BSW315 Generalist Practice: Groups (3 cr.)

Prerequisite(s): BSW310 
This course provides the foundation for social work practice with groups as vehicles of change to promote individual and community well-being. Students learn the principles and processes of group work, group facilitation, and strategies to apply group work principles toward collaboratively identified outcomes.

Upon completion of this course, students are expected to be able to do the following:

1. Examine how group facilitation and leadership skills are used to engage, support, and sustain varied forms of culturally responsive group work.
2. Describe the social worker role and its inherent power, and how it impacts group dynamics.
3. Produce clear, coherent, accurate, and inclusive oral and written communication about the processes and outcomes of group work for internal and external audiences.
4. Demonstrate appreciative curiosity to understand how interpersonal dynamics and contextual factors may strengthen and potentially threaten group cohesion and efficacy.
5. Critique the range of strategies that may be required to negotiate, mediate, and advocate between group members and on behalf of a group’s articulated goals.
6. Articulate how informal and formal procedures and rules function to limit or enhance interdependence, inclusion, self-determination, and achievement of goals within groups.
7. Compare and contrast practice outcome evaluation methodologies that value the cultural strengths, expertise, and perspectives embedded in groups.