A Problem-Based Learning Model for Social Policy Class: Student-Led Grassroots Organizing for Policy Change
摘要
Social policy is a less popular field of practice in professional social work, partially due to social workers’ lack of agency, efficacy, capacity, and belief they can make a difference through policy interventions. By using experiential, skills-based instruction in policy classes, social work educators may offer greater opportunity for mastery experiences for students to successfully perform policy skills to increase confidence and inspire interest and participation in social policy practice. Adopting a problem-based learning approach, the authors redesigned a social policy course as an immersive, semester-long, student-led project on grassroots organizing for social change. The class “problem” is defined as leading a community-based change effort for social policy enactment, revision, or enforcement. Students are empowered to work on real policy and social justice issues in their own communities applying the planned change process, beginning with engagement and proceeding through assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, and termination. The authors present a model for a social policy course wholly designed in problem-based learning including an overview of the class organization, course content, assignments, student preparation, teaching strategies, and instructor reflections on guiding the process.