While psychoanalysis played an important role in social work practice and education as far back as the 1920's, the period from the 1960s through the 1990s led to its diminishing presence. We believe incorporating psychoanalytic theory into social work education is now necessary to prepare students for contemporary direct practice and should be a…

To fill a gap in research on the incorporation of neuroscience in social work education, this article describes Master of Social Work (MSW) student and alumni experiences learning a neuroscience-informed model for practice with clients who have endured developmental trauma. The Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT) is a clinical…

This article aims to provide an overview of an introductory MSW research course that introduced students to participatory action research (PAR) by investigating adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) among social work majors at a public university. Integrating trauma-informed pedagogy with Kolb's experiential learning model provided a framework for…

In the United States, rape culture is a prevalent phenomenon that has contributed to desensitization to scenes in popular media that might have been considered unacceptable in the past. This paper explores the proposal of a model (Rape Culture and Violence Legitimization Model, RCVL) to understand the factors that prompt a society's focus and…

Little is known about preparing BSW students to work with intimate partner violence (IPV). This study describes an experiential exercise designed to introduce them to working with survivors of IPV. Qualitative methods were used to explore BSW student descriptions of their experiences of and learning from the exercise. Analysis revealed students'…

Social work educators face the task of integrating personal experiences into their teaching practice. In difficult topic areas such as child protection, violence, trauma, and abuse, the challenge of presenting material objectively is made more difficult when the social work educator has lived experience of these topics. This paper uses a…

The movement towards competency-based education in social work has required a shift in delivery to more experiential learning opportunities for students. Looking forward, the Council on Social Work Education [CSWE] has instituted a Futures Task Force, exploring roles social workers may play in the future, with particular attention to the evolution…

Systematic inquiry is an inherent part of social work practice. Despite this fact, social work students and practitioners continue to view research as difficult, intimidating and irrelevant. This disconnect is compounded by a lack of rigorous study on how best to teach research concepts to social work students. One way to bridge this gap is to…

Social work students created a community activism project to raise awareness about trauma prevalence and impact. Trauma theory describes silencing as the mechanism that hinders individual and community healing. Therefore, students sought to create an interactive opportunity to heighten trauma visibility on campus. They created a physical mailbox…

Many students pursuing social work and human services courses have experienced adverse childhoods. This article focuses on their learning about self-care, an important skill for future practice. Interviews with 20 undergraduate students with a history of childhood adversity found unmet needs both for conceptualizing self-care and developing…

Actual exposure to the details of trauma within the classroom setting is considered to be a necessary part of preparation for social work practice with traumatized clients. This article reviews the reasons why it is important for faculty to understand students' possible reactions to exposure to trauma content. One factor believed to increase the…

This article presents the starting case for applying the elements of trauma-informed care (TIC) to education and outlines the authors' initial efforts to develop guidelines for what they call trauma-informed educational practice. To this end, the article starts with a literature review related to the potential for vicarious traumatization and…

Schools of social work are increasingly offering study abroad courses as a strategy for enhancing future practitioners' knowledge and skills in serving individuals and families of diverse sociocultural backgrounds. Literature relative to such educational initiatives has focused on the characteristics, motivations, and outcomes for students and…