Attuning to Need: Reconceptualizing “Help” in Poor Rural Areas

Social isolation is closely linked to overall health and well-being and is a serious concern for those in rural areas. Our research seeks insights into the needs experienced in poor rural areas by utilizing letter writing between students and community agency participants as a research methodology. In the letters, we observed that community participants relied upon friend and family style relationships and even viewed their agency relationships as such. This suggests that transforming professional helping relationships into alliances that are less impersonal might be in order. Such relationships and connections seemed conducive to the development of empowering self-efficacy. This finding prompts questions regarding the type and quality of relationships that are built and sustained by providers at rural community-based organizations

Exploring Regional Differences In Social Work Pedagogy: Attitudes Toward Poverty

This study explores regional differences in student learning outcomes from pre and post-test surveys of undergraduate and first year graduate social work students (N = 373) enrolled in a social welfare policy class at six different CSWE accredited institutions. As expected, overall results showed a shift in student attitudes away from a personal deficiency explanation for poverty, a decline in stigmatization of poverty, and toward a more structural explanation for the causes of poverty, but significant differences were reported by geographical region. Future research should explore the instructor, pedagogical, and geographical factors that may help of hinder attitudinal preparation for practice social work students

Teaching Characteristics and Student Satisfaction: Impact on Social Work Students’ Interest in Policy

Social work educators are charged with the important task of preparing students to carry out the noble mission to focus on the needs and empowerment of people who are vulnerable, oppressed, and living in poverty. Educators, particularly those who teach social policy, understand that to achieve this mission, it is imperative for social workers to be trained to engage in structural and policy change efforts, regardless of interest in clinical or macro practice. This study explored the characteristics, if any, that make policy instructors in social work effective, as well as instructor characteristics that promote interest in policy work in social work professional practice

Changing Social Work Students’ Perceptions of the Role of Government in a Policy Class

Understanding student political attitudes—feelings about government and perceptions of its role—has long been of interest to social scientists. One factor that may influence political attitudes is belief in a just world, a complex psychological construct well established in the literature. Our study explores changes in social work students’ perception of a supportive role of government and their beliefs in a just world after one policy course using a pretest and posttest design. Student perceptions changed toward a more supportive government role, but there was no significant change for belief in a just world. The study contributes to empirical evaluation of the social work education policy class in terms of the Council on Social Work Education competencies