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This exploratory qualitative study examined the intrinsic definitions of spirituality and religion across three different religious or ethnic groups of older adults – Jewish, African American Protestants and Caucasian Protestants. The study explores how older adults from these various backgrounds self-identify with the terms religion and spirituality. Because both African-Americans and Jewish older adults are underrepresented in the research on spirituality and religion, their inclusion lends insights to this topic and helps to anchor the findings in a cross-cultural context. Focus groups were employed to understand how these groups characterize their relationship to spirituality and religion. Social work professionals can utilize these findings to work more effectively with the diverse and complex issues of older adults.

Traditionally, research in both adult education and social work fields have focused on cognitive ways of knowing. Although both disciplines have acknowledged other ways of knowing, there has been minimal focus on noncognitive ways of knowing, including embodied knowing. The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how social workers incorporated embodied knowing into their social work practice. Ten social workers from a variety of settings were interviewed to understand how they learned to trust their bodies as a site of knowing and integrate embodied knowing into their social work practices. Using a feminist theoretical framework, findings indicated that participants embraced and trusted their embodied knowing as a valid source of knowledge. Participants identified internal reactions in social work interactions and described how they processed these somatic sensations to guide their practices. Implications for social work practitioners and social work and adult educators are discussed. Keywords somatic knowing, embodied knowing, body in practiceRationality and cognitive knowledge, resulting in a mind/body dichotomy, have been the focus of research and dominated the field of education since the scientific

Given the far-reaching social, economic, and demographic changes in the aging population, the authors argue for a methodological and practice-oriented transformation in future geriatric social work. The authors suggest that if they are to maintain their independence and well-being, a resilience-enhancing social work intervention will be especially effective in fostering the specific survival skills that older adults often already utilize to help them cope with difficult situations. A risk-resilience model sensitive to ethnic difference and practiced at multiple systems levels (e.g., the community) is offered as an advancement of the traditional models of social work practice. In conclusion, the authors emphasize the value of a strengths perspective to address the pressing issues that affect the aging population.

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