Full Description
Service learning and social work education comprise an exciting, yet underutilized, partnership. This book represents the first comprehensive overview of this active and empowering approach to learning in social work. Both educators and practitioners will discover conceptual and practical guidance for developing productive community-based projects.
Often envisioned as located at the midpoint on a continuum from volunteer work to internship, service learning combines the opportunity to serve with the opportunity to learn. It offers community agencies a chance to collaborate with academic colleagues to meet identified community needs, frequently with an explicit social justice dimension.
The contributors illustrate how service learning facilitates students' understanding and interacting with community members as partners, not clients. Service learning encourages students to use critical thinking skills to reflect on their work and its implications. This combination of study-action-reflection in conjunction with course content is highly effective.
The book explores its subject from several perspectives. The first section serves as a conceptual and theoretical orientation to service learning in social work. The second section offers models that illustrate many ways of implementing service learning across the components of the social work curriculum. The final two parts of the book focus on evaluation and service learning in the broader context of civic engagement.
Contents
Chapter 1 Service Learning and Social Work Education: A Natural but Tenuous Connection
Chapter 2 The Components of Service Learning as Pedagogy in Social Work Education
Chapter 3 Service Learning Across the Social Work Curriculum
Chapter 4 Social Welfare Policy and Services: Service Learning through Social Policy Projects in Human Service Organizations
Chapter 5 Social Work Practice: Beginning Practice Skill Development in Introduction to Social Work Courses: Mobilizing Partnerships between Youth Development Agencies and Social Work Education through Service Learning
Chapter 6 Research: Infusing Service Learning into Research, Social Policy, and Community-Based Practice
Chapter 7 Human Behavior and the Social Environment: An Oral History Service-Learning Project
Chapter 8 Human Diversity: Service Learning and Gender Studies within a Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Context
Chapter 9 Populations-at-Risk/Immersion Experience: Social Work in the Sun: Service Learning at Summer Camp
Chapter 10 General Education: Herding Cats and Making History: Service Learning in a Large General Education Social Welfare Course
Chapter 11 Developing Partnerships between Community and Curriculum: How Does the Team Assess Student Outcomes?
Chapter 12 Service Lerning for Social Justice: Mandate for Long-Term Evaluation?
Chapter 13 Service Learning in Social Work: A Curricular and Evaluative Model
Chapter 14 Social Work, Service Learning, and the American Democracy Project: The Creation of a More Socially Conscious Campus Community
