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Making wise choices is of special importance to social workers since they will inevitably face, and have to negotiate, difficult and complex client cases. To date, wisdom has been understood primarily in the literature in terms of a body of knowledge and skills that practitioners gain with experience. This understanding, also known as 'Practice Wisdom', faces some serious difficulties. In its place, this presentation presents an alternative novel approach called "Practitioner Wisdom". According to it, attention is shifted away from a body of knowledge or skills and placed instead on practitioners themselves. The goal of social work education should be to help students become wise, and aims to do so by creating conditions under they can acquire and cultivate certain social work virtues and values. The central argument is that when social workers possess these virtues and values, they will have the resources to make wise choice.
Methods:
Researcher(s) received IRB from the university and administered surveys through undergraduate and graduate courses. The questionnaire included the 3D Wisdom Scale (reflective, cognitive, and affective dimensions), the Hope Scale, the Compassion Scale, and the Cognitive Empathy Scale. The sample consists of 158 students with females (n=132) and males (n=26). The sample has a mean age of 24.31 years (SD = 8.440). The participants were mostly White (78.5%) with approximately (21.5%) minorities. Students were mainly BSW (41.8%), approximately (19%) MSW, and approximately (31.6%) with an emphasis in clinical mental health. Only 8.2% are social work practitioners.
Results:
Approximately (31.5%) of participants reported that social work education helped them develop wise social work virtues, with (33.9%) somewhat agreed, and (16.5%) did not agree. Additionally, (29.7%) of participants reported that social work education develops wise social work values, (31.3%) somewhat agree, and (27.3%) did not agree. Multivariate analysis revealed that social work students who reported higher levels of cognitive empathy and positive mental health symptoms were more likely to have reflective wisdom. However, social work students and practitioners were not significantly associated with cognitive or affective wisdom.
Implications:
Wisdom is one of the most important attributes for social workers to obtain. Wisdom includes reflective dimension (different perspectives, overcoming subjectivity and projections), cognitive dimension (reality, understand deep truths, intrapersonal and interpersonal), and affective dimension (sympathy and empathy), which are all driven by virtues and values. Social work students with cognitive empathy were more likely to have reflective wisdom. However, there was not an association with cognitive and affective wisdom. This points to the need for wisdom to be integrated in our educational curriculum for social workers. Therefore, students and professors’ perceptions of wisdom should be explored. Exploring, social workers perceptions of wisdom is of special importance as it is one of the determining factors that affect the efficacy of learning.