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School Social Work NOW
Supporting Innovative Practice, Effective Leadership & Applied Research
February 2011 - Vol 1, Issue 16 |
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| Greetings! |
Past issues of School Social Work NOW are available to you in the ACSSW Newsletter Archives. If you've joined ACSSW or signed up for the newsletter only recently, you may have missed articles or links of interest. To see what's new and current, visit the ACSSW Newsletter Archives now.
SCHOOL SOCIAL WORK WEEK, March 6th-12th, is right around the corner. Check out ways to prepare for and publicize this time of celebration for school social workers by clicking on ACSSW Celebrates School Social Work. This list includes fun, informational, and "foodie" ways to let others know of the work you do and how you assist students on their learning paths. Start your planning NOW!!
The 2nd National Research-to-Practice Summit will be held June 26-28 at the Hilton Chicago Indian Lakes Resort in Bloomingdale, IL. This will be a forum in which to (1) learn about current research projects, (2) become familiar with research models you can apply in your setting and practice, and (3) showcase your projects to colleagues. Monday night will offer an opportunity to sample wonders of the city of Chicago! Plan to join your colleagues for this unique Summit experience and enjoyable leisure times! School teams are encouraged to attend. Watch this newsletter for more information.
If you have questions, concerns, or ideas on how to improve the newsletter, don't hesitate to contact ACSSW. Several articles and ideas have already been submitted by our members. Your contributions are very welcome. President |
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Practice Points |
 Grandparents of Children with Autism--Support, Caregiving, Advocacy
The recent release of a survey by the Interactive Autism Network (IAN) at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Baltimore can serve as a reminder to social workers to transcend the child-parent dynamic and consider grandparents when dealing with a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Released in two parts, the survey is available online at The IAN Project . . . The survey's goal was to match children and families with research studies and to collect autism data from parents, according to Elise Babbitt-Welker, the Kennedy Krieger Institute's communications manager. Indicative of their importance, grandparents rallied to be included in the survey.
Getting Into Practice: Social Work Curriculums and Evidence-Based Practice
The basic tenets of evidence-based practice are not new in social work in the USA, but calls to make the profession more scientific have had less impact than proponents desired. And while social work teachers have spent decades trying to address this, some of the resistance comes from within. . . Allen Rubin from the University of Texas at Austin, [says] this is not a reason to give up. Instead, he believes, it is a call to improve curricula. Teaching statistics, for example, might focus less on the intricacies of various tests and more on what they mean. Research methods courses could get students appraising research as opposed to producing it.
What are the dangers of teaching--or not teaching--EBP in university curriculums? Learn more.
Study Disputes Myth of School Bullies' Social Status
In the movie "Mean Girls," head plastic Regina George tortures her North Shore High classmates of all stripes, including her supposed best friends. At Springfield Elementary, where Bart Simpson goes to school, Nelson Muntz, the oversized dimwit with the distinctive laugh, is the cartoon series' bully. A new study suggests that, in reality, neither of those students would be the aggressors on campus.
Robert W. Faris, an assistant sociology professor at the University of California, Davis, spent several years surveying students at middle and high schools in rural and suburban North Carolina. The results of his research are published in this month's edition of the American Sociological Review. He found that students in the middle of the social hierarchies at their schools, rather than the most popular or the most socially outcast, are more likely to be bullies. Read the full article courtesy of Edweek.org |
| Leadership News |
Peter Senge's vision of a learning organization as a group of people who are continually enhancing their capabilities to create what they want to create has been deeply influential. [Discussed are] the five disciplines he sees as central to learning organizations and some issues and questions concerning the theory and practice of learning organizations. Be sure to read the section on Systems Thinking, so familiar to school social workers, and the section on Politics and Vision. Interesting food for thought for school social work leaders. Challenge your current thinking. |
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| Research Highlights |
 Positive Impact of Social/Emotional Learning for Kindergarten to 8th-Grade Students
Executive Summary(pdf); Full report(pdf); California addendum (pdf) This report summarizes results from three large-scale reviews of research on the impact of SEL programs. This report, made possible with the support of the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health, is one of a series of papers to come out of CASEL's Meta-Analysis Project. The present report focuses on the impact of SEL on elementary- and middle-school students (it does not include studies of high-school impacts). The report examines the impacts of SEL in school settings among students with early identified emotional or behavioral problems (the "indicated" student population), school settings among students without identified emotional or behavioral problems (the "universal" student population), and in after-school settings.
Pot Linked to Earlier Onset of Mental Illness
Smoking marijuana has been linked with an increased risk of mental illness, and now researchers say that when pot smokers do become mentally ill, the disease starts earlier than it would if they didn't smoke pot. This means that serious psychiatric diseases that might not have shown up until kids were in their teens or twenties - or might never had developed at all - are starting in children as young as 12 who smoke marijuana. The link between using pot and developing serious mental illness is strongest in the youngest smokers - 12- to 15-year-olds, or kids even younger, said Dr. Matthew Large... who headed up the research at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Large and his colleagues looked at thousands of patients with psychotic disorders like schizophrenia. People with psychotic disorders lose touch with reality - usually starting in adolescence or young adulthood. The authors of the new study found that in the subjects who had been pot smokers, the psychotic symptoms began nearly 3 years earlier than in those who had not been marijuana users. Read full article.
Teenagers, Friends, and Bad Decisions
In studies at Temple University, psychologists used functional magnetic resonance imaging scans on 40 teenagers and adults to determine if there are differences in brain activity when adolescents are alone versus with their friends. The findings suggest that teenage peer pressure has a distinct effect on brain signals involving risk and reward, helping to explain why young people are more likely to misbehave and take risks when their friends are watching... Among adults and college students, there were no meaningful differences in risk taking, regardless of whether friends were watching. But the young teenagers ran about 40 percent more yellow lights and had 60 percent more crashes when they knew their friends were watching. And notably, the regions of the brain associated with reward showed greater activity when they were playing in view of their friends. It was as if the presence of friends, even in the next room, prompted the brain's reward system to drown out any warning signals about risk, tipping the balance toward the reward. For full article, click here. |
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In the News |
Phil Barker, MASSW President, Quoted in Cepeda Article
Continuing her exploration of support services in schools in "A Role to Fill in Our Schools", Washington Post education reporter and former teacher, interviewed Phil Barker, president of the Michigan Association of School Social Workers, for her recent article. Click here to read more. |
| Request for Research Assistance | |
An Examination of Homophobia and Social Work Practice Among a Sample of School Social Workers
Milka Ramírez, MSW, a member of the American Council for School Social Work and the School Social Work Association of America and a school social worker in Chicago, is conducting her doctoral research and would like you to participate in the 30 minute survey. Please take time to support this important research. Click the following link to participate in this essential work: Homophobia & Social Work |
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Grants & Funding | |
Do Something Seed Grants
Do Something Grants put money directly into the hands of young people by providing community action grants that help turn dream projects into a reality and take existing projects to the next level. Past grantees have used the money to create a community-run organic farm, publish a youth-written literary magazine for women of color, and even created an organization that teaches sick kids how to fly. For more, visit the website.
OJJDP To Fund Tribal Youth Research
The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) has released a solicitation for proposals to fund research and programs for tribal youth. Tribal Youth Field Initiated Research and Evaluation Programs will fund studies on effective programs, policies, and strategies for the prevention and intervention of tribal youth delinquency. Applicants must register and submit their proposals by February 28, 2011. To download the solicitation visit: Tribal Youth Field Initiated Research and Evaluation Programs. |
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ACSSW Activities | |
ACSSW's present major activities include:
- increasing research projects and their application within the school environment,
- developing a national school social work role paper,
- a more long-term goal, establishing a National Center for School Social Work Research, and,
- developing the 2nd National School Social work Research Summit to be held June 26-28.
If you have interest in assisting with one or more of these projects, don't hesitate to contact Judie Shine. ACSSW strives to be inclusive and transparent in all of its activities and welcomes the participation, whether short or lengthy, of its members. |
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