Record writing and professional socializ

Oglensky, York College, City University of New York, New York, UNITED STATES Abstract: Despite increasing awareness of the importance of clinical documentation to the delivery of effecti

The International

JOURNAL

SOCIAL SCIENCES

Volume 3, Number 6

Record-Writing and Professional Socialization in

Social Work

Bonnie D Oglensky

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES

http://www.SocialSciences-Journal.com

First published in 2008 in Melbourne, Australia by Common Ground Publishing Pty Ltd

www.CommonGroundPublishing.com

© 2008 (individual papers), the author(s)

© 2008 (selection and editorial matter) Common Ground

Authors are responsible for the accuracy of citations, quotations, diagrams, tables and maps

All rights reserved Apart from fair use for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act (Australia), no part of this work may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher For permissions and other inquiries, please contact

<cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com>

ISSN: 1833-1882

Publisher Site: http://www.SocialSciences-Journal.com

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES is a peer refereed journal Full papers submitted for publication are refereed by Associate Editors through anonymous referee processes

Typeset in Common Ground Markup Language using CGCreator multichannel typesetting system http://www.CommonGroundSoftware.com

Record-Writing and Professional Socialization in Social Work

Bonnie D Oglensky, York College, City University of New York, New York, UNITED STATES

Abstract: Despite increasing awareness of the importance of clinical documentation to the delivery of effective social work services, little attention has been paid to training social work majors in professional writing In this article, I present an overview of efforts to address this gap through a workshop series for undergraduate social work students called “Writing

in the Field.” Applying the concepts of genre and cognitive apprenticeship from writing composition and learning theories,

I outline the theoretical underpinnings of the workshops Based on an analysis of “encoded ways of knowing” found in the structure and conventions of content of one social work record known as the “Psychosocial Assessment Report,” I argue that competent clinical report-writing reflects the development of cognitive processes that are aligned with and uphold the logic and values of the social work field As students learn how to write clinical records, they learn how to think about clients, behave like social workers, and begin to develop a sense of what it feels like to be a member of the profession Viewed in this way, clinical documentation is considered a powerful tool for the professional socialization of social work students.

Keywords: Professional Socialization, Writing to Learn, Field Writing, Record as Genre, Psychosocial Assessment Report

Introduction

SOCIAL WORK EDUCATORS and

practi-tioners have become increasingly aware of

the importance of professional writing to the

effective delivery of social work services

(e.g., Beebe, 1993; Reynolds, et al, 1995) The

ad-vent of managed care and ever-expanding systems

of accountability have served to underscore the

crit-ical role of documentation and report writing (e.g.,

Callahan, 1996; Swain, 2005) Yet, several have

noted that social work student skills are weak in this

area (Alter & Adkins, 2006; Ames, 1999; Rompf,

1995) My experience as Director of Field Education

in the Social Work Program at York College

(CUNY) over the past five years unfortunately

con-firms this Supervisors at internship sites often

com-plain about the quality of student writing—some

even feel the need to limit their writing of agency

records until some level of proficiency is

demon-strated

Beyond our duty to prepare students for the

everyday demands of social work jobs, the

acquisi-tion of report-writing skills—particularly clinical

report-writing skills–can be viewed as a way for

students to learn about the profession in a broader

sense A means of communicating with colleagues,

competent clinical report-writing reflects the

devel-opment of cognitive processes that are aligned with

and uphold the logic and values of the social work field Hence, as we learn how to write clinical re-cords, we can learn how to think about clients, be-have like social workers, and begin to develop a sense of what it feels like to be a member of the profession Consequently, both the employability

and professional socialization of social work

gradu-ates would seem to depend upon mastery of these skills Given its centrality to professional functioning,

it is surprising that so little attention has been paid

to training social work majors in this kind of writing Supported by a university grant and in collabora-tion with a Writing Fellow,I developed and piloted

a workshop series called “Writing in the Field”1to soon-to-be graduating baccalaureate social work students during spring 2008 on a voluntary, non-graded basis Designed like a professional confer-ence–replete with a light breakfast, packets, badges, certificates of completion, and “shmooze” or network-ing time—21 students attended the series which featured 2 workshops held one month apart—entail-ing 6-hours of in-class trainapart—entail-ing, video-role play activities, the use of a rubric outlining 12 report-writing competencies, and a take-away report-writing task

in which students were asked to apply skills they learned in the workshop to assemble, analyze, and write a “Psychosocial Assessment Report” based on

a social work case on the Internet.2The goal of the

1 This project is supported by a federal Title III grant administered through the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL)

at York College, City University of New York Thanks to Title III grantee group members and Dr Debra Swoboda as well as colleagues and students in the Social Work Program for helping to get this project off the ground Special thanks to CUNY Writing Fellow Jennifer Worth for her commitment and fine collaborative work on this project.

2

The simulated on-line case material was developed by Dr Annette Bailey, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield , Ct.

THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF INTERDISCIPLINARY SOCIAL SCIENCES,

VOLUME 3, NUMBER 6, 2008 http://www.SocialSciences-Journal.com, ISSN 1833-1882

© Common Ground, Bonnie D Oglensky, All Rights Reserved, Permissions: cg-support@commongroundpublishing.com

workshop series is to strengthen clinical

record-writing skills while building habits of thinking and

practice that instill professional identity, role, and a

sense of practice responsibility in budding social

workers “Writing in the Field” is also conceived as

an action-research project focused on the design,

implementation, and outcomes of the workshops A

forthcoming paper will present the project outcomes

and research findings

This article will focus on the conceptual and

the-oretical underpinnings of the “Writing in the Field”

workshop series I will outline the relevant literature,

explicate concepts from writing composition theories

that are fundamental to my pedagogical approach,

and offer a set of proposals as to how training in

clinical documentation can groom students to think

and behave like professional social workers I

con-clude with considerations about future direction and

challenges ahead

Literature Review

There is a relatively sparse literature on pedagogical

work on professional report-writing in social work

This is probably due to the fact that there are few

educational initiatives addressing this kind of writing

While some universities offer courses in professional

writing in social work, a review of syllabi reveals

that these tend to skim the surface, covering a range

of written products such as research papers, advocacy

letters, brochures, and resumes (e.g., Sarnoff, 2007;

George Mason University Social Work Dept, 2007;

Ohio University, 2007) Among these courses, one

class session is usually devoted to report–writing

and within that session, the aim is to offer general

guidelines about various types of records social

workers write And there are many Hence, coverage

tends to be quite superficial

Of course, “Writing Intensive” or

discipline-spe-cific writing courses are now offered at a number of

colleges An extension of the Writing Across the

Curriculum movement in higher education, these

courses offer students the opportunity to practice and

improve writing skills, yet the

“writing-in-the-discip-line” focus is on gaining knowledge of relevant

content material (Carter, et al., 2004) So, for

ex-ample, in the writing intensive “Generalist Practice”

course offered in the social work program at my

college, writing assignments are focused on social

work interventions with formal organizations and

communities—not the acquisition of professional

writing skills Even courses expressly designed to

teach professional writing such as one (also at my

college) called “Research and Writing for

Profession-al Programs”—neglect the more practicProfession-al kinds of

writing—concentrating instead on the skills of

writ-ing a research paper A review of course bulletins

and syllabi from a cross-section of colleges in the

U.S reveals that when writing is explicitly addressed

in social work curricula, the emphasis is almost al-ways on academic, not workplace writing

Still within the realm of academic writing, a seg-ment of social work literature deals with experiential writing—in which low-stakes writing approaches designed by social work faculty to teach or use writing in coursework are evaluated Broadly speaking, the goal of these pedagogical projects is either to help students improve writing in a general sense, for example, by gaining confidence in their ability to write (e.g., Rompf, 1995), or by using the process of writing to help students enhance other social work practice capacities For example, writing journals (Dolejs, et al., 2000) or reflective papers (Rai, 2004) has been shown to expand capacity for self-awareness—a crucial skill in building rapport and a working alliance with clients

Notwithstanding the dearth of scholarship on the pedagogy of record-writing in social work, there is

an emerging literature on social work documentation itself A fair number of articles and books deal with the nuts and bolts of record-writing in social work and related professions These tend to be how-to oriented (e.g., Reynolds, et al., 1995, Beebe, 1993; McKane, 1975), offering the practitioner technical guidelines, focused on mechanics Some of these publications (e.g., Beebe, 1993) appear on the syllabi for social work courses in professional writing and

in this sense, could be considered instructional ma-terial There are also a few studies which look at documentation through the lens of audience or con-text; for example, the need for social workers to write reports that can pass muster in managed care, court,

or legal proceedings as social workers advocate for (or sometimes unwittingly against) their clients (e.g., Cumming, et al., 2007, Callahan, 1996, Swain, 2005) Concerns about risk and liability are in the forefront

of these Principles for training students and practi-tioners to write records that simultaneously protect social workers, clients, and agencies while upholding professional ethics are proposed While technical assistance with report writing is helpful, the use of report-writing as a tool for continuous learning and

reflection on one’s own practice and development is

seldom mentioned in this literature

Unpacking the ‘Psychosocial’

Taking seriously the opportunity to learn from re-cord-writing, this project introduces a novel approach

to professional writing in social work honing in on the competencies needed to write one document in particular This narrative record, known as the

“Psychosocial Assessment Report” is a prototype in the social work field (Vourlekis & Hall, 2007) The most universal and comprehensive record that

prac-titioners are expected to write, the

“psychoso-cial”—as it is commonly referred to—has evolved

historically as a staple of social work practice (Crisp,

et al., 2004) Most other social work reports contain

subsets of the kinds of information and assessment

material contained in the psychosocial, so learning

to write this document can provide a solid foundation

for writing most other clinical reports in the field

A few words on the role and functions of the

psychosocial are in order The psychosocial is

actu-ally a process, one outcome of which is the report

Social workers write this document after gathering

information about the client—from interviews with

and observations of the client, exchanges with

indi-viduals associated with the client (e.g., family

members, friends), collateral contacts (e.g., other

professionals who have knowledge of or are also

working with the client in some capacity), and review

of written records (e.g., from the agency, referral

source documentation, and other documents

includ-ing: psychological, psychiatric, medical and

educa-tional tests, and court and legal records) The process

of gathering this information typically occurs within

the first few weeks after the social worker has met

the client and the report is generated shortly

there-after

The psychosocial assessment report has several

functions Similar to a medical history, it is the

pro-fessional’s protocol for compiling information

relev-ant to arriving at some educated guesses about what

the client “clinically speaking” is dealing with (in

medical fields this is known as diagnosis; in social

work—it is called assessment) ultimately for the

purpose of generating a treatment plan including

in-terventions and recommendations for service As

such, it serves as the initial study of the client

Be-cause it is written at an early point in time, the

psychosocial also functions as a baseline document

Assessments of client progress based on goals from

the original report can be made Intervention

ap-proaches and the goals themselves can be

re-ex-amined against the original report, and revised as

fitting

The commonplace view of the psychosocial is that

it is a means of communication with agency

col-leagues; when the social worker is not available, the

record can be consulted to access information about

the client From a bureaucratic standpoint, however,

the psychosocial record—like any other official

re-cord—is a testament to the fact that even though the

social worker has been assigned to work with the

client and this person becomes “his or her client”,

that person is, in fact, a client of the agency The

re-cord has a clear formal dimension of accountability:

it can be inspected in an agency audit, forwarded to

insurance companies, subpoenaed by attorneys, and

increasingly—with the advent of federal patient protection regulations—reviewed by clients

Little has been made of the fact that the psychosocial, apart from its official status as an agency document, has a critical function in how a social worker metabolizes casework practice Re-cently, I met up with a colleague who shared a story about the importance of writing to her understanding

of one of her clients A seasoned therapist in private practice, the colleague had just finished seeing a cli-ent who she felt “stumped” by She said she “could not put her finger on what the client was dealing with”—she “couldn’t get a handle on him.” It wasn’t until she wrote out her report and in so doing brought

to light and thought through her more nascent impres-sions, that she understood how to frame the client’s difficulty This story—a version of which I have heard repeatedly from students and colleagues alike—underscores the invisible function of the psychosocial as a structure and process of figuring things out about the client In this sense, writing the

psychosocial is ‘doing social work.’

Conceptual Sketch

Framed by the norms and customs of social work practice, I am viewing the psychosocial as a “writing genre” defined by Schryer as a “specific literary practice—evolving within a specific context” (1993,

p 200) Using this definition, other writing genres include, for example, the English composition in a college classroom, a peer-reviewed paper given at a professional conference, and a rejection letter sent

by a corporate headhunter to a job applicant As a routine and conventionalized way of communicating,

a writing genre is “a dynamic patterning of human experience” (Devitt, 1993, p 573) Put another way,

a writing genre shapes our thinking, sensing, and sense-making of the “thing itself”–that is, whatever

it is we are writing about (Paré, 2000)

For biology professors Carter, Ferzli, and Wiebe (2007), the lab report is a writing genre; it is not only

a set of mechanical and literary conventions but in

the process of learning how to write it and in the actual writing of it, it is also a way of informing and

shaping how biologists think, appraise, consider, in-terpret, understand, render opinions about, make sense of, and communicate about experiments As such, learning to write the lab report is part of what Carter, et al., (2007) refer to as “cognitive apprentice-ship.” Challenging the traditional dichotomy in the academy between learning versus doing, the learning model of cognitive apprenticeship is “based on the principle that the ways of doing that define an authen-tic activity in a knowledge domain embody the ways

of knowing that domain” (p 283)

9 BONNIE D OGLENSKY

My work takes off from these precepts as I have

adopted the perspective that in-depth, hands-on

training in writing the psychosocial is “a way of

bringing authentic activities of a knowledge domain

to the classroom” (Carter, et al., 2007, p 283)

Stu-dents are offered instruction in how to compose a

quality report and thus develop marketable skills for

the jobs they will likely hold Just as importantly, in

the process of undergoing such a training, students

are exposed to the inner workings of the specific

re-cord-writing genre This includes it logic, the purpose

of various sections, the rationale for its sequence,

the rules and norms for gathering, presenting, and

evaluating client material, the role of evidence,

ob-jective fact, and subob-jective impressions, and the

standards and expectations for arriving at and

articu-lating treatment decisions and recommendations

Moreover, the social work values of respect,

trans-parency, empathy, objectivity, humility, and

account-ability are also are a part of the inner workings of

the psychosocial—embedded in the competencies

needed to write the report This kind of integrative

training linking the conceptual and ethical

underpin-nings of report-writing with work-specific

conven-tions and guided practice offers the student a unique

type of anticipatory socialization—that is, a

“rehears-al” opportunity to transition into the profession and

to begin to view oneself as a member in it (Merton,

1957)

Grounded in the language of dialectical thinking,

this project thus views learning to write and writing

to learn as inverse processes that should not (and

cannot) be pulled apart from each other, except for

heuristic purposes Teaching social work students

how to write the psychosocial, while certainly a

worthy end in and of itself, takes on a loftier role as

it offers a cognitive apprenticeship and mode of

so-cialization into the professional community

The Psychosocial as a Tool for

Professional Learning

So how, then, can training in writing the

Psychoso-cial Assessment Report prepare soPsychoso-cial work students

to think and behave like full-fledged practitioners?

What is it about writing the psychosocial that

encour-ages professional socialization? I am proposing that

this occurs as the student learns about and practices

writing with a consciousness of two distinct aspects

of the genre: the psychosocial report structure and

its conventions for content.

According to Carter et al (2007), the genre of the

report “encodes a way of knowing in its structure.”

What this means is that the way the report is

built—its format, list and sequence of topics, and

discursive conventions—becomes a guide for

knowing the work of social work In perhaps the

most elemental way, the specific topics addressed in

the psychosocial reflect areas of concern and expert-ise that a social worker is expected to possess The social work student must become familiar with these topics and must organize the data he or she collects from the client in terms of these categories of the trade As Goodwin (1994) notes, classification is a basic human cognitive activity involving sorting and transforming various phenomena “into the categories and events that are relevant to the work of [a] profes-sion” (p 608)

The topics on the psychosocial (see Figure I) in-clude client background and current functioning with respect to: family relationships, education, employ-ment, psychological issues, medical concerns, social connections, basic necessities, coping capacities, spirituality, legal matters, and community supports This particular variety of topics—bridging individual and community/societal considerations—is a hall-mark of the social work profession, historically dis-tinguishing it from psychology and psychiatry whose central focus has primarily been on the individual Hence, the social work student learns about and takes part in reaffirming the profession’s commitment to understanding human suffering and growth in the context of both individual and environmental factors—each time he or she writes up an assessment

Moving through the sequence of the psychosocial

report also encodes a social work way of knowing The guidelines here are implicit The report has three main sections of material concerning the client: demographic information, the body of the report which is divided into subsections regarding the cli-ent’s background and current functioning with re-spect to the range of “psycho-social” areas including those listed above, and a final segment dealing with the social worker’s summary, assessment, recom-mendations, and plans for service

In terms of clinical reasoning, each section follows purposefully from the section prior Salient identity facts come first Issues like age and language spoken

by the client, for example, are characteristics which should direct choices about gathering and recording assessment material; the social worker would not necessarily ask about or complete the subsection of the report regarding employment, for instance, if the client is a young child But the social worker should—when exploring and documenting all the subsequent areas—present material that takes into account demographic characteristics of the client such as age, race, socioeconomic status—that are likely to affect the client’s life experiences and devel-opmental capacities These demographics should trigger certain lines of questioning, that is, when the social worker is gathering the data and writing up the report

Although probably obvious, it is worth highlighting

that in anticipation of writing the psychosocial, the

social worker engages in the process of collecting

the data about the client; in this sense, the

psychosocial report organizes the clinical experience

of interviewing client—e.g., what questions to ask

and how to ask them, which questions to follow-up

on and which are less pressing, what non-verbal

be-havior to observe and how to watch for patterns

Hence, as mentioned earlier, the genre is not only a

set of mechanical and literary conventions, but

pen-etrates into the practice of clinical social work

Training students to write the psychosocial, therefore,

is embedded with training in practice skills

The case material presented in the body of the

re-port builds a picture of the client’s “story”—e.g., his

or her view of the “presenting problem”—that is, the

reason/s that the client has come to the agency for

help—as well as the client’s strengths, weaknesses,

support systems, resources, coping skills, and

histor-ical events and milestones as they relate to the report

topics The genre is organized such that the social

worker presents material about the client and

then—considering all of that material—synthesizes, prioritizes, hypothesizes, and offers an overall assess-ment and plan The key point here is that the social worker needs to develop a comprehensive description

of the client before impressions and treatment plans can be proposed This final section is the place where the social worker “makes something of the data” in the report, summarizing the main issues and render-ing professional opinion about what should be done

to assist the client The overall sequence of the psychosocial, thus, forms a logic—a series of steps (though not necessarily distinguished as such con-sciously) for constructing and thinking through a client’s story—to arrive at a set of clinical opinions and recommendations, preliminary ones, at least, about how to help This is where the record comes

to its final point—and the social worker is supposed

to navigate through the record, understanding the need to connect the dots

Beyond the structure of the report, the second way that writing the psychosocial serves as a socialization tool relates to issues of content—what data should

be included and how should it be expressed The

11 BONNIE D OGLENSKY

conventions of how a psychosocial should be

writ-ten—including the appropriate use of language, facts,

impressions, detail, quotations, illustrations,

interpret-ations, speculinterpret-ations, and opinion—also encode a way

of knowing the field of social work As my

collabor-ator and I identified and delineated “competencies”

for a rubric to be used in the workshop series (see

Figure II), we became keenly aware of the fact that

the conventions for writing a good psychosocial are

in synch with and when applied, reinforce core

val-ues, ethics and practice principles in the social work

field I shall offer a few examples

Some of the alignments are obvious First, “uses

non-judgmental language and offers a non-biased

presentation” (Rubric Competency #4) fits with a

number of tenets in the National Association of

So-cial Workers (NASW) Code of Ethics (1999) The

section on “Social Workers’ Ethical Responsibility

to Clients,” contains a subsection on “Derogatory

Language” (p 13) which clearly states this

expecta-tion for the psychosocial genre: “…social workers

should not use derogatory language in their written

or verbal communications to or about clients Social

workers should use accurate and respectful language

in all communications to and about clients.” Another

subsection on “Cultural Competence and Social

Di-versity” (p 10) which states that “social workers should understand culture and its function in human behavior and society, recognizing the strengths that exist in all cultures” is also enacted and upheld as the student learns to recognize and use a bias-free language and approach in his or her presentation of the client in the psychosocial report

The ability to “use clear, descriptive, vivid lan-guage and quotes” (Rubric Competency #3) to depict the client in ways that acknowledge his or her unique qualities also adheres to an NASW ethical principle, that is, to “respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person” (NASW, 1999, p 8) By learning to avoid stereotypes and bland descriptions, the social worker is compelled—by the norms of the psychosocial —to continue developing and demon-strating in writing a “mindfulness of individual dif-ferences” (p 8) In addition to its value-basis, re-search findings support the clinical rationale for this principle–when people are lumped into labeled groups, the perceived range of possible behaviors decreases (Wilder, 1984) Keeping open to the indi-viduality of clients—and gaining practice in how to capture that in writing—socializes the social work student to reflect upon and question ingrained assump-tions about social groups

Rubric Competency #5—”is informationally

accur-ate”—also accords with a social work value—one

that has to do with pledging not to distort, exaggerate,

or misrepresent what a client says or does; to be

truthful in reporting This is plainly stated in the

NASW Code of Ethics subsection on “Client

Re-cords,” “Social workers should take reasonable steps

to ensure that documentation in records is

accur-ate…” (p 18) While this might seem

self-evid-ent—any reporter would be encouraged to strive for

absolute accuracy; it is valued on its own terms—in

social work it carries another charge as it is related

to how one represents and therefore “treats” the

cli-ent If documentation is viewed as an “integral part

of clinical practice,” writing about the client must

be considered part of treatment, “not merely an

ad-ministrative side-task” (Cumming, et al., 2007)

A final example can be found in Rubric

Compet-ency #10—”is judicious”—which deals with a social

worker’s capacity to neither “make too much nor too

little” with the data More nuanced perhaps than the

other examples, this competency emphasizes the

values of humility and risk The professional social

worker must say something about the client in the

psychosocial, she is expected to offer some

profes-sional viewpoint or hunch (stated as such, if

appro-priate) Yet the social worker must not be flagrant

or sloppy in clinical interpretation A scientific ethic

grounds clinical reasoning in social work practice

Hypotheses, opinion, and interpretation must be

supported by evidence, as stated in NASW Code

4.01, “[s]ocial workers should base practice on

recog-nized knowledge, including empirically based

knowledge…” When evidence is not clear, the social

work student and practitioner learn to acknowledge

uncertainty in the psychosocial process and as they

do so, they enact a professional stance of humility

Concluding Thoughts and Challenges

Ahead

Following the recommendations of social work

scholars (Dolejs & Grant, 2000; Levy-Simon, 1989)

“Writing in the Field” is a cross-disciplinary project

rooted in writing composition and learning theories

I have developed an argument in this article, based

on notions of genre and cognitive apprenticeship,

that a propitious relationship between writing,

thinking, and professional socialization in social

work can be cultivated by teaching social work

stu-dents the craft of clinical report-writing, specifically the psychosocial assessment While forthcoming project outcomes and research findings will shed light on the impact of our workshops—that is, the extent to which social work students do, in fact, im-prove in clinical record writing skills and build habits

of thinking and practice that enhance socialization into the profession—important pedagogical questions remain

A key question is whether it makes sense for social work educators to continue to teach the classic nar-rative style of the psychosocial record or adapt to and train students to use standardized formats that are de rigueur in many social service agencies As

in much of our efficiency and accountability driven society, the trend is social work administration is to require that social workers fill out check-off forms (Kagle, 1993), a method that may shrink down the effort and time that goes into writing about clients, but probably also lessen the thought that goes into

it This emerging transformation of the psychosocial process to a standardized format is patently anti-so-cial work as it dehumanizes the client—referring to the client impersonally in categorical terms, reducing the rich, clinically relevant description of a client to labeling, and quashing the opportunity for the social worker to use the writing process and time for thinking about the client in ways are needed for perceptive and helpful assessment

Institutional demands…suppress narrative, speculation, elaboration—all the lengthy and messy uses of language that promote explorat-ory thought (Paré, 2000, p 161)

As this analysis suggests, continuing to teach the

“messier” narrative genre of the psychosocial report may offer students a powerful opportunity to develop reflective, transparent, value-anchored clinical reas-oning skills These skills are not confined to the pen and paper work of social work, but are likely to in-filtrate into how the social worker views the client and defines his or her outlook on professional respons-ibility Moreover, they lend themselves to modes of thinking that are crucial for understanding the inev-itable complexities and ambiguities of the human condition My hope is that this project with its new way of looking at the value of report-writing can help us counter the bureaucratic trend and thereby avoid “painting the client [and social work practition-er] into a box” (Snyder, et al., 2006)

References

Alter, C and Adkins, C (2006) Assessing student writing proficiency in graduate schools of social work Journal of Social

Work Education, 42(2), 337-353.

Ames, N (1999) Social work recording: A new look at an old issue Journal of Social Work Education, 35(2), 227-237.

Beebe, L (1993) Professional Writing for the Human Services New York: NASW Press.

13 BONNIE D OGLENSKY

Callahan, J (1996) Documentation of client dangerousness in a managed care environment Health and Social Work, 21,

202-207.

Carter, M., Ferzil, M., and Wiebe, E N (2004) Teaching genre to English first-language adults: A study of the laboratory

report Research in the Teaching of English, 38(4), 395-419.

(2007) Writing to learn by learning to write in the disciplines Journal of Business and Technical Communication,

21, 278-302.

Crisp, B R., Anderson, M R., Orme, J., and Lister, P G (2004) Learning and teaching assessment: Reviewing the evidence.

Social Work Education, 23(2), 199-215.

Cumming, S., Fitzpatrick, E., McAuliffe, S.M., Martin, C., and Tonge, A (2007) Raising the Titanic: Rescuing social work

documentation from the sea of ethical risk Australian Social Work, 60(2), 239-257.

Devitt, A J (1993) Generalizing about genre: New conceptions of an old concept College Composition and Communication,

44(4), 573-586.

Dolejs, A and Grant, D (2000) Deep Breaths on Paper: Teaching Writing in the Social Work Classroom Journal of

Teaching in Social Work, 20(3/4) 19-39.

Goodwin, C (1994) Professional vision American Anthropologist, 96, 606-633.

George Mason University (2007) “SOCW 670: Communication and Technology for Professional Practice,” Syllabus for

course offered in Social Work Department.

Kagle, J D (1993) Recording keeping: Direction for the 1990’s Social Work, 38(2), 190-196.

Levy-Simon, B (1989) The teaching of writing in social work education: A pressing priority for the 1990s Journal of

Teaching in Social Work, 3(2) 47-63.

Merton, R., Reader, G and Kendall, P (1957) The student-physician Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press McKane, M (1975) Case-record writing with reader empathy Child Welfare, 54(8), 593-597.

National Association of Social Workers (1999) NASW Code Of Ethics.

Ohio University (2007) “Social Work 370J: Writing for the Human Services,” Syllabus for course offered in Department

of Social Work.

Paré, A (2000) Writing as a way into social work: Genre sets, genre systems, and distributed cognition In Transitions:

Writing in Academic and Workplace Settings, (Edited by P Dias and A Paré), Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, Inc Rai, L (2004) Exploring literacy in social work education: A social practices approach to student writing Social Work

Education, 23(2), 149-162.

Reynolds, J F., Mair, D C., and Fischer, P C (1995) Writing and reading mental health records: Issues and analysis in

professional writing and scientific rhetoric Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Rompf, E L (1995) Student writing in social work: An aggravation or an opportunity for social work educators? Journal

of Teaching in Social Work, 12(2), 125-138.

Sarnoff, S (2007) Four years of teaching a hybrid, discipline-specific writing course (Unpublished paper).

Schryer, C F (1993) Records as genre Written Communication, 10(2), 200-234.

Snyder, C.R., Ritschel, L.A., Rand, K.L., and Berg, C J (2006) Balancing psychological assessments: Including strengths

and hope in client reports Journal of Clinical Psychology, 62(1), 33-46.

Swain, P.A (2005) ‘No expert should cavil at any questioning:’ Reports and assessments for courts and tribunals Australian

Social Work, 58(1), 44-57.

Vourlekis, B and Hall, D.M.H (2007) Outcomes from a baccalaureate program’s writing improvement initiative The

Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 13(1), 67-80.

Wilder, D.A (1984) Predictions of belief homogeneity and similarity following social categorization British Journal of

Social Psychology, 23, 323-333.

About the Author

Dr Bonnie D Oglensky

Dr Bonnie Oglensky is a professor and Director of Field Education in the Department of Social Sciences at York College, City University of New York, U.S Trained as a sociologist and social worker, Dr Oglensky’s primary research interests are in pedagogy and professional socialization, authority and workplace relationships, and the socio-emotional dynamics of long term mentoring relationships She is co-author along with Cynthia

Fuchs Epstein, Carroll Seron, and Robert Saute, of The Part-Time Paradox: Time Norms, Professional Life,

and Gender (Routledge, 1999), and has published articles in journals such as Human Relations (Tavistock) and Management Learning (Sage).