The purpose of this course is to prepare advanced standing MSW students for participation in the UVM social work concentration curriculum. In this course Advanced Standing students will explore the guiding concepts of the UVM MSW curriculum and their application to human behavior, social work practice, policy, and research. The course begins by considering the major ideas of social construction—their genesis, conceptualizations, and relationships to social work. These ideas are then applied to different dimensions of social work. In particular, we consider how these ideas intersect with advanced social work practices.

Successful completion requires that students complete 60 hours of study that involves reading required texts as indicated in the syllabus, weekly online classroom discussions, online discussions with classmates, blackboard posts and responses, individual meetings with professor and other independent work outlined in the syllabus and according to individual agreements made with the professor.

Student facilitation of readings, discussions in online meetings, and applied written essays will be evaluated in general terms by the organization of the presented oral or written remarks, ability to reference videos and texts used in the course to explain conceptual points, ability to interpret terms and ideas used by author to make meaning within a social work context, the quality of questions posed to instructor and classmates to generate critical analysis, and ability to facilitate a conversation regarding the main themes of material under review.