Search

The article discusses the issues related to social work education. The author believes that one reason is that many authors seem to have the impression that a paper that is meant for social work education must be quantitatively oriented and empirically based to be published. To many this means con- ducting studies on fairly narrow questions that may be of interest to a limited audience. Junior faculty especially, he has found, often believe that tenure and pro- motion committees are much more interested in published papers filled with statistical analyses and tables than in theoretical or conceptually oriented essays. The author has heard many junior faculty comments that they would prefer to write about the latter but feel pressured to churn out the former. The concludes that one need to take a hard look at the "market forces" that are pressuring so many faculty to conduct research and write papers on topics that do not attract. It is essential that social work educators engage in thoughtful discourse about these matters, because they do matter. Finally the author concludes that reach on these issues have a great deal to do with the character of this noble profession.