Social Work in an Ethnically Diverse Europe: The Shifting Challenges of Difference

This article addresses the inherently politicised context of social work practice located within the contested logics and values of national social policy and professional values and identities. Noting the key role of social work in delivering the state’s promise of social citizenship, it is argued that the increasing neo-nationalist sentiments and politics in European states generate significant pressures upon the universalist, inclusive, values of social work in a multiethnic Europe. The academic and policy debate around social cohesion is explored to illustrate how an assimilationist drift in multicultural state policies undermines the capacity of social work services to deliver appropriate, ethnically sensitive, services. It is further argued that the pervasive spread of populist counter-narratives to multiculturalism erode support for anti-racist and transcultural social work practice. In this context it is argued that social work must acknowledge its compromised situation and explicitly develop a political agenda committed to guaranteeing substantive equality in service delivery.

“Advertising Psychology – The Blog Seminar”.

The aim of the web-based course “Advertising Psychology – The Blog Seminar” was to offer a contemporary teaching design using typical Web 2.0 characteristics such as comments, discussions and social media integration which covers facebook and Twitter support, as nowadays, this is a common part of students’ everyday life. This weblog (blog)-based seminar for Advertising Psychology was set up in order to make the course accessible to students from different campuses in the Ruhr metropolitan area. The technical aspect of the open-source content management system Drupal 6.0 and the didactical course structure, based on Merrill’s five first principles of instruction, are introduced. To date, this blog seminar has been conducted three times with a total of 84 participants, who were asked to rate the course according to the benefits of different didactical elements and with regard to Kirkpatrick’s levels of evaluation model. This model covers a) reactions such as reported enjoyment, perceived usefulness and perceived difficulty, and b) effects on learning through the subjectively reported increase in knowledge and attitude towards the seminar. Overall, the blog seminar was evaluated very positively and can be considered as providing support for achieving the learning objectives. However, a successful blended learning approach should always be tailored to the learning contents and the environment.