This article describes a course on mindfulness and social work in an Israeli college. During the course, the students dealt with the unpredictable reality of the COVID-19 crisis. As they studied and ...practiced mindfulness, they experienced new life circumstances, as a living lab, creating a direct encounter with the course concepts. Practicing meditation became particularly significant for them given their coping with the crisis. One of the course requirements was writing a journal. Analysis of the journals suggested a three-stage learning process: (a) ambivalence toward the course, (b) the magic of mindfulness, and (c) reflection and selection. The findings indicate that the students experienced the course as helping them deal with the COVID-19 challenges on personal, professional, and academic levels.
The present study examined the effectiveness of participation in a mindfulness group for Israeli early career social workers during the COVID-19 period. Eleven participants conducting fieldwork in a ...mental health rehabilitation center were interviewed. The participants described a variety of benefits from their mindfulness training, in three main areas: (1) Personal: applying mindfulness in their daily life; (2) Family: improved work-life balance and family relationships; and (3) Professional: applying mindfulness in their work with mental health clients. Mental support and self-care tools provided to early-career social workers were perceived by the participants as helping them overcome uncertainty, fatigue, and overwork.
Despite the growing interest in the experience of early-career social workers, the literature on the formation of their professional identity in the transition to workplace is limited. The aim of the ...present qualitative research is to explore how social workers perceive the formation of their professional identity in their first years of practice and what the significance of their professional identity as social workers is in their overall early-career experience. Two focus groups were conducted online with eleven Israeli graduates. The findings indicated that forming a professional identity was central to the participants' experience in their first years of their practice, and was described as a complex, ambivalent, and even contradictory process. They used the term 'impostor syndrome' to describe this process. It emerged as a developmental stage-a state of being and a coping mechanism with the discrepancies between the participants' inner world and the world outside, and between the image of the ideal professional identity and that of the profession in general they had held in mind as students and the one they encountered in their day-to-day field practice. These findings and their implication for social work practice are further discussed.
In the last decade, an increasing number of qualitative studies sought to investigate the dynamics of various dyads by conducting in‐depth, multiple family member interviews. The emphasis in the ...methodological literature dealing with this type of research is primarily on the data collection process, and much less on the development of methods suitable for the analysis of the data thus derived, especially with regard to dyads consisting of family members belonging to different systems: families of origin or nuclear families. The purpose of this paper is to propose a model for dyadic analysis based on examining the dynamics of the evolving relationships between key caregivers of a family member with brain injury. The model includes inductive and abductive phases of analysis, and it is based on an ecological‐systemic perspective. The benefits of this model are highlighted, and its potential contribution is further discussed.
En la última década, un número cada vez mayor de estudios cualitativos tuvo como finalidad investigar la dinámica de varias díadas realizando entrevistas detalladas a numerosas familias. El énfasis en la bibliografía metodológica que trata de este tipo de investigación se pone principalmente en el proceso de recopilación de datos, pero mucho menos en el desarrollo de métodos adecuados para el análisis de datos así derivados, especialmente con respecto a las díadas que consisten en familiares pertenecientes a diferentes sistemas: familias de origen o familias nucleares. El propósito de este artículo es proponer un modelo para el análisis diádico sobre la base de la dinámica de las relaciones que surgen entre los principales cuidadores de un miembro de la familia con daño cerebral. El modelo incluye fases inductivas y abductivas de análisis y está basado en una perspectiva ecológico‐sistémica. Se destacan los beneficios de este modelo y se debate además su posible aporte.
过去十年里,质的研究越来越多地力图通过对多个家庭成员展开较深入访谈的调查方式来研究不同的两人组别之间的互动特点。从相关的方法论的文献中了解到,大多与此类问题相关的研究其重点主要是放在数据搜集的过程上,较少放在发展以适合数据分析的方法,特别是针对分属于不同家庭系统即同源大家庭和核心小家庭的两个家庭成员之间。本论文的宗旨是通过对照料脑部受伤的家庭成员的两个关键护理人之间不断发展变化的动态关系的研究,提出一个针对二元分析的模型。本模型采用的是生态系统的视角,包括归纳总结和外展推理两个阶段的分析。文中还讨论了使用本模型的好处和潜在的贡献。
This qualitative study focuses on blogs written by Israeli girls, aged 14 to 18, concerning their body and the developmental process of identity construction. Using a sociocultural approach, the ...study examined the ways in which the girls write about their bodies, what issues they raise in their blogs concerning their body and identity, and what blog writing about the body offers to them in the process of identity construction. A combination of thematic-categorical analysis and structural-linguistic analysis was used to analyze 27 blogs (86 posts) written by Israeli girls. The findings reveal a complex picture about the ways in which girls experience their bodies and perceive societal norms concerning their appearance. The blogs included the girls’ feelings of insecurity, stress, and confusion about their body and at the same time served as a place where girls were able to voice resistance to the current ideal of beauty and of social conventions. Findings also reveal the ways in which the girls presented their body to their girl peers. The study concludes that writing blogs is an important channel for Israeli girls to engage in discourse about the body as part of the process of identity formation.
The purpose of this study was to examine gender perceptions within the Bedouin community in Israel, particularly the perception of masculinity among male social workers of the community. These men ...work in a field in which most of the employees are women, and their professional values conflict with the values of Bedouin culture and society. The research employed a qualitative methodology in the phenomenological tradition. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from 20 male Bedouin social workers aged 40-54, all married and fathers. The interviews revealed their struggle to accommodate both their personal and professional masculinity and their society's traditional view of masculinity. This complex dichotomy is manifested in the different behaviour of the social workers within their society and in their personal and professional spaces.
IMPLICATIONS
Respecting or honouring local knowledge is important for social workers in all contexts.
Bedouin social workers integrate two types of values and principles-those of social work and those of their local culture-that are equally important and that present a fascinating ethical challenge for them.
Recognising native knowledge is an important aspect of a social worker's education.
Summary
This article aims to further research on diversity within social work. It examines the gender-related experiences of frontline Israeli male social workers who practice within the context of a ...female-oriented profession. Eighteen in-depth interviews were conducted in order to explore gender-related experiences as social work practitioners, within the context of participants’ life stories.
Findings
Three themes were identified as central in the interface between social work and gender: (a) the struggle involved in choosing the social work profession; (b) social work as a home for their emotional life; and (c) the complexities of coping with a female-dominated profession. Findings are discussed within the context of masculinity, highlighting the continual process of adaptation and renewal of masculinity in the male social workers professional development.
Applications
Recommendations are provided for social work academic institutions and agencies to further assist males on this important journey.
Purpose - This study, based on a merger of gender and accounting theories, aims to explore whether and how earnings management is affected by the presence of female directors on the board of ...directors and on the audit committee.Design methodology approach - The study employs both a univariate and multivariate analysis approach to explore the relation between female directors and earnings management in high-technology firms. In the analysis, two contemporary ex-post measures of earnings management, discretionary accruals and nonoperating accruals, as well as two ex-ante measures of earnings management, Big4 auditor and financial leverage are applied.Findings - The paper finds evidence for a negative relation between the presence of female directors and earnings management. The findings indicate that accounting aggressiveness is affected by the proportion of women on the board of directors as well as on the audit committee. Furthermore, the paper find evidences indicating that earnings management is lower when either the CEO or the CFO is a woman. Notably, in firms with a higher female representation in corporate governance and or in top management, external monitoring by auditors and creditors seems to be weaker, yet earnings quality is higher. Additional analysis suggests that the gender of directors has value implications for analysts and investors; specifically, there is a positive relation between the proportion of female directors and the firm's value. The findings are supported by several gender theories and findings regarding women's motivation and achievement, moral values, social stereotypes and the relation between task performance and self-confidence.Originality value - This study associates the gender of directors with earnings management by firms. The study contributes to the growing body of literature on earnings management. It should be useful to researchers, regulators, investors, analysts and creditors as well as other players in the capital markets, as it presents a new and important aspect that needs to be accounted for when assessing the quality of firms' accounting information.
This study examines social workers perceptions of their profession and of supervision of social work students. We gathered from 403 social workers metaphors related to the profession and supervision. ...We found that most of the metaphors concerning the profession revealed a positive view of it, though criticism was also expressed. The metaphors concerning supervision revealed a view that was even more positive than that of the profession itself. But the difficulty noted by some participants and the criticism of the employment conditions and low esteem of the profession must be addressed by the academic institutions and society in order to maintain the positive attitude toward the profession among the supervisors who are grooming the next generation of social workers.
Abstract Social work education focuses on preparing students for the profession. To this end, many educators utilise reflective journals in their courses. Reflective journaling is recognised in the ...literature as essential for the construction of students’ professional identity, yet few studies have explored how journals serve this purpose and the specific ways in which journal writing contributes to shaping social workers’ professional identity. This qualitative phenomenological study examined thirty Israeli social work students in their final year of undergraduate studies, before entering the field. Written during a practicum course, their journals were thematically analysed, revealing four themes of journal writing: (i) using personal experiences to construct a professional identity; (ii) acquiring professional concepts and skills by linking theory to practice; (iii) journal writing as professional retrospection; and (iv) journal writing as a safe resonant space for self-development. The discussion elaborates on the significance of each theme for the development of students’ professional identity.
