Research-based service-learning: outcomes of a social policy course

Engaging MSW Students in Policy Practice

“…Social work educators may want to adopt service-learning when teaching graduate-level policy courses to achieve better civic outcomes. Consistent with conceptual articles about the positive effect of service-learning on cultivating students' personal social responsibility (Anderson, 2006;Bringle & Hatcher, 1996), the present study found that students' attitudes toward responsibility increased significantly (Lim et al, 2017). Students in the servicelearning class may have "gained a deeper understanding of the social problem" (Anderson, 2006, p. 13) of taxpayers' failing to claim the EITC and underutilizing the VITA sites, having worked with EITC-eligible individuals and social work agencies that assist lowand moderate-income families.…”

“…Thirdly, the self-oriented motives score was lower for service-learning students at both pretest and posttest, which is not surprising given that service-learning students more than traditional-learning students tend to want to give back to the community and are thus service-oriented (Lim et al, 2017). Given that service-learning students' self-oriented motives were non-significant in both paired sample and independent samples t-test results, social work educators may want to consider ways to better market to students the personal benefits of service-learning policy courses.…”

“…Gerontology (Ames & Diepstra, 2006;Gutheil, Chernesky, & Sherratt, 2006), poverty (Forte, 1997), research methods and statistics (Wells, 2006), and special populations, such as burn survivors (Williams, King, & Koob, 2002), are just some of the topics in social work curricula taught using service-learning. Social policy is among them, although to a lesser degree than other courses (Anderson & Harris, 2005;Lim, Maccio, Bickham, & Dabney, 2017) and with less known about this merger (Droppa, 2007a).…”

“…First, while it instituted pre-and posttest surveys with a comparison group (and the two groups did not statistically differ on several characteristics), the study could not control for other possible participant characteristics and, thus, could not establish causality. Using a sample from a larger theoretical population and more rigorous research designs (i.e., longitudinal studies, experimental designs) may pose difficulties from an administrative standpoint (Lim et al, 2017). Doing so, however, does promise a next step up for pedagogical research that measures the effectiveness of service-learning methods.…”

Social Workers and the Policy Process: When Does Opportunity Knock?

“…solid normative and theoretical foundation for policy involvement by social workers and to identify strategies and routes by which social workers can impact policy (Bent-Goodley 2015;Gal and Weiss-Gal 2015;Jansson 2008;Reisch 2017;Weiss-Gal 2017a), discussions on the ways in which social work education can best provide future social workers with the tools required to influence policies (Bernklau Halvo 2016;Lim et al 2017;Brierton Granruth et al 2018;Pritzker and Lane 2014;Weiss-Gal 2016), assessments of the level of social workers' engagement in policy change (Gewirtz-Meydan et al 2016), case studies intended to demonstrate how policy engagement can be successfully undertaken (Chandler 2009;Mendes et al 2015), and studies on the factors associated with social workers' involvement in policy change within or outside their job setting (Jansson et al 2016;Lavee et al 2018;Ritter 2008;Gewirtz-Meydan et al 2016).…”