Courses

• Psychosocial Pathology
  
  • This course gives an overview of abnormal psychology, and teaches the use of DSM IV.
  • I teach it with an emphasis on how people are labelled, the social construction of psychiatric disorders, and what is currently believed to be "best treatment."
  • I teach this course using PowerPoint and movie clips to demonstrate psychiatric disorders. Most students think this is fun, and I certainly do.
  • There are no papers for this course, but there are two online exams, a midterm and a final.
    
• Social Work in Schools
  
  • This course examines social work practice in schools primarily from the perspective of community organization, and also delves into policy.
  • It is taught using PowerPoint and case studies.
  • For the first assignment, each student is required to visit a school and perform a "needs assessment." A second paper is a literature review on a subject relevant to a school need uncovered in the first assignment. In the third paper, the student creates a program for the school he has visited, based on the need. She must also present her findings to the class at the end of the semester using PowerPoint.
    
• Evaluation of Practice
  
  • This is the first of two research courses that every student is required to take. This course concentrates on evaluating practice with a single subject. Each student must evaluate her own practice with a fieldwork client, and report on it, in a paper and using PowerPoint, at the end of the semester.
  • This course is taught using special software developed by Dr. Auerbach.
    
• Applied Methods in Social Work research
  
  • This is the second of the two research courses. Students study different modes of research that are used in social work and are introduced to simple statistics. They learn to analyse data using SPSS (Statistical package for the Social Sciences).
  • I teach this course using sample data from large databases available on the internet. Students choose a subject and then perform a secondary analysis of one of these databases to test a hypothesis. The first paper analyzes a qualitative research article. The remaining papers are devoted to stages of the students research project. These projects may be done in teams.