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Social Work Commons

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Articles 1 - 4 of 4

Full-Text Articles in Social Work

Recollections And Voices: An Appalachian Community Revisited, Kristina M. Hash, Christine E. Rittenour, Catherine Gouge, Tamba M'Bayo, Lori Hostuttler, Tyler Redding Jan 2019

Recollections And Voices: An Appalachian Community Revisited, Kristina M. Hash, Christine E. Rittenour, Catherine Gouge, Tamba M'Bayo, Lori Hostuttler, Tyler Redding

Contemporary Rural Social Work Journal

Scott’s Run has a rich history as a tight-knit, coal-built community in the heart of rural Appalachia. To learn more about the lives of the community members during the Depression Era, an interdisciplinary research team from five departments at a major university in the state conducted an oral history project focused on historical photos of the community. Individuals who grew up in the area reviewed photographs taken early in the 20th century and provided information and shared stories related to the time and place of the images for context. The interviews uncovered key themes that told a much more …


The Trans Person Is Not The Problem: Brave Spaces And Structural Competence As Educative Tools For Trans Justice In Social Work, Jama Shelton, Kel Kroehle, Maria Monica Andia Jan 2019

The Trans Person Is Not The Problem: Brave Spaces And Structural Competence As Educative Tools For Trans Justice In Social Work, Jama Shelton, Kel Kroehle, Maria Monica Andia

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social work students must be equipped to confront injustice and oppression. Effectively challenging oppression necessitates attention to the ideological origins and subsequent systematic marginalization of oppressed populations. This article critically examines social work education as it relates to trans people and communities. We propose two interconnected pedagogical shifts for consideration: moving from the social work classroom as “safe space” to the social work classroom as “brave space,” and broadening the commonly used educative method of cultural competence to structural competence. We argue that these pedagogical shifts will better prepare social work students to disrupt cisgenderism and dismantle the gender binary, …


From The Empire State To The North Star State: Voter Engagement In The 2016 Election, Katharine M. Hill, Shannon R. Lane, Jenna Powers, Tanya Rhodes Smith Jan 2019

From The Empire State To The North Star State: Voter Engagement In The 2016 Election, Katharine M. Hill, Shannon R. Lane, Jenna Powers, Tanya Rhodes Smith

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Voter engagement has the potential to be a fundamental part of social work practice and key to the professional socialization of social work students. This article describes a classroom-based voter engagement project conducted in two undergraduate social work programs in different U.S. states with significantly different voting laws. We describe the rationale, process of implementing the project, evaluation, and review the results in the context of the 2016 election. We suggest future research that can help develop best practices and methods for implementation of voter engagement in social work practice and education in the future.


Constructing The Structurally Competent Classroom, Leah A. Jacobs, Hanna Mark Jan 2019

Constructing The Structurally Competent Classroom, Leah A. Jacobs, Hanna Mark

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Social work seeks to address social problems through interventions that span micro and macro systems. As such, all social workers are obligated to understand the interplay between individual realities and structural forces. Yet prior models of structural social work play a marginal role in social work education, leaving social work educators without the means to meet these obligations. This structural gap in social work classrooms risks deemphasizing macro practice and failing to prepare micro practitioners to account for structural forces that impact client wellbeing and client-social worker interactions. This paper examines the framework of structural competence as a potential solution …