Social Work Research Courses Research Articles

Applying feminist principles to social work teaching: Pandemic times and beyond.

It took a global pandemic for me to recognize how my social work teaching was an act of feminist praxis. I have long identified as a feminist and regularly engage efforts to advance equity for women, primarily centered on the abolition of prisons which disproportionately incarcerate Indigenous and Black women in Canada. Surprisingly, I have never considered how my feminism shows up in my teaching. The following reflexive essay explores the ways in which the feminist principles of centring emotions, rejecting patriarchal hierarchy, and challenging white feminism were embedded into the development and delivery of a graduate level social work research course that was rapidly adapted to being taught online during a global public health crisis. It ends with a call to action for social work educators to incorporate feminist principles into their pedagogies, not only in times of crisis, but as standard practice.

Teaching Note: Using Adult Learning Principles for Evidence-Based Learning in a BSW Research Course

Many social work students report experiencing feelings of anxiety and reluctance to engage in independent research. This article offers a framework for integrating adult learning principles into an undergraduate social work research course. We delineate the six principles of adult learning and describe course activities that facilitate this learning process. For each principle, we discuss implications for the classroom and related learning tasks. Using adult learning principles challenges and extends what is known about integrating the experience of adult learners in conjunction with improving student learning, including effectively communicating evidence-based practice.

Teaching Statistics to MSW Students: Comparing Credit and Non-Credit Options

In professional disciplines like social work, students are expected to be able to understand and apply basic statistical concepts. Graduate programs differ in how they expect students to develop this ability; some require a full-credit statistics course as a prerequisite to admission, and others incorporate statistics into social work research courses. The for-credit requirement has a high financial and time cost for students. This exploratory study examined the feasibility of replacing this requirement with a brief, non-credit statistics course. MSW students (n=168) who took both types of courses were surveyed. No association was found between the type of course and students’ anxiety, confidence, and the perceived relevance of statistics. Students identified factors that impeded or facilitated their learning. The inclusion of the statistics course within the social work program and the use of relevant social work literature was perceived as supporting students’ learning of statistics. The course length was no more of a concern for the non-credit statistics students than for the for-credit students. These findings support the use of a brief, non-credit statistics course as a less costly and time-consuming approach, but raises concerns about consistently high levels of anxiety, and low levels of confidence and statistics ability of MSW students.

Students’ Perceptions of Service-Learning in an Advanced Research Course

Social work students are often anxious, apathetic, or resistant to learning research knowledge and skills. They may view research courses as irrelevant and disconnected from social work practice. Studies suggest that service-learning improves learning outcomes in social work research courses, but less is known about the processes through which these outcomes are achieved. This study explored the perceptions of 70 Masters-level social work students enrolled in an advanced research course that included a pro bono program evaluation of a shelter serving homeless men. Content analysis of students’ narratives revealed three main themes. First, students perceived that they had changed their thinking about homelessness in positive ways. Second, students made connections between their research experience and the social work curriculum. Finally, an unanticipated theme of curriculum integration emerged. Critical reflection about a meaningful experience—an integral aspect of service-learning—supported students in developing metacognitive insight. This helped students to develop and apply social work research skills. The service-learning project supported students’ mastery of other social work competencies and improved their integrated practice abilities. Because this approach is effective in helping students to embrace research and integrate it with social work practice, application and evaluation of service-learning are recommended for social work education.

The reflective diary: an experiential tool for enhancing social work students’ research learning

There has been substantial discussion internationally about the need for social work students to integrate research into practice. Little has been written, however, about teaching methods that address the cognitive and emotional challenges students experience in their efforts to develop research competencies. Many students believe that research does not apply to the ‘real’ world of practice and are anxious and fearful when they begin a research course. Using a retrospective review of students’ assignments, this article describes the use of reflective diaries in teaching MSW students from a university in the USA skills for practice-based social work research. Reflective diaries provide a safe forum for students to actively engage with the challenges they experience while taking a research course and take ownership of their learning needs. The diary entries provide instructors with windows into their students’ learning processes that enable them to create scaffolding opportunities that support students in developing confidence in their research skills. This article describes the pedagogical philosophy behind reflective diaries, details of the diaries assignment, and benefits of this learning tool for students and instructors. The authors offer recommendations for incorporating reflective diaries into social work research courses and implications for evidence-based practice.

Flipping the Classroom in an Undergraduate Social Work Research Course

Flipping the Classroom in an Undergraduate Social Work Research Course

Qualitative Research for Social Workers or Social Work for Qualitative Researchers?

Deborah Padgett’s new edition of Qualitative Methods in Social Work Research significantly updates and expands her initial edition. This qualitative research text will be a welcomed addition to social work research courses. While becoming a more inclusive text with wide applicability for the research context today, the author only hints at some of the more contentious or evolving issues that continue to make the field of qualitative research challenging to traditional research approaches. Several places/issues of growth and evolution are suggested by this reviewer.

Centering power, positionality, and emotional labor in a Master of Social Work research course: Perspectives from a student and instructor

This paper presents a case study of a student and instructor’s experience in a foundational research course in a Master of Social Work (MSW) program at a major university. As part of this course, students are asked to design and implement an original, practice-informed research project. One student had a particularly complex, affective response to her research project. In response to the student’s experience in the course, the instructor reconceptualized the major course assignment, drawing from the feminist concept of emotional labor, so that it would be responsive and relevant to the student’s learning. This instance of educational individualization allowed the student to take inventory of and critically reflect on her enhanced awareness of self, positionality, and power structures personally, professionally, and as a researcher, through an autoethnographic narrative and critical analysis. A central finding of this case study is that attention to the emotional labor of research opens up space for ways of knowing and learning beyond positivist, inflexible, and narrowly imagined competency-based paradigms. Moreover, this case study demonstrates the possibilities of qualitative research in accessing and exploring the affective research experience. Finally, this paper argues that emotional labor is a critical aspect of learning, teaching, and practicing research that ought to be fully considered and addressed across all approaches to inquiry, particularly those concerned with social justice. Recommendations for conceptualizing and teaching social work research courses are offered, including those related to course structure, curricular sequencing and the integration of content on epistemology and emotional labor.

Engaged Teaching-Learning: Outcome Evaluation for Social Work Students in a Graduate-Level Service Learning Research Course

The challenges of engaging social work students in the research curriculum are well-documented, and the literature supports the use of service learning to increase engagement. This study explores self-efficacy as one measure of learning outcomes. Changes in students’ (N=88) assessment of their ability to perform research and program evaluation tasks skillfully were measured by administering the Evaluation Self-Efficacy Scale (ESE) on the first and last days of a graduate-level advanced research class that included a service learning project. ESE scores on the last day of class were significantly higher than on the first day of class. The effect size was larger than in prior similar studies, suggesting that service learning contributed to students’ sense of mastery of course content. These results support the use of an engaged-learning model such as a service learning project in advanced social work research courses to improve students’ evaluation self-efficacy.

Photographs Generate Knowledge: Reflections on Experiential Learning In/Outside the Social Work Classroom

Building active learning strategies into courses can be risky, but the benefits to students often outweigh the concerns, as in the case presented here. The process began as an attempt to employ experiential learning, through the use of photovoice, to enhance the teaching of an undergraduate social work research course. In later courses it blossomed into a community-based research project that saw the students interacting directly with people who had experienced homelessness, and with community agencies. This article explains the transformative process that took place in Canada over 3 academic years. It includes an overview of the photovoice research approach, a discussion of the methodologies used, and reflections on student experiences during a process based on principles of co-learning, mutual benefit, capacity building, and long-term commitment to the goal of social change.

Being an Elbow: A Phenomenological Autoethnography of Faculty-Student Collaboration for Accommodations

Hybrid and online courses and advances in assistive technologies make accommodating students with disabilities ever-changing, requiring innovation. This reality, coupled with students’ reluctance to disclose disabilities, points toward a need for replacing accommodations directed at those with disabilities with universal design whereby they become accessible to all—virtually eliminating the need for accommodations. In this paper, a master's of social work student (Chad) and his instructor (Regina) document their collaborations to revise a social work research course to meet his request for accommodations to make options more universally accessible. These revisions are done through reflections from both Chad and Regina from a phenomenological autoethnographic perspective—depicting their lived experiences.

Nurturing “Critical Hope” in Teaching Feminist Social Work Research

Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its feminist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections as researchers, teachers, and feminists inside social work. We draw from a review of feminist social work research and offer suggestions for teaching critical feminist approaches in social work research. Incorporating critical feminist values and research practices into social work research courses creates the potential for greater integration of research, practice, and the principal values of our profession.

Service Learning in an Undergraduate Social Work Research Course

The current study examined student experiences (n = 111) in an undergraduate social work (BSW) research seminar in which a service learning (SL) project was the primary focus. Student groups of approximately six or seven worked with local agencies to develop a research plan for the agency. Students found the SL project to be a positive experience. The SL outcomes resulted in a greater appreciation of research, including a greater interest in and comfort with conducting research. Results also are compared to a similar SL project in which the entire class, rather than a small group, worked with one agency. The implications are discussed.

Teaching Inferential Statistics to Social Work Students: A Decision-making Flow Chart

Given that social work research courses are typically built on modernist principles of teaching and content, it is not surprising that the majority of social work students dread these courses. Few attempts have been made to better align the modernist content of quantitative research with the postmodern philosophy and values inherent in current social work. This article presents a decision-making flow chart in conjunction with a problem-based learning framework so that students can be self-directed in the process of determining which inferential statistic to use when given a case example.

Audience Response Systems: Using “Clickers” to Enhance BSW Education

Among new technologies for enhancing classroom-based education are audience response systems (ARS), also known as “clickers.” These handheld devices record student responses to instructor questions and send them electronically to a receiver that tallies the responses. Summary results are then projected, usually as a graph. Instructors piloted the use of clickers in undergraduate social work research and practice courses. Instructor and student experiences with the clickers were examined by type of course, frequency of use, ease of use, perceived impact on learning, and use by students with disabilities. Instructors and students in both types of courses found the clickers beneficial. Minor differences by type of course were found. Some students with disabilities noted problems using the clickers. More use of clickers and research on their use in social work education is recommended along with continued attention to universal design in course preparation.

Reflections on Designing and Teaching a Social Work Research Course for Distance and On-Campus Students

Social work educators are increasingly challenged to train future social workers who can both value research and believe in themselves as capable researchers. One way to achieve this is the teaching of a specific social work research course at a basic qualification level. At Otago University, such a course was introduced in late 2005, and early 2006, for both on-campus and distance (off-campus) students. This Ideas in Action piece reveals the thinking behind and strategies used to help future social workers overcome their reluctance about social work research and enable them to take practice-related research skills into their future work.

Teaching Social Work Research: A Comparison of Web-Based and In-Class Lecture Methods

ABSTRACT Like many other disciplines, Social Work education programs are increasingly including on-line classes in course offerings. Despite the rapid and widespread proliferation of web-based courses there is little data in the social work literature to inform educators about this teaching methodology. Using a quasi-experimental design this study examines the performance of 73 MSW students on objective measures of learning in a social work research course. Findings reveal that performance of students in lecture only and lecture with Blackboard supplement sections of the course was significantly better than performance of students in the on-line course.

Bringing the Agency to the Classroom: Using Service-Learning to Teach Research to BSW Students

Faculty members teaching social work research courses face a variety of challenges: The material is typically viewed by students as outside their interest area; the technical and complex content is not easy to teach to any audience, especially when students vary significantly in skill levels; and the course material is often taught in isolation from core curriculum areas, especially social work practice. This article describes a service-learning approach for teaching research that allows students to apply their research knowledge to the information needs of an agency while they are developing corresponding knowledge and skills. Additionally, this article highlights the unique features of this approach and presents student feedback from a recent section of this course. Finally, it describes the implications of this technique.

The Impact of Social Work Research Courses on Research Self‐Efficacy for Social Work Students

This article reports on a study of research self‐efficacy for a sample of BSW and MSW students at a large public university in the United States. This exploratory study examined gains in students' research confidence over the course of a semester according to when they had taken their required research course. BSW and MSW students taking a research class showed differential gains in research self‐efficacy but ended up with similar levels at the end of the semester. Also, students who started their research course with lower levels of self‐efficacy made substantially greater gains in their research confidence compared to students who started out with higher levels of self‐efficacy. The findings are discussed in the context of the accrediting body of schools of social work in the United States, and have implications for how social work educators approach research instruction with social work students.

Using Technology to Evaluate a Web-Based Clinical Social Work Research Course

This article reports on a clinical research methods course taught online to a total of 90 off-campus MSW students in the fall of 1999, 2000, and 2001. The course was taught in a mid-size public university in a CSWE-accredited School of Social Work. The purpose of the course was to teach single subject design research skills for the evaluation of clinical social work practice. The student experience of the online course was assessed using qualitative interviews that add a deeper, textured understanding of the various facets of online instruction from the learner's perspective. Important dimensions for social work instruction in online courseware were delineated. A collaborative learning and teaching framework is presented for those social work educators interested in implementing web-based courses.