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Keywords

school social work, interprofessional collaboration, interprofessional practice teachers

Abstract

School social work requires significant skills for interprofessional collaboration, especially collaboration with teachers. While the value of such skills is increasingly recognized in fields such as healthcare, there has been limited attention to assessing or supporting interprofessional practice in education. This exploratory mixed-methods study analyzed survey data from 264 school social workers across the United States in order to understand their perceptions of teachers as collaborators and their practices relating to collaboration with teachers. Barriers to collaboration were also identified. Data suggested that school social workers had positive perceptions of teachers as collaborators generally, but saw limitations in the training and support of teachers to effectively respond to non-academic concerns; time and support for collaboration were identified as significant barriers to collaborative practice.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Author Biography

Stacy Gherardi PhD, LCSW is an Assistant Professor of Social Work at New Mexico State University living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Her experiences as a classroom teacher and a school social worker inform her work, which focuses on the intersections between social and educational policy. Her research has explored models for school social work, interprofessional practice in school mental health, and the community school movement. Her current work is largely focused on creating, implementing, and evaluating social justice-oriented trauma-informed practices in culturally diverse schools.

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