Utilization of Contemporary Literature in Human Behavior and Social Justice Coursework

A Constructionist Approach to the Use of Arts-Based Materials in Social Work Education: Making Connections Between Art and Life

“…Examples include providing an illustration of a personality Downloaded by [University of Ulster Library] at 06:51 17 November 2014 disorder, the ways poverty or old age affects a particular person, or how ABMs evoke certain cognitive reactions (Downey, Jackson, Puig, & Furman, 2003;Grodal, 1997;Liles, 2007). Others have used ABMs to explore multicultural, social justice, and clinical judgment themes in education, arguing that they can convey the subtle, complex, personal, and emotive issues at hand (Cnaan, 1986;Downie, 2000;Ello, 2007;Garcia & Bregoli, 2000;Viggianni, Charlesworth, Hutchinson, & Faria, 2005).…”

Making Human Behavior Theory Real Through the Unreal: Fiction in the HBSE Classroom

“…In the classroom, Viggiani et al (2005) describe the benefits of using textbooks and literature in the social work courses. They contend that textbooks provide students with adequate coverage of general and theoretical knowledge but often fall short of connecting the content with the nuances of individualized situations students will experience in practice.…”

Students’ learning reflections when using works of fiction in social work education

“…University instructors have used fiction to teach specific concepts and theoretical ideas to students. Literary works of fiction have previously been used in the social sciences when teaching many social work relevant topics, such as stratification and inequality (Fitzgerald, 1992;Laz, 2020;Moran, 1999), social justice (Viggiani et al, 2005), labelling (Cnaan, 1989;Monroe, 2006), mental health stigma (Lewis, 2004), family issues (Cosbey, 1997;Hall, 2000) and effective leadership (Hafford-Letchfield & Harper, 2014). Previous research is rather uniform, arguing that the analysis of fiction fosters social scientific reasoning, conceptual understanding and the 'sociological imagination' (Castellano et al, 2008;Fitzgerald, 1992;Hendershott & Wright, 1993;Laz, 2020).…”

“…In addition, length-wise this short story is relatively easy to read and analyse. According to Viggiani et al (2005), fiction used in social science education should reflect complex interactions between individuals and societal structures, and address the complexity and relationality of human life. According to our interpretation, Berlin's short story meets these criteria quite well.…”