LibGuides: OER Subject Guides: Social Work

Social Work OER

Open Social Work Education
Open Social Work Education (OSWE) is a collaborative project dedicated to open educational resources (OER) in social work. By spreading the creation and adoption of OER, we will: Eliminate textbook cost barriers to social work knowledge, particularly for groups historically underrepresented in higher education; Improve the quality of educational resources through open sharing and revision of instructional materials; Build a commons of social work knowledge owned and sustained by the community of social work scholars
Human Behavior and the Social Environment II [2020]
From the author's introduction: "After several years of clinical practice, I made the unexpected transition to academia and was given the opportunity to teach the Human Behavior and the Social Environment course. After working on the curriculum for two semesters, it became clear to me that students wanted and desired a textbook that was free, easy to access online, and contained information from a multitude of disciplines. I was fortunate enough to learn about Open Educational Resources at our institution and began working with the University library system to compile several different chapters from several different open and free textbooks. These materials will help students and instructors alike explore human behavior and how it is shaped and impacted by both traditional and non-traditional paradigms. This text will also support the reader in having a deeper understanding of how the environment, in all of its complexity, can affect individuals, families, groups, and communities.

It is my hope that the information contained in this book will help you, as a future social worker, approach client systems with empathy, understanding, and a compassionate curiosity that allows for comprehensive assessment, individualized approaches to treatment, and continuity of care."
A Toolkit for Teaching Communication Skills in Social Work [2020]
This toolkit includes five videos demonstrating basic communication skills and a teaching guide for instructors. The videos are a series of short vignettes of counselling sessions between a social worker and a client. Four of the videos target one or two basic communication skills so students can learn the skills in manageable segments. The fifth video demonstrates how a counsellor would amalgamate all the skills in a counselling session. The teaching guide provides transcripts, discussion questions and exercises/role plays that instructors can use in both face-to-face and online teaching to enhance student learning of communication skills.
Foundations of Social Work Research [2020]
This textbook was created to provide an introduction to research methods for BSW and MSW students, with particular emphasis on research and practice relevant to students at the University of Texas at Arlington. It provides an introduction to social work students to help evaluate research for evidence-based practice and design social work research projects. It can be used with its companion, A Guidebook for Social Work Literature Reviews and Research Questions by Rebecca L. Mauldin and Matthew DeCarlo, or as a stand-alone textbook.
Scientific Inquiry in Social Work [2018]
As an introductory textbook for social work students studying research methods, this book guides students through the process of creating a research project. Students will learn how to discover a researchable topic that is interesting to them, examine scholarly literature, formulate a proper research question, design a quantitative or qualitative study to answer their question, carry out the design, interpret quantitative or qualitative results, and disseminate their findings to a variety of audiences. Examples are drawn from the author's practice and research experience, as well as topical articles from the literature. The textbook is aligned with the Council on Social Work Education's 2015 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards. Students and faculty can download copies of this textbook using the links provided in the front matter. As an open textbook, users are free to retain copies, redistribute copies (non-commercially), revise the contents, remix it with other works, and reuse for any purpose.