Читать книгу Social Work Research Methods - Reginald O. York - Страница 27

The key distinction of this text is the theme of learning by doing, which refers to putting knowledge into practice. My decades of teaching social work research at more than one university has taught me to agree with Confucius. He said that what you are told, you will forget; what you are shown, you will remember; but what you do, you will understand.

There are several features of this book that execute this major theme. For example, each chapter begins with a vignette that illustrates the basic content of the chapter. The vignette explains how one social worker made use of the knowledge that is addressed in the chapter.

Another feature is that priority is given to themes of practical use, such as the steps in the use of systematic reviews of evidence, where to find published tools for measuring client progress, and how to use the Internet for the analysis of data. In many of these instances, students are guided through a step-by-step process that makes the task very clear.

The most important mechanism for executing the learning-by-doing theme, however, is that each chapter has a practice exercise that calls on the reader to apply the knowledge gained from the chapter. One of these exercises asks the reader to conduct a study of the relationship between stress, social support, and life satisfaction using data from members of the research class. The class completes the survey and each student analyzes the data using a convenient Internet website. They report the results and offer their conclusions. Another practice exercise calls on students to report their assessment of how well a familiar agency evaluates need, service process, and client outcome.

Many of the current research texts on the market offer myriad concepts with little step-by-step guidance on how this understanding can be applied. These texts make the improper assumption that students can apply their abstract understanding of concepts without any step-by-step guidance on the research task. For example, they will be taught about measurement reliability and validity but will not be given guidance on how to select a good published measurement scale for their study. They may be taught about the nature of the systematic review of evidence but not be given instructions on how to examine a given systematic review. These other texts will teach students about the nature of statistical tests but will not give them step-by-step guidance on analyzing their data using the Internet. In other words, the assumption of these alternative texts is that students will figure things out for themselves, in their own unique ways, just how to apply what they have learned. This is a faulty assumption in my opinion, based on my experience as a research teacher in social work.