Examining associations between child welfare workforce well-being and utilization of casework skills with children and families.

Background: While child welfare scholarship has paid much attention to workforce well-being such as burnout, secondary traumatic stress (STS), and compassion satisfaction, few studies have investigated how these outcomes influence utilization of casework skills.

Objectives: This study aimed to understand the relationship between child welfare workforce well-being and use of casework skills. Specifically, we examined associations between burnout, STS, and compassion satisfaction and casework skills including parent/youth engagement, safety and risk assessment/case planning, and relative/kin connections.

"Without Compassion We Don't Have a Social Work Field": A Thematic Analysis Exploring Social Workers' Experiences with Compassion.

Purpose: Evidence establishing the importance of compassion in the context of social work practice is emerging. Compassion, stemming from the Latin words and , means to suffer with. Given the proximity social workers have to vast experiences of suffering, compassion may play a central role in providing meaningful care to individuals, communities, and systems.

Investigating the Relationship between Trauma Symptoms and Placement Instability.

Background: Placement stability while in foster care has important implications for children's permanency and well-being. Though a majority of youth have adequate placement stability while in foster care, a substantial minority experience multiple moves during their time in care. Research on correlates of placement instability has demonstrated a relationship between externalizing behaviors and placement instability.

Fostering adolescent curiosity through a question brainstorming intervention.

Introduction: High adolescent curiosity is associated with several positive outcomes, yet questioning, a common behavioral manifestation of curiosity, declines once children enter formal schooling. The present quasi-experimental study empirically investigated whether directly teaching students to question helps to foster students' more enduring, dispositional tendency towards curiosity.

Method: The study explored the impact of a direct-instruction student-brainstorming intervention, the Question Formulation Technique (QFT), on adolescents' curiosity.

The Role of Curiosity in the Sociopolitical Development of Black and Latinx Adolescents.

Sociopolitical development, the process of coming to understand and take action against systems of oppression, is associated with key outcomes for youth. Although rooted in Paulo Freire's work on critical consciousness, sociopolitical development models overlook a motivational attribute-curiosity-that Freire characterized as a catalyst of such development. This longitudinal study investigated the relationship between curiosity and two aspects of sociopolitical development (social analysis, societal involvement) in a sample of Black and Latinx adolescents (N = 659).

The Development of Critical Consciousness and its Relation to Academic Achievement in Adolescents of Color.

Critical consciousness, the process by which individuals come to understand, analyze, and take action against systems of oppression, is associated with several positive youth outcomes. However, little research has considered how the core components of critical consciousness (critical reflection, political agency, critical action) are associated with academic achievement. The present study explored the extent to which the developing critical consciousness of adolescents of color (N = 364) over 4 years of high school predicted academic achievement, as measured by grade point average (GPA) and the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT).

Black and Latinx adolescents' developing beliefs about poverty and associations with their awareness of racism.

Interpersonal and structural forms of racism contribute to a system of economic stratification in the United States in which children of color are disproportionately likely to be born into poverty and to remain poor as adults. However, only a small body of research has focused on Black and Latinx adolescents' developing beliefs about the causes of poverty or the relationship between such beliefs and their awareness of racism. The present study sought to contribute to this scholarship with a longitudinal investigation involving Black and Latinx adolescents (n = 457) attending urban secondary schools in 5 northeastern cities.

Investigating Adolescents' Critical Consciousness Development through a Character Framework.

Brazilian philosopher-educator Paulo Freire defined critical consciousness as the ability to engage in reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it. A growing body of research has found that critical consciousness is predictive of a number of important academic and civic outcomes in adolescents from oppressed groups. The present mixed methods study considered the critical consciousness development of 335 adolescents (57% female, 92% African American or Latinx) attending urban secondary schools that sought to foster their students' critical consciousness, but featured five different pedagogical approaches.