researchers and students in “University and Community Agency Research Partnerships: Implications for Teaching, Scholarship, and Service.” Specific implications for partnership development, teaching, and service are described.

In “Between Despair and Hope: Israeli Social Workers’ Perceptions of the Profession and of Student Supervision,” Segev, Malka, and Kaspi-Baruch report on a phenomenological analysis of social work student supervisors’ metaphors of the social work profession and supervision. They discuss the implications of these findings within the context of the social work profession in Israel.

de Saxe Zerden, Jones, Day, and Lombardi report on a mixed-method evaluation of an interprofessional training program for MSW students in “Interprofessional Collaboration: An Evaluation of Social Work Students’ Skills and Experiences in Integrated Health Care.” Specific information is provided about their specialized curriculum and clinical internship sites working with interprofessional teams.

The following three articles represent the remainder of accepted articles from our call for the COVID-19 special issue in JSWE. This is a very short special section featuring these articles. Evans, Reed, Caler, and Nam report on a large survey of social work students in accredited social work programs across the United States in “Social Work Students’ Experiences During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Themes of Resilience.” They report specifically on social work students’ experiences with online learning, as well as financial and mental health well-being. The authors also discuss the challenges and themes of resilience among students. In “Trial by Fire: Innovative Approaches and Evaluation of Course Transition During COVID-19,” Menon, Lucas, and Robbins share evaluation outcomes across six face-to-face and online graduate social work courses to assess satisfaction and perceptions of the outcomes of the transition from face-to-face to online course delivery. Key findings suggest implications and lessons learned for such transitions in the future. Finally, Jenney, Straka, and Walsh describe important issues and recommendations related to teaching interpersonal violence (a highly emotional and sensitive topic) online during the COVID-19 pandemic in “Responsible Pedagogy During a Pandemic: Teaching Social Work Courses on Interpersonal Violence During COVID-19.”

This issue wraps up with a research note and a teaching note. Tyler and Franklin present the results of two pilot studies focused on developing the reliability of an objective structured clinical examination performance rating scale and reflection rating scale for a new simulation scenario with either a parent and bisexual child or a parent and a transgender child in their research note, “Dyadic OSCE Subscales: Measuring Students’ Ability to Work With Parents and LGBTQ Children.” Next, Cryer-Coupet, Wiseman, Atkinson, Gibson, and Hoo describe the implementation of a trauma-informed family literacy intervention and explore ways that this model can be used in an interdisciplinary social work and education course in their teaching note, “Drawn Together: Collaboration Between Social Work and Education to Address Family Trauma.”