Assignment #1 Prompt and Rubric
Prompt
(This paper should be no more than four pages following the formatting requirements on the course syllabus. No introduction or conclusion sections for this paper are necessary. Just make sure to answer each question in each section of the four sections fully and well. Each section should include explicit links to the course material and should use APA style when citing course readings. Please review Orientation to HBSE Papers for more information.)
The purpose of this assignment is to facilitate your deeper understanding of what theory is and how it can be used to enhance social work practice. This assignment also provides an opportunity for students to demonstrate their mastery of key ideas from the person-environment perspective and systems theory.
This is not the type of assignment that students can complete the night before it is due. The questions in the prompt are designed to be challenging and to push students to understand the course material more deeply. They are as much an assessment of where students are at with the course material as they are part of the learning process in this course.
For the purposes of this assignment, students should listen to the first 35 minutes of the podcast below and respond to the prompts.
Covid’s Future, Trauma’s Long Shadow and California’s Lessons:
California surgeon general Dr. Nadine Burke Harris and Ezra Klein discuss how Covid-19 and trauma are shaping children
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/09/podcasts/ezra-klein-podcast-nadine-burke-harris-transcriipt.html (Please listen to just the first 35 minutes). You can access the podcast via the link, or via libraries.rutgers.edu and access the NY Times (you will need to login with your net id).
Using this podcast, students are to answer the questions below. Students should complete this assignment by developing well-formulated sections with respect to the following questions. No additional introductory or concluding sections are needed, nor are transition sentences between sections. The assignment should reflect students’ own thoughts and analysis—not that of classmates, work colleagues, or anybody else.
Section #1
View the podcast interview (first 35 minutes) with Dr. Nadine Burke Harris. Summarize the main point of the presentations as a whole. What is the main argument? Within this discussion, make sure to demonstrate your understanding of each domain of persons as biopsychosocial beings, integrating this understanding within key points from the presentation, and citing course materials with in-text citations as part of your discussion.
Section #2
To what extent did the interview with Nadine Burke Harris address each of the following levels of social environments in terms of their implications for development among children facing maltreatment: micro-social, meso-social, and macro-social? Using your own ideas, elaborate on one concept discussed in any one area of the social environment which resonated for you. Identify how Dr. Burke displayed one of the four elements of developing a liberatory consciousness as it relates to one the three levels of social environment.
Within this discussion, make sure to demonstrate your clear understanding of each level of the social environment, citing core course materials (with in-text citations) as part of your demonstration of understanding.
Section #3
Explain in your own words the concept of person-environment transactions, making at least one link to the core course material when describing this concept. Next, describe how the CRT tenet of interest conversion could help us understand person-environment transactions and, in particular, the person-environment transactions affecting Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), as described by Burke Harris.
Section #4
Based on your viewing of the interview with Nadine Burke Harris how did the presentation incorporate insights from a complex systems perspective? Describe at least one clear and compelling example—demonstrating your understanding of at least one specific and central concept from complex systems theory through in-text citations (e.g., probabilism, non-reductionism, non-linear causality, heterogeneity). Conclude with a discussion on how this insight from complex systems theory enhances your sensitivity to diversity among children facing maltreatment and overall implications for practice.
