A Preliminary Analysis of MSW Students Attitudes Towards Neuroscience: Implications for MSW Education and Training

Background and Purpose: Neuroscience has become increasingly relevant in social work practice by improving social work interventions. For instance, findings on the neurobiology of trauma support the somatic interventions now used in trauma treatment. Because of this, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) advocates for the incorporation of neuroscience knowledge as part of learning in social work. As such we need to understand how to educate social workers in neuroscience with application to direct practice. There is limited research exploring how to best educate social workers in neuroscience and if such training would improve direct practice outcomes. As an initial step, this research sought to explore the attitudes of Master of Social Work (MSW) students towards neuroscience within social work education.

Methods: A cross-sectional survey was designed to capture MSW student attitudes toward neuroscience. The survey was implemented in Qualtrics at a top 15 MSW program within a private Midwest university that includes approximately 375 total MSW students. From this ongoing study, a total of 83 students have responded to the survey. Only surveys with complete responses were analyzed in SPSS (N = 72). Composites were created capturing students’ comfort, perceived importance, and perceived usefulness of neuroscience. First, descriptive statistics summarized demographics (race, gender, age), composite measures, and alignment with the NASW Code of Ethics, the Grand Challenges for Social Work (GCSW), and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) competencies. One-way ANOVAs were used to examine if previous neuroscience exposure and awareness of the “Decade of the Brain” predicted the composite outcomes.

Results: Sample characteristics were composed of predominantly white (70.8%, 51), females (75%, 54), with an average age of 28 (SD = 7.79). Respondents believed neuroscience aligned with the NASW (agree = 41.7%, strongly agree = 31.9%), the GCSW (agree = 44.4%, strongly agree = 30.6%) and the CSWE competencies (agree = 44.4%, strongly agree = 40.3%). Students rated their overall perceived comfort with neuroscience as slightly comfortable (M = 3.72, observed range = 1 (very uncomfortable) – 5 (very comfortable)). Students perceived “a lot” of usefulness of neuroscience (M = 3.74, observed range = 0 (not at all) – 5 (hugely)). Moreover, students perceived the importance of neuroscience to be “moderately important” (M = 3.88, observed range = 1 (unimportant) to 5 (very important)), which was significantly associated with previous neuroscience exposure (f (2) = 5.107, p < .01). No other relationships were significant (p > .05).

Conclusions and Implications: These results suggest that overall MSW students are comfortable with neuroscience and find it important and useful in social work aligning with the NASW Code of Ethics, the GCSW, and the CSWE competencies. The relationship between previous neuroscience exposure and perceived importance indicates consideration for the inclusion of neuroscience in foundational MSW courses. Future research will need to expand on these findings and investigate what neuroscience information would be most helpful if taught in foundational social work curricula. To conclude, this study offers important, novel insights into the incorporation of neuroscience knowledge into social work education.