Faculty Scholarly Dissemination Grants

Department

School of Social Work

College

College of Community and Public Service

Date Range

2011-2012

Abstract

Graduate students in our MSW program have been actively lobbying for more in-depth coverage of spirituality and religion within our curriculum over the past several years. This study employed a photovoice method to explore 14 social work students' experiences with spirituality/religion in their personal and professional lives, and also suggestions and assessments for the social work curriculum. Photovoice, developed in the 1990's by Wang and Burris, in which researchers provide questions or topic areas to participants and ask them to use a camera to capture a photographic response to the topic/ question. Participants, who generally self-identified as more spiritual than religious, participated in three phases of data collection. This phase of data explored participants' experiences within our accredited MSW program. Participants were asked to take pictures in response to describing how they experienced spirituality/religion in the social work curriculum. Specific prompt questions included but were not limited to: What have been your experiences of the integration of spirituality/religion in the social work classroom?; What should be the role of religion/ spirituality in social work education?; What does spirituality/religious training contribute to social work education? This presentation shares the perceived necessity of the inclusion of spirituality and religion in formal social work training and missed opportunities to better address these areas related to human behavior, cultural competency, and intervention training. This presentation will share the findings from this research, as well as implications for social work programs in the development of curriculum and the pursuit of demonstrating the core competencies.

Conference Name

Annual Program Meeting

Conference Location

Atlanta, GA

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