The American education system has been significantly disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, which led schools to shut down and convert to remote learning environments in spring 2020. However, long before these school closures, school social workers (SSWs) have faced significant practice dilemmas, as they have encountered obstacles to their engagement in best practices. While initial pandemic school closures presented SSWs with a range of uncertain situations, they also provided the possibility to respond to practice demands in different and dynamic ways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUsing data on ninth graders, math teachers, and schools from the nationally representative High School Longitudinal Study of 2009, we investigate the following questions: (1) How do ninth graders' perceptions of their math teachers as equitable relate to their math identity at the intersection of adolescents' race and gender? and (2) Do differences in the percentage of students at the school who share the adolescent's race moderate (i.e., differentiate) the salience of perceptions of math teachers for adolescents' math identities? Our results suggest that adolescents who perceive their math teachers as equitable typically have higher levels of math identity regardless of their race or gender.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Understanding teachers' appraisals of student wellness services and supports during COVID-19 is essential to strengthening services and improving student health outcomes. This mixed-method study aimed to examine US PK-12 teachers' appraisals of student wellness services and supports during COVID-19.
Methods: This study focuses on qualitative data from 291 teachers' open-ended responses to the question: "What do you wish your school leaders knew about this (wellness support) aspect of your work?" and whose responses described wellness services and supports.
Children of color (COC) continue to have a range of disparate educational experiences that implicate structural and institutional racism as powerful, detrimental forces in P-12 schools. As members of a profession dedicated to empowerment and the dismantling of oppression, social workers are called to respond. Social workers work in and with schools in diverse roles (for example, as practitioners, community partners, organizational leaders, and contracted providers) and are ethically obligated to challenge injustice.
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