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"How to Successfully Transition Students into College - From Traps to Triumph" by Leonard Geddes is a book that explores the challenges faced by high school students when transitioning to college. The author identifies three types of traps that students may encounter: structural, functional, and cognitive traps. Geddes provides advice, real-life examples, exercises, and thoughtful questions throughout the book to help students navigate these traps and succeed in college. The book emphasizes the importance of critical thinking, deep learning, and independent learning in college, and offers tools and strategies to overcome the challenges of the transition. [Extracted from the article]

Theoretical models of family formation have assumed sexual coupling as the foundation of family life. This article proposes instead a model of family formation predicated on the processes of taking care of one another, eating together, and sharing life together. The interpersonal dynamics that distinguish a family from other close relationships are attachment, belonging, and entitlement. This process model of family formation does not presume marriage or any other form of sexual coupling to be a requirement for family formation. A case study illustrates, with implications for social work practice. (Contains 1 figure.)

Social workers in diverse community practice settings recruit and work with volunteers from religious congregations. This article reports findings from two surveys: 7,405 congregants in 35 Protestant congregations, including 2,570 who were actively volunteering, and a follow-up survey of 946 volunteers. It compares characteristics of congregation volunteers and nonvolunteers. Volunteers tended to be married, older, more highly educated, longer term congregational members, and to score higher on all measures of faith maturity and faith practice than did nonvolunteers. Volunteers perceived their involvement as meaningful, important, and challenging. A large majority of volunteers (80 percent) reported changes in faith, attitudes and values, and behavior as results of their volunteer work. Findings provide insights into how religious individuals begin and continue to volunteer in service settings and how congregations promote high levels of community service among their members. These findings have implications for effective social work practice with congregation volunteers.

A research study surveyed 946 volunteers from congregations who were actively involved in community service, as well as 3,959 other congregational attenders who were not involved in volunteer service, to understand the relationship between service learning and faith development. Findings show that service-learning is powerfully related to a mature faith and to other faith practices such as prayer, Bible study, and worship. Authors explore the characteristics of service-learning that strengthen its contribution to the faith life of volunteers. These findings have important implications for how religious educators and community leaders structure service-learning experiences. The authors conclude that leaders who want to nurture the life of faith need to consider service-learning to be at the core rather than elective in congregational life. (Contains 1 table and 3 footnotes.)

The Kolb Learning Style Inventory was used to identify differences between the learning styles of 168 students in traditional face-to-face courses and students in matched courses taught online. Additionally, the data for the online courses were divided by gender to determine if gender was a factor. Results of the analysis found that there was a difference in the learning style of the online student and the student in the face-to-face course and that gender was a factor in the relationship between learning style and student engagement. The implications for online course designers are significant. When designing online courses the learning style and gender of all students must be considered.

This article presents findings from a research project exploring the motivations of 25 volunteers from Protestant Christian congregations involved in community service programs. These volunteers are motivated primarily as their way of responding to God and to the needs of others. As they serve, beneficial relationships with others and other personal benefits become motivations for their continuing service. Their motivations help them sustain their service in the face of the challenges created by volunteering. This article concludes with implications for social service administrators who seek to recruit, train, and sustain the involvement of these volunteers and their congregations, including understanding and connecting with volunteers' religious world views. KEYWORDS volunteers, congregations, faith, religious volunteers

Little attention has been given to the needs of international and American social work students who are preparing for direct practice outside of the United States. A preliminary model of cross-cultural social work practice is described as the basis for a course in direct social work practice in international settings. (Author/MLW)

Evaluates effectiveness of training in active listening skills. Couples trained in the skills became significantly more accurate in their perceptions of spouses' attitudes and feelings. Results indicate that greater accuracy did not have a significant effect on marital adjustment. (Author)

THE TERM family ministry is relatively new in the long history of the church, though care for, exhortation about and attempts to intervene in family life have been around for […]

Social work within a congregational context is still a developing field of practice. This analytical essay is derived from some of the results of a research study of 51 congregational social workers working in and with congregations. This article includes discussion, analysis, and implications of this research. We describe the roles and functions of these 51 congregational social workers, with whom we conducted exploratory, in-depth telephone interviews. Additionally, some of our own experiences are shared from our respective congregational social work experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]