Department of Social Work
Illinois State University
A student once asked me on the first day of an undergraduate research course whether I considered myself a social worker or a researcher. I answered without hesitation to say, "I am a social worker who conducts research and teaches." My response not only appeared to satisfy the student's query, it also helped define me as an academic. That is to say, I view the "academy" through the eyes of the social work profession and this perspective is reflected throughout my teaching portfolio.
My teaching ideology is made up of my philosophy about teaching and learning, as well as the theoretical framework that guides my teaching approach.
My teaching framework rests heavily on the foundations of Bandura's social learning theory but is also guided by the idea that there are three modes of learning: accretion (adding new knowledge to existing memory), structuring, (forming new conceptual schema), and tuning (adjusting knowledge to a specific task through practice) (Rumelhart & Norman, 1978). The three modes of learning is a linear model that assumes knowledge exists in one's memory before new conceptual schema or knowledge adjustment can happen. This framework is useful for teaching research in social work given that the majority of students have little to no research knowledge prior to the course. In particular, the theory helps students understand that learning concepts must come before application can happen or, as we often say in social work, before integration of theory and practice. This understanding helps alleviate anxiety that sometimes results when students find the pace of learning in research is "incongruent" with the pace of learning in other upper-level social work courses. The pace in research tends to be slower and more cumbersome because students must struggle not only with a new vocabulary but also a new (and sometimes foreign) logic.
The benefit of social learning theory comes from its emphasis on observing and modeling behaviors and attitudes of others, and can be applied to each of the three modes of learning described above. Social learning theory argues that learning is a result of continuous reciprocal interactions between individual's thinking, actions, and the reactions of the environment. I use the four components of this learning theory (i.e., attention, retention, motor reproduction, and motivation) to design both individual and group learning experiences. For example, teaching the concept of validity requires a definition and examples that are distinctive from other research concepts in order to capture students' attention. Retention of "validity" is enhanced by helping students to develop a "thinking (cognitive) structure," and learning is achieved when students demonstrate their understanding of the concept in the outside world (i.e., comment on the validity of a questionnaire in a magazine).
Motivation is another key aspect of social learning theory that I rely on a great deal to encourage social work students in the topic of research. Indeed, Bandura's application of social learning theory to self-efficacy is what convinces me that it is an effective approach for increasing students' self-confidence about research methodology, as well as increasing their knowledge.
I fulfilled by departmental teaching responsibility in my first year at ISU by teaching two courses per term the normative load of first-year faculty. My teaching assignment included two sections of Social Work 315 (Research) during each of the Spring and Fall 1999 terms. Social work practitioners are expected (under the NASW Code of Ethics) to be competent at promoting and facilitating evaluation and research for the purposes of knowledge development, as well as critically examining emerging knowledge relevant to social work and fully using evaluation and research evidence in professional practice.
Thus, my responsibility as a research instructor necessarily means that I must develop research self-efficacy among students, which in turn leads to me using a variety of instructional and assessment strategies in the classroom. Modifications to my course syllabi over time are evidence that I am seeking new and innovative ways to educate social workers about research. Specifically, my course syllabi for Spring and Fall 1999 show variation in reading assignments, class activities, and assignments.
In addition to my assigned teaching responsibilities of four research courses for this year, I also worked with five BSW students on either a UTA or independent study basis. I accepted one UTA student in Spring 1999 semester whose learning objectives were focused on improving her skills at SPSS and applied research. Then in the Fall 1999, I volunteered to take on four independent study students, all of whom emerged from my Spring 1999 research course with an appetite for learning more about research.
My effort with these four young women involved weekly group meetings, individual meetings, e-mail contact, and review of assigned projects. Each student was assigned responsibility for a different research-related project two students were assigned as "research consultants" to BSW course instructors and provided assistance with formative evaluation efforts, a third carved out a research project using a data set from the Center for Adoption studies, and the fourth student had a lead role in preparing and screening the data file for my child welfare curriculum study (co-investigator is Kathy Wehrmann).
Each student was responsible for developing and monitoring her plan-of-study, which identified learning objectives, activities, and strategies for measuring performance. Their learning objectives covered areas of research knowledge and skill (e.g., to improve SPSS skills, to advance understanding of applied research), as well as professional development (e.g., developing capacity as a professional team member). Students engaged in a variety of individual and group activities over the course of the semester in an effort to advance their learning. A few examples of learning activities are: writing a research proposal, selecting data collection strategies, building an SPSS data file, quantitative and qualitative data analysis, critiquing student work, group discussion and critique, writing reports, and assisting in research projects.
I have played an integral role in hiring seven BSW students for research-related employment this year. Four students were hired to the Center for Adoption Studies, and three were hired as research assistants to Faculty (one to Mary Campbell and two to myself). This work experience benefits students in two ways. First, it provides them an opportunity to apply their research knowledge and skills to "real-life" research problems and projects. Second, the employment experience helps to socialize students into the profession by giving them an opportunity to experience a different relationship with their professors (e.g., supervisor-supervisee vs. teacher-student).
I was privileged this year with several opportunities to teach my colleagues, both in the community and the academy.
My community teaching efforts involved two workshops, both of which I developed and presented. One workshop aimed to increase program evaluation knowledge and skills among human service program administrators (Attachment D). I co-presented this full-day workshop with Dr. Richard M. Grinnell, Jr., to 12 participants from the Central Illinois areas. The other workshop was a half-day effort presented to foster parents in two rural communities of Nevada (Attachment E). This latter workshop focused on developing "survival" skills for rural foster parents.
Teaching to my academic colleagues came in four forms. First, I co-presented at Illinois State University's 1999 Teaching Symposium on the topic of how to use classroom assessment strategies as a tool for assessing students' learning (Attachment F). Second, I co-presented a paper to other social work academics at the 1999 Annual Baccalaureate Program Directors (BPD) meeting (Attachment G). This paper presented a new and innovative way to teaching qualitative research skill to BSW students. Third, I have been privileged to "coach" other junior faculty within my department as we all prepared for our first year appraisal. In particular, this involved a one-hour presentation and discussion session co-facilitated with Dr. Kathryn Wehrmann) on the development and writing of an annual report (Attachment H). Finally, I am research mentor to Dr. Cheryl Stampley, assistant professor in the Department of Social Work (Attachment I).
By the end of 1999 I will have participated in over 39 hours of formal teaching development activities (e.g., workshops, discussion groups, and observation) and 35 hours of formal computer skills training. The benefit of these developmental activities are threefold. First, I have met numerous colleagues from other departments at ISU, which provides me an informal network of support for teaching and computer development. Second, it has provided me opportunity to reflect on my courses and make improvements (see changes in Social Work 315 syllabi, Attachment A). Third, it has stimulated my efforts at creating instructional innovations (see below).
In keeping with my teaching philosophy that learning is enhanced by a positive, dynamic, and fun classroom environment, I attempted several teaching innovations this year. The following are my instructional innovation highlights:
Monitoring student learning and classroom climate is a regular part of my teaching, which necessarily fits with social learning theory. I regularly use "informal" assessment strategies through structured activities during class. For example, I might begin class with the question, "What part of your assigned reading for today was most confusing (or most clear)?" Students are given one minute to independently think about the question (with permission to scan their textbook) before entering a round-robin discussion where each student provides a brief response, which is then listed on the chalkboard. The responses give a measure of which concepts were most difficult (or easy) to grasp and are referred to throughout the class.
On a more formal note, I provide students an opportunity to provide feedback about their learning and class activity midway through the semester. I use an open-ended survey that takes about 4 minutes at the end of a class period. I later have all student's responses transcribed to a word processor, and then group their answers according to common themes. The feedback gives me and the students information about (1) factors that assist their learning in the course, (2) factors that are obstacles to their learning in the course, (3) ideas about how I, as instructor, can better teach students, and (4) ideas about how students can better help themselves. In addition to using these evaluation tools to adjust my activities in class, I also use it as a class example for the topic of qualitative research, hopefully increasing the relevance of the material.
My student evaluations from the Spring 1999 semester are also contained in Attachment Q. These student ratings give me insight into the effectiveness of my teaching from the students perspective. I feel satisfied that while students found my course to be difficult, they rated my teaching highly and provided many examples of what they learned (see open-ended comments of Spring 1999 evaluations).
I have committed time and energy to the scholarship of teaching in two major ways this past year. First, I attended annual meetings of both the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and the Baccalaureate Program Directors (BPD) Association and presented a paper at the latter. Second, I (along with Dr. Kathryn Wehrmann) was successful in obtaining a Teaching-Learning Development Grant from the Center for the Advancement of Teaching at ISU to conduct a research study on child welfare curricula at the BSW level. This study, which is currently underway, aims to develop an expert-informed child welfare curriculum by drawing on perspective from child welfare practitioners and academics.
My major goals for teaching development next year are to:
