In the midst of a revitalized interest in spirituality and religion in Western societies, there has been reported a resurgence of activity regarding spirituality and religion in the mental health professions, including marriage and family therapy (MFT). Little is known, however, about the beliefs, behaviours, and training experiences of MFT graduate students. Therefore it is important to examine the training (education and supervision) needs in this area. For this initial study, a sample of US MFT graduate students were surveyed regarding their spiritual and religious attitudes and practices in their personal and professional lives. In most areas, graduate students were found to be similar to the previously published reports of practising professionals. In other areas, they report even more investment in spirituality and religion. The results of the survey suggest a need to include systematic attention to these areas in graduate training curricula and in the professional supervision process.

Although instructors express concerns about social work students' writing skills, little research has been conducted. One remedy is a social work-focused writing course. This study assessed a required writing course with a sample of 49 baccalaureate students. From online pre-and posttest surveys, 2 student outcomes improved significantly: self-reported scores for writing selfefficacy and competence in course objectives. On-demand writing samples improved significantly based on anonymous ratings by the course instructors; however, blind ratings found gains but not at a significant level. Improved outcomes were not associated with demographic or back ground characteristics. We discuss limitations of the study and implications for social work education.

In this article the authors report on a collaborative effort to disseminate trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) with community practitioners (N = 33). They discuss the evolution and planning of this local initiative and the research component to assess practitioners' self-efficacy at the basic and advanced levels of training. Self-efficacy scores increased significantly and were positively associated with practice experience. Independent implementation effort was low due to low referral numbers. Final ratings were high for competence, the value of consultation sessions, and future use of the model. The results offer insight into this approach to dissemination and implementation.

Objective: A questionnaire to examine efforts toward the teaching of empirically supported interventions (ESI) was mailed to the 165 deans and directors of Council on Social Work Education-accredited Master’s in social work (MSW) programs; 66 (40%) responded. Method: Questions included program characteristics and items assessing both faculty and official program positions on ESI, which were summed to provide scores as an index of commitment to ESI. Results: Informal faculty commitment to teaching ESI was significantly higher than official program commitment, and offering more clinical practice courses was associated with greater program commitment. Factor analysis extracted two components from program emphasis on theoretical models in the overall practice curriculum: (a) experiential and (b) behavioral/systems; correlation of factor scores for these two components, as yielded from regression, with commitment scores, showed that the behavioral/systems component was significantly associated with greater faculty and program commitment. Conclusion: Study limitations are discussed and recommendations address how the findings apply to social work educators and innovations for promoting empirical practice in the MSW curriculum.

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