Social Work and Law Interdisciplinary Service Learning: Increasing Future Lawyers’ Interpersonal Skills

Autor: Stephanie Q. Quiring, Evan Harris, Stephanie K. Boys, Carrie Hagan
Rok vydání: 2015
Předmět:
Zdroj: Journal of Teaching in Social Work. 35:410-424
ISSN: 1540-7349
0884-1233
DOI: 10.1080/08841233.2015.1063569
Popis: Social workers and attorneys both interact with persons from diverse backgrounds every day, yet although interpersonal skills are an essential focus of social work education, these skills are not addressed in legal education. Interdisciplinary courses in which social workers and lawyers learn interpersonal skills together and have an opportunity to practice them through service learning opportunities are a way to remedy a gap in legal education. The authors describe a project recently piloted at a large midwestern university in which law and graduate social work students participated in an interdisciplinary course with a service learning component requiring students to work together on cases. As one component of the clinic’s assessment, all students were pre- and posttested via an interpersonal skills survey. The law students showed statistically significant improvement in interpersonal skills at the end of the course. The results indicate a need for increased support for interdisciplinary education, spec...
Databáze: OpenAIRE