Social workers need to possess professional skills and personal qualities, often referred to as "soft skills," along with disciplinary knowledge, to be successful and to deliver high-quality client services. This study reports on the importance US social work faculty place on soft skills, the extent to which these faculty incorporate…

Suicide is a major public health issue in the United States and schools of social work have an important role to play in educating future social workers in suicide prevention. This article describes the results of a survey of BSW and MSW practice instructors (N = 259) exploring the strategies used to teach suicide content, including resources used…

This paper explores the experiences of social work practitioners making a career move from front-line practice into academia. Six participants engaged in a focus group and subsequent individual semi-structured interviews to reflect on their transitional experiences. From this, factors that helped or hindered the transition were identified and…

Most of the studies exploring social work education's impact on working with older adults (OA) examine intentions among students. This study goes beyond expressed intention and focuses upon the actual post-graduation career choices of 20 cohorts (1996-2016) of BSW graduates of an OA concentration at an Israeli school of social work. The 203 study…

The COVID-19 pandemic's impact on people's professional and personal lives is ongoing. The transition to remote teaching has particularly affected social work education due to its experiential methods incorporating a direct experience whereby students "learn by doing." This study examined the impact of the global pandemic and the…

This article offers some general guidelines to social work faculty seeking to be promoted to the rank of Full Professor, guidelines that we hope will provide a beginning discussion for individual programs to develop more transparent criteria and expectations for promotion to the highest rank in the academy. Specifically, we offer guidance about…

The number of adjunct faculty members in higher education has been increasing nationally over the past two decades, and schools of social work are no exception to this trend. There has been robust debate about adjunct use, given concerns about low pay, poor access to benefits, lack of inclusion in academic decision making, and little support…

How do we challenge anti-Black racism within the social work curriculum? As a requirement of all BSW and MSW programs, Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) coursework provides students with foundational knowledge about human development that is essential to theory-driven social work practice. Traditionally, conceptions of human…

Evidence of the impact of COVID-19 on higher education, specifically on social work education, is gradually emerging. While the empirical literature points to the effectiveness of delivering course content virtually, research on the impact of the abrupt, forced transition from in-person to distance teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic is limited.…

Social work programs are preparing professionals to respond to natural disasters and global pandemics when they arise. However, literature on the learning experiences of students in the social work classroom with synchronous instruction during a natural disaster or global pandemic is limited, as is documentation of the experiences of social work…

Online education has shown consistent growth in social work curricula over the past two decades despite some questions about the effectiveness of virtual environments in teaching critical elements of social work practice and professional competency. With the COVID-19 pandemic, programs have been forced to exclusively utilize online teaching…

COVID-19's unprecedented effects on the world emphasize the minimal exigent research on best practices of social work pedagogy during crises. The purpose of this paper is to inform this research and our understanding of social work education's shift at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study draws upon the narratives of four key…

Despite the importance of field education in social work, there are situations when only a few social work educators are involved in supporting students in their field placements. At the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU), for example, involvement in field education is reserved for faculty who are fluent in Arabic due to the nature of…

Similar to all academic disciplines, the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in social work has grown exponentially in both scope and volume during recent decades. Until the COVID 19 crisis, main driving forces were the growing demand for higher education, constant evolving of innovative technologies, cost effectiveness, and…

In 2012, the National Strategy for Suicide Prevention recommended more education in suicide prevention for mental health professionals. This study of social work instructors (N = 225) explored attitudes, beliefs, and feelings toward teaching suicide content in practice courses; the content covered; barriers to teaching about suicide; and desired…