"Without Compassion We Don't Have a Social Work Field": A Thematic Analysis Exploring Social Workers' Experiences with Compassion.

PURPOSE: Evidence establishing the importance of compassion in the context of social work practice is emerging. Compassion, stemming from the Latin words com and pati, means to suffer with. Given the proximity social workers have to vast experiences of suffering, compassion may play a central role in providing meaningful care to individuals, communities, and systems. The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore social workers' definitions of and experiences with compassion. METHOD: Participants included 12 social workers working across levels of practice in two Midwestern states in the United States. Data were collected via semi-structured interviews. RESULTS: Thematic analysis demonstrated three themes present in the data. Consistent with previous conceptual scholarship, the findings illustrated that compassion is a central component of social work practice. Additionally, results from the study demonstrated that social workers find compassion to be an imperative component of ethical practice and suggested that both barriers to and facilitators of compassion are present across levels of social work practice. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION: This study adds to the growing body of social work scholarship exploring compassion and highlights implications for the social work discipline across levels of practice to more overtly center compassion in education, practice, and policy. Further research is needed to better understand multilevel barriers to compassion and develop strategies for overcoming them. Moreover, additional research is needed to holistically understand how to leverage and build upon the facilitators of compassion identified by participants in order to foster compassionate social workers, social work organizations, and systems.

Investigating the Relationship between Trauma Symptoms and Placement Instability.

BACKGROUND: Placement stability while in foster care has important implications for children's permanency and well-being. Though a majority of youth have adequate placement stability while in foster care, a substantial minority experience multiple moves during their time in care. Research on correlates of placement instability has demonstrated a relationship between externalizing behaviors and placement instability. Likewise, evidence suggests higher levels of trauma are associated with increased externalizing behaviors. However, few studies have examined the relationship between trauma symptoms and placement instability. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether children with clinically significant trauma symptoms had higher odds of placement instability. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Administrative data collected as a part of a summative evaluation for a federally-funded trauma III grant project were used. The sample included 1,668 children ages 5 and older who entered foster care during a 30-month period in a Midwestern state and completed a self-reported trauma screen within 120 days of entering care. METHODS: Hierarchical logistic regression was conducted to examine the contributions of trauma symptoms scores to placement instability, above and beyond demographic characteristics and case characteristics. RESULTS: Results from the final analytic model, which controlled for demographic and case characteristics, showed that children with clinically significant trauma symptoms (i.e., scores ≥19) had 46% higher odds of experiencing placement instability (OR = 1.46, 95% CIs [1.16, 1.82], p = .001). Findings support the need to screen for and treat trauma symptomology among youth in foster care.

The Role of Curiosity in the Sociopolitical Development of Black and Latinx Adolescents.

Sociopolitical development, the process of coming to understand and take action against systems of oppression, is associated with key outcomes for youth. Although rooted in Paulo Freire's work on critical consciousness, sociopolitical development models overlook a motivational attribute-curiosity-that Freire characterized as a catalyst of such development. This longitudinal study investigated the relationship between curiosity and two aspects of sociopolitical development (social analysis, societal involvement) in a sample of Black and Latinx adolescents (N = 659). Longitudinal growth models demonstrated positive growth in all constructs over 4-years of high school. Multivariate growth models revealed a positive correlation at baseline between curiosity and both constructs; growth in curiosity was also positively correlated with growth in social analysis and societal involvement.

The Development of Critical Consciousness and its Relation to Academic Achievement in Adolescents of Color.

Critical consciousness, the process by which individuals come to understand, analyze, and take action against systems of oppression, is associated with several positive youth outcomes. However, little research has considered how the core components of critical consciousness (critical reflection, political agency, critical action) are associated with academic achievement. The present study explored the extent to which the developing critical consciousness of adolescents of color (N = 364) over 4 years of high school predicted academic achievement, as measured by grade point average (GPA) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Results demonstrated that adolescents' critical reflection and critical action intercepts predicted SAT scores whereas critical reflection and critical action slopes predicted GPAs. Political agency was not predictive of either academic outcome.

Fostering adolescent curiosity through a question brainstorming intervention.

INTRODUCTION: High adolescent curiosity is associated with several positive outcomes, yet questioning, a common behavioral manifestation of curiosity, declines once children enter formal schooling. The present quasi-experimental study empirically investigated whether directly teaching students to question helps to foster students' more enduring, dispositional tendency towards curiosity. METHOD: The study explored the impact of a direct-instruction student-brainstorming intervention, the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), on adolescents' curiosity. The study's sample included adolescents (N = 3173) in four public high schools in the United States nested within 43 educators' English/Language Arts classrooms. Teachers (N = 43) were randomly assigned to two groups, one of which received professional development in the QFT in fall 2015 and the other in the winter of 2016. The study utilized student self-report questionnaires and teacher fidelity checks at three time points (fall, winter, and spring) to consider the impact of the QFT on participating adolescents' curiosity. RESULTS: Multilevel modeling results indicated a positive treatment effect of the QFT on adolescents' curiosity, a positive adherence effect on adolescents' curiosity growth, and a positive dosage effect on adolescents' curiosity growth. CONCLUSIONS: The study suggests that adolescent dispositional curiosity can be significantly increased by directly teaching students to question.

Black and Latinx adolescents' developing beliefs about poverty and associations with their awareness of racism.

Interpersonal and structural forms of racism contribute to a system of economic stratification in the United States in which children of color are disproportionately likely to be born into poverty and to remain poor as adults. However, only a small body of research has focused on Black and Latinx adolescents' developing beliefs about the causes of poverty or the relationship between such beliefs and their awareness of racism. The present study sought to contribute to this scholarship with a longitudinal investigation involving Black and Latinx adolescents (n = 457) attending urban secondary schools in 5 northeastern cities. Specifically, we investigated (a) these adolescents' change over time in their beliefs about the causes of poverty; (b) the relationship between their developing beliefs about the causes of poverty and changes in their awareness of racism; and (c) the role of a progressive schooling experience in influencing the adolescents' beliefs about the causes of poverty. Multivariate latent growth modeling revealed that participants demonstrated significant positive change over time in their conception of poverty as caused by structural factors as well as a significant relationship at each time point between adolescents' beliefs about the causes of poverty and awareness of interpersonal racism. However, we found that attending a secondary school featuring a progressive schooling model did not significantly predict adolescents' change in beliefs about the structural causes of poverty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Investigating Adolescents' Critical Consciousness Development through a Character Framework.

Brazilian philosopher-educator Paulo Freire defined critical consciousness as the ability to engage in reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. A growing body of research has found that critical consciousness is predictive of a number of important academic and civic outcomes in adolescents from oppressed groups. The present mixed methods study considered the critical consciousness development of 335 adolescents (57% female, 92% African American or Latinx) attending urban secondary schools that sought to foster their students' critical consciousness, but featured five different pedagogical approaches. We hypothesized that considering these adolescents' critical consciousness development through a character lens would highlight ways in which different schooling models contribute differentially to their students' development of the intellectual, performance, and civic dimensions of critical consciousness. Longitudinal analyses revealed significant differences in the critical consciousness development of adolescents attending different schooling models along these dimensions. Interviews with adolescents and field work conducted at their schools offered insight into the programming and practices that may have contributed to these differences in students' critical consciousness development.