Live and Let Live

Though I do not yet have experience as a social work practitioner, I am beginning to see what it takes to do the right job. I have learned that it takes commitment, compassion, but beyond that, and very importantly, it takes evidence-based practice. While I know I have lots yet to learn, I can apply some of my earlier lessons from the field of education to my social work practice. One of those biggest lessons would be that collecting data and analyzing it ends up saving so much more time than it requires. I have seen how, even with just minimal initial effort, record keeping and research pay huge dividends. When I got my first tutoring jobs in elementary math, I figured that first and second grade math would be a cinch but it turned out that it was not as easy as I expected and that supporting such young children required many new strategies and ideas than I came equipped with. Thus, after unsuccessfully trying and trying to encourage seven and eight year olds to learn to multiply wi...

My Thoughts about Writing Literature Reviews To answer the titular question, "do you have what it takes to write an effective literature review?" one needs to stop guessing and start doing! Whether or not you can write a good or effective literature review is not decided before writing one in the first place. To better inform me on how I need to stop conjecturing and to start practicing I took a look at the preamble of the fourth edition of Machi & McEvoy's classic; "The Literature Review: Six Steps to Success". I can't wait to see if the book as interesting as it sounds! To start, I picked up the text, which immediately discusses how even if literature review is a complex project, it can be split up into smaller steps. As the title, preface, and introduction suggest, I'm going to go on a journey through six of these steps. The text book considers the novice wishing to learn and offers practical guidance for the “first timer” to be successful. A...