Social Work Students and Faculty: Testing the Convergence of Perspectives on Student Writing Abilities.

ANALYSIS of variance; CHI-squared test; COMMUNICATIVE competence; CONFIDENCE; ENGLISH as a foreign language; PLAGIARISM; PROBABILITY theory; RACE; STATISTICAL sampling; SCALE analysis (Psychology); SELF-evaluation; SELF-perception; SEX distribution; SOCIAL work education; STATISTICS; STUDENT attitudes; SURVEYS; T-test (Statistics); WRITING; DATA analysis; JOB performance; TEACHING methods; EFFECT sizes (Statistics); CROSS-sectional method; COLLEGE teacher attitudes; DATA analysis software

Students (n = 244, 76% MSSW) and faculty members (n = 40, 36% tenure or tenure track) at a social work program at a large public southern U.S. university were surveyed to assess within- and between-group differences in perspectives on student writing. Faculty members expressed significantly greater concern with student writing than students. Latina/o, African American, female, and undergraduate students all reported more writing challenges compared to their peers. Likewise, full-time faculty members who teach mainly online or had less training in writing instruction reported more challenges than their colleagues. Overall, our findings support the need for writing interventions that acculturate students to the discipline through a more inclusive, culturally competent discourse as well as increased faculty preparation for teaching writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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