Microsoft Word - EDITORIAL Vol 12_2 _________________ William H. Barton, Ph.D., is a professor in the Indiana University School of Social Work on the Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis campus. Contact information: (317) 274-6711; Email: wbarton@iupui.edu Copyright © 2011 Advances in Social Work Vol. 12 No. 2 (Fall 2011), i-iii EDITORIAL William H. Barton Welcome to the Fall 2011 issue of Advances in Social Work (Volume 12, No. 2). Once again, we have had the good fortune to receive many high-quality manuscripts, and reviewers and authors alike have responded quickly and capably to their respective reviewing and revising tasks. As a result, this issue contains 16 articles on a range of topics. In addition, this issue begins with a special recognition, written by Rob Schneider, of the centennial of the Indiana University School of Social Work, the oldest social work education program affiliated with a university, and the sponsor of this journal! On the Advances horizon for 2012 will be two special issues. Some delays in processing manuscripts have moved the “Military Social Work” special issue, co-edited by James G. Daley and Anthony Hassan to sometime in early 2012. In the Spring of 2012, we will be publishing yet another special issue, “Global Problems: Local Solutions,” highlighting the latest work on cross-border, cross-disciplinary, and cross- boundary practices that seek solutions at the local level to problems caused by global conditions. Khadija Khaja and Joe Varga are co-editors, and we’ve had a good response to the call for papers for that issue. Our next “regular” issue will be the Fall 2012 issue. The first regular article in the current issue, “Strengths-Based Practice and Motivational Interviewing,” should be of particular interest to practitioners. In it, Trevor Manthey and colleagues systematically examine the fit between motivational interviewing and strengths-based practice. The article includes a detailed case example that makes the abstract comparison come to life. Next, in “Outpatient Commitment on the Ground: Listening to Consumers and Providers,” Christopher Gjesfjeld and Michaela Kennedy present a qualitative study of the perspectives of consumers and providers about outpatient commitment, that is, court-ordered mental health treatment. Although they found that consumers perceived that outpatient commitment led to improvements in their lives, they also identified themes of ambiguity of personal control among consumers, and inconsistencies among both consumers and providers regarding what outpatient commitment specifically required. Two articles by Darrel Montero in this issue use Gallup Poll and other national survey data to investigate changes in public attitudes about controversial social issues. The first, “End-of-Life Issues in the United States after Terri Schiavo: Implications for Social Work Practice,” looks at attitudes towards end-of-life issues in the years following the highly publicized case of Terry Schiavo. The second, “Survivorship and Inheritance Rights for Same-Gender Couples: Relevance to Social Workers,” appearing as this issue’s next-to-last entry and co-authored by Montero with several former MSW students, analyzes changes over time in attitudes related to same-sex marriage and other civil rights of homosexuals. Both articles provide evidence that increasingly larger percentages of the public favor the extension of greater rights. ADVANCES IN SOCIAL WORK, Fall 2011, 12(2) ii Two articles explore parent-child issues in the context of specific ethnic families. Kimberly Stauss and colleagues, in “Parent-Child Communication Related to Sexual Health: The Contextual Experiences of Rural Latino Parents and Youth,” explore perceptions of first-generation, immigrant rural Latino parents and youth regarding parent-child communication related to sexual health. Results suggest that parents provided gender-specific messages about sex to their children, mothers discussed birth control facts in greater frequency, and youth, especially boys, expressed the need to have more conversations about sex with their parents. Next, in “Understanding Fathering among Urban Native American Men,” Jeffrey Shears and colleagues use qualitative data from the National Early Head Start Research and Evaluation Project to examine the perceptions of Native American fathers about their role as fathers. The fathers indicated that it is important to them to be “present” in addition to “being there” in the lives of their children, to pass on the language and cultural traditions to their children. They also perceived fathering as a protective factor for themselves, helping them reduce their participation in at-risk behaviors. In “Paying Project Participants: Dilemmas in Research with Poor, Marginalized Populations,” Lara Descartes and colleagues offer lessons learned about issues that can arise in research with marginalized populations. In a study of gay men’s perceptions of prostate health and prostate cancer, they attempted to recruit focus group participants using monetary incentives. They encountered unanticipated problems in specifically recruiting low-income participants, and reflect upon how such situations might be avoided or better handled in future research. The next five articles in this issue should be of particular interest to social work educators. Emily L. McCave and Carrie W. Rishel, in “Prevention as an Explicit Part of the Social Work Profession: A Systematic Investigation,” argue that, despite social work’s endorsement of prevention-focused practice, little attention to prevention can be found in a systematic search of the social work literature, NASW policy positions, or the new EPAS curricular competencies and practice behaviors. In “Lawyers are Counselors, Too: Social Workers can Train Lawyers to More Effectively Counsel Clients,” Stephanie Boys and colleagues advocate and provide examples of transdisciplinary education in which social work educators teach classes in law schools. Angela R. Ausbrooks and colleagues next provide results from an exploratory study of faculty and student perceptions of classroom incivility in a social work program in an article entitled, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t: Faculty and Student Perceptions of Classroom Incivility in a Social Work Program.” They report that faculty noticed classroom incivility less than did students, while students felt that faculty were not doing enough to address incivility. Bruce Dalton and colleagues, in “‘How do you do it?’: MSW Field Director Survey,” report great variation in respondents’ reports of field requirements, field credits, and field liaison faculty status. While recognizing the potential problems of having overly standardized requirements, the authors recommend pursuing some level of basic equity of student field experience between programs. In the final article in this group, “Towards a Research Agenda for Social Work Practice in Virtual Worlds,” Scott Anstadt and colleagues discuss the potential merits and challenges of using Second Life, an online 3D Barton/EDITORIAL iii virtual world, in social work practice and education. Their review of existing research reveals a number of questions that remain for researchers to answer. And now for something completely different. “The Dialectic Method: A Critical and Postmodern Alternative to the Scientific Method,” by Phillip Dybicz and Loretta Pyles, ventures into the philosophical territory of Hans-Georg Gadamer. The article discusses how Gadamer’s dialectic method can be applied to social work inquiry and practice concerns, as an alternative to the traditional scientific method. The authors identify the dialectic method’s strengths in uncovering socially constructed truths and emphasizing empowerment. The next two articles return to social work education issues. In “Using Internet-Based Videos as Pedagogical Tools in the Social Work Policy Classroom,” Sarabeth Leukefeld describes how to select and use contemporary internet videos to engage students in policy courses. Then, in “Exploring Empathy Embedded in Ethics Curricula: A Classroom Inquiry,” Susan Gair presents exploratory, qualitative research regarding the use of case vignettes to teach empathy in social work. She concludes that an introduction to empathy in social work classes may be insufficient if students do not advance beyond a superficial understanding of empathy to deeper listening and empathic capacity. The final article in this issue, “Social Workers’ Role in the Disproportionality of African American Students in Special Education,” Kristen Faye Bean addresses a timely social justice issue. She employs Patricia Collins’ Domains-of-Power Framework to identify ways school social workers can practice transformational resistance to reduce the overrepresentation of African American students in special education. So, something to do over the long holiday break, perhaps curled up by the fire (if you are in the Northern Hemisphere) or on the beach (if you are in the Southern Hemisphere)! Of course, you may also use some of whatever time off you may have to work on those next manuscripts you intend to submit to Advances – I look forward to receiving them. Cheers!