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The Biological Person

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The body's biochemical, cell, organ, and physiological systems. Nervous system, endocrine system, immune system, cardiovascular system, musculoskeletal system, reproductive system.

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The Psychological Person

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The mind and the mental processes. Cognition (conscious thinking processes), emotion (feelings), self (identity).

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The Spiritual Person

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The aspect of the person that searches for meaning and purpose in life,. Themes of morality, ethics, justice, interconnectedness, creativity, mystical states, prayer, meditation and contemplation, relationships with a higher power.

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The Physical Environment:

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The natural and human-built material aspects of the environment. Water, sun, trees, buildings, landscapes.

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Culture

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A set of common understandings, evident in both behavior and material artifacts. Beliefs, customs, traditions, values.

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Social Institutions

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Patterned ways of organizing social relationships in a particular sector of social life, Family, religion, government, economy, education, social welfare, health care, mass media.

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Social Structure

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A set of interrelated social institutions developed by humans to impose constraints on human interaction for the purpose of the survival and well being of the collectivity. Social class.

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Dyads

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Two persons bound together in some way. Parent and child, romantic couple, social worker and client.

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Families

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Groupings of two or more people who define themselves as family and assume obligations to one another. Nuclear family, extended family, fictive kin.

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Small Group

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Collections of people who interact with each other, perceive themselves as belonging to a group, are interdependent, join together to accomplish a goal, fulfill a need through joint association or are influenced by a set of rules and norms. Friendship group, self help group, therapy group, committee task group, interdisciplinary team.

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Formal Organizations

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Collectivities of people, with a high degree of formality of structure, working together to meet a goal or goals. Civic and social service organizations, business organizations, professional associations.

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Communities

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People bound either by geography or by network links (webs of communication), sharing common ties, and interacting with one another. Territorial communities such as neighborhoods, relational communities such as the social work community, the disability community, a faith community, a soccer league.

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Social Movements

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Large scale collective actions to make change or resist change, in specific social institutions, Civil rights movement, poor people's movements, disability movement, gay rights movement.

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Trends

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Long term patterns of change that move in a general direction. Trend toward greater ethnic diversity in the United States, trend toward delayed childbearing in advanced industrial countries, trend toward greater income inequality between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world.

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Cycles

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Short term patterns of change that reverse direction repetitively. A weekly cycle of work interspersed with rest and relaxation. Economic downturns and upturns.

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Shifts

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Sudden abrupt changes of direction. Changes in patterns of living following a major loss. Changes in the physical and social environment following a natural disaster (hurricane, flood, earthquake) or human made disaster such as September 11, 2001.

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Linear Time

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Time in terms of a straight line. Past, present, future.

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Acculturation

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A process of changing one's culture by incorporating elements of another culture.

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Service

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Social worker's primary goal is to help people in need and to address social problems. Social workers elevate service to others above self interest. Social workers draw on their knowledge, values, and skills to help people in need and to address social problems. Social workers are encouraged to volunteer some portion of their professional skills with no expectation of significant financial return.

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Social Justice

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Social workers challenge social justice. Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. Social workers' social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice. These activities seek to promote sensitivity to needed information, services, and resources; equally of opportunity and meaningful participation in decision making of people.

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Dignity and Worth of the Person

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Social workers respect the inherent dignity and worth of the person. Social workers treat each person in a caring and respectful fashion, mindful of individual differences and cultural and ethnic diversity. Social workers promote clients' socially responsible self determination. Social workers are cognizant of their dual responsibility to clients and to the broader society. They seek to resolve conflicts between clients' interests and the broader society's interests in a socially responsible manner consistent with the values, ethical principles, and ethical standards of the profession.

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Importance of Human Relationship

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Social workers recognize the central importance of human relationships. Social workers understand that relationships between and among people are an important vehicle for change. Social workers engage people as partners in the helping process. Social workers seek to strengthen relationships among people in a purposeful effort to promote, restore, maintain, and enhance the well being of individuals, families, social groups, organizations, and communities.

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Integrity

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Social workers behave in a trustworthy manner, Social workers are continually aware of the profession's mission, values, ethical principles, and ethical standards and practice in a manner consistent with them. Social workers act honestly and responsibly and promote ethical practices on the part of the organizations with which they are affiliated.

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Competence

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Social workers practice within their areas of competence and develop and enhance their professional expertise. Social workers continually strive to increase their professional knowledge and skills and to apply them in practice. Social workers should aspire to contribute to the knowledge base of the profession.

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Infancy

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Trust versus Mistrust, Maternal persons

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Early Childhood

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Autonomy versus Shame and Doubt, Parental persons

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Play Age

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Initiative versus Guilt, Family

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School Age

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Industry versus Inferiority, Neighborhood

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Adolescence

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Identity versus identity diffusion, Peers

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Young Adulthood

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Intimacy versus Isolation, Partners

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Adulthood

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Generativity versus Self absorption, Household

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Mature Age

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Integrity versus Disgust and Despair, Humanity

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Microsystems

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Systems that involve direct face to face contact between members.

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Mesosystems

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Networks of microsystems of a given person.

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Exosystems

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The linkages between microsystems and larger institutions that affect the system such as the family system and the parent's workplace or the family system and the child's school.

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Macrosystems

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The broader influences of culture, subculture, and social structure.

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Assumptions

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Beliefs held to be true without testing or proof, about the nature of human social life.

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Biopsychosocial approach

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Human behavior is considered to be the result of interactions of integrated biological, psychological, and social systems. Psychology is seen as inseparable from biology; emotions and cognition affect the health of the body and are affected by it. Increasingly, neurobiologist write about the "social brain", recognizing that the human brain is wired for social life but also recognizing that the social environment has an impact on brain structure and processes.

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Constants

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Move invariably in one direction; the aging process.

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Deductive Reasoning

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Meaning that theories lay out general, abstract propositions that we can use to generate specific hypothesis to test in unique situations.

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Determinism

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Human behavior determined by forces beyond the control of the person.

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Dimension

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Refers to a feature that can be focused on separately but that cannot be understood without also considering other features.

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Empirical Research

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A careful, purposeful, and systematic observation of events with the intent to note and record them in terms of their attributes, to look for patterns in those events, and to make our methods and observations public.

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Heterogeneity

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Refers to individual level orientation differences among individuals.

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Hypothesis

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Tentative statements, to be explored and tested, not facts to be applied, in transactions with the person.

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Interpretist Perspective

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Assumption that reality is based on people's definitions of it and research should focus on learning the meanings that people give to their situations. Also referred to as constructivist perspective.

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Life Course Perspective

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Assumes that each person's life has a unique long-term pattern of stability and change but that shared social and historical contexts produce some commonalities.

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Life Events

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Brief events or incidents; they may produce shifts and have serious and long-lasting effects.

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Multi-determined

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Human behavior is developed as a result of many causes.

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Multidimensional Approach

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Thinking about human behavior as changing configurations of person and environment over time.

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Objective Reality

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Dimensions of human behavior that exist outside of a person's consciousness.

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Positivist Perspective

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The world has an order that can be discovered; findings of one study should be applicable to other groups; complex phenomena can be studied by reducing them to some component part; findings are tentative and subject to question; scientific methods are value-free.

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Privilege

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Unearned advantage, for some groups and disadvantage for other groups.

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Propositions

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Theoretical concepts are put together to form assertions.

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Qualitative Methods of Research

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Designed to capture how participants view social life rather than to ask participants to respond to categories preset by the researcher.

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Quantitative Methods of Research

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Use quantifiable measures of concepts, standardize the collection of data, attend only to preselected variables, and use statistical methods to look for patterns and associations.

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Subjective Reality

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Reality based on personal perception.

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Theory

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A logically interrelated set of concepts and propositions, organized into a deductive system, which explains relationships between aspects of our world.

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Time Orientation

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Describes the extent to which individuals and Collectivities are invested in three temporal zones- past, present, and future.

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Voluntarism

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Persons are free and proactive agents in the creation of their behavior.

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Boundary

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Indicating who is in and who is out.

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Chaos Theory

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Emphasize systems processes that produce change, even sudden, rapid, radical change. Recognizes negative feedback loops as important processes in systems and recognizes their role in promoting system stability. Proposes that complex systems produce positive feedback loops that feed back information about deviation or should we say innovation, into the steady state in such a way that deviation reverberates throughout the system and produces change sometimes even rapid change.

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Conflict Perspective

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Drawing attention to conflict, dominance, and oppression in social life; typically looks for sources of conflict and causes of human behavior in the economic and political arenas, and more recently in the cultural arena.

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Developmental perspective

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Focuses on how human behavior unfolds across the life course. Human development occurs in clearly defined stages and is seen as a complex interaction of biological, psychological, and social processes.

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Efficacy Expectation

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An expectation that one can personally accomplish a goal.

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Empowerment Theories

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Focus on processes by which individuals and collectivities can recognize patterns of inequality and injustice and take action to increase their own power.

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Feedback Mechanism

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The processes by which information about past behaviors in a system are fed back into the system in a circular manner.

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Feminist Theories

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Focus on male domination of the major social institution and present a vision of a just world based on gender equity.

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Hierarchy of Needs

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Suggests higher needs cannot emerge until lower needs have been satisfied. 1. Physiological needs: hunger, thirst, sex 2. Safety needs: avoidance of pain and anxiety; desire for security. 3. Belongingness and love needs: affection, intimacy 4. Esteem needs: self-respect, adequacy, mastery 5. Self-actualization: to be fully what one can be; altruism, beauty, creativity, justice

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Humanistic Perspective

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Include humanistic psychology and existential psychology, both of which emphasize the individual's freedom of action and search for meaning.

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Learned Helplessness

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A person's prior experience with environmental forces has led to low self-efficacy and expectations of efficacy.

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Phenomenal Self

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The individual's subjectively felt and interpreted experience of "who I am".

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Psychodynamic Perspective

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Concerned with how internal processes such as needs, drives, and emotions motivate human behavior.

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Role

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The usual behaviors of persons occupying a particular social position.

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Self-efficacy

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A sense of personal competence.

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Social Behavioral Perspective

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Sometimes called the social learning perspective; suggests that human behavior is learned as individuals interact with their environments.

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Social Constructionist Perspective

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Focuses on how people learn, through their interactions with each other to classify the world and their place in the world.

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Social Exchange Theory

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Starts with the premise that social behavior is based on the desire to maximize benefits and minimize costs.

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Social Network Theory

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Has intellectual roots in the systems perspective. Provides useful tools for person-environment assessments and holds great promise for the future. Typically presented as socio-grams which illustrate the relations among network members-individuals, groups, organizations.

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Systems Perspective

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Sees human behavior as the outcome of reciprocal interactions of persons operating within linked social systems. Its roots are very interdisciplinary.

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Afrocentric Relational Theory

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Assumes a collective identity for people rather than valuing individuality.

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Coping

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Our efforts to master the demands of stress.

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Daily Hassles

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Common occurrences that are taxing.

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Defense Mechanisms

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Unconscious, automatic responses that enable us to minimize perceived threats or keep them out of our awareness entirely.

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Emotion-Focused Coping

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To change either the way the stressful situation is attended to (by vigilance or avoidance) or the meaning to oneself of what is happening. The external situation does not change, but our behaviors or attitudes change with respect to it, and we may thus effectively manage the stressors.

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Homeostasis

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A steady state of functioning; our body's attempts to maintain physical equilibrium.

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Personal Network

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Includes those from the social network who, in our view, provide us with our most essential supports.

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Person-In-Environment

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Formally organizes the assessment of individual's ability to cope with stress around social functioning problems, environmental problems, mental health problems, and physical health problems.

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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder

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Persistent reliving of traumatic event, persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the traumatic event, persistent high state of arousal.

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Problem-Focused Coping

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To change the situation by acting on the environment. Tends to dominate whenever we view situations as controllable by action.

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Relational Coping

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Takes into account actions that maximize the survival of others- such as our families, children, and friends- as well as ourselves.

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Social Network

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Includes not just our social support but all the people with whom we regularly interact and the patterns of interaction that result from exchanging resources with them.

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Social Support

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The interpersonal interactions and relationships that provide us with assistance or feelings of attachment to persons we perceive as caring.

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State

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A process that changes over time depending on the context.

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Stress

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Any event in which environmental or internal demands tax the adaptive resources of an individual. May be biological (a disturbance in bodily systems), psychological (cognitive and emotional factors involved in the evaluation of a threat), and even social (the disruption of a social unit).

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Traumatic Stress

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Refers to events that involve actual or threatened severe injury or death, of oneself or significant others; natural, technological, and individual.

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Behavior Settings

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Behavior is always tied to a specific place.

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Behavior Settings Theories

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Consistent, uniform patterns of behavior occur in particular places of behavior settings.

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Biophilia

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Humans have a genetically based need to affiliate with nature.

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Boundary Regulating Mechanisms

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Personal space and territoriality- we use to gain greater control over our physical environments.

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Built Environment

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The portion of the physical environment attributable solely to the human effort.

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Control Theories

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Focus on the issue of how much control we have over our physical environments and the attempts we make to gain control; privacy, personal space, territoriality, and crowding.

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Crowding

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The subjective feeling of having too many people around.

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Defensible space

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Theory that suggests residential crime and fear of crime can be decreased by means of certain design features that increase resident's sense of territoriality and consequently, their motivation to watch out for the neighborhood.

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Density

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The ration of persons per unit area of space.

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Natural Environment

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The portion of the environment influenced primarily by geological and nonhuman biological forces- for both you and your clients.

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Personal Space

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Interpersonal distance, the physical distance we choose to maintain in interpersonal relationships.

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Place Attachment

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The process in which people and groups form bonds with places.

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Place Identity

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When a particular place becomes an important part of our self-identity; merger of place and self. Can develop when there is strong negative, as well as positive place attachment.

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Primary Territory

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Territory that evokes feelings of ownership that we control on a relatively permanent. basis and that is vital to our daily lives.

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Accommodation

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The process of partial or selective cultural change.

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Acculturation

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A mutual sharing of culture.

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Assimilation

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The process in which the cultural uniqueness of the minority is abandoned and its members try to blend invisibly into the dominant culture.

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Bicultural Socialization

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Involves a non-majority group or member mastering both the dominant culture and their own.

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Biological Determinism

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The attempt to differentiate social behavior on the basis of biological and genetic endowment.

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Common Sense

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What people have come to believe everyone in a community or society should know and understand as a matter of ordinary, taken for granted social competence.

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Cultural Conflict

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The symbols we use are arbitrary. They can mean one thing to you and something different to others.

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Cultural Innovation

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Culture is not static; it is adapted, modified, and changed through interactions over time.

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Cultural Relativism

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Makes few rankings of inferiority and superiority; frames contemporary multiculturalism.

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Culture of Poverty

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Originally used to bring attention to the way of life developed by poor people to adapt to the difficult circumstances of their lives.

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Customs

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Cultural practices.

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Ethnic Identity

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How ethnic groups define themselves and maintain meaning for living individually and as a group.

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Ethnocentrism

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Tendency to elevate our own ethnic group and its social and cultural processes over others.

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Ethos

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The tone, character, and quality of people's life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood; it is the underlying attitude toward themselves and their world that life reflects.

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Hegemony

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Dominance of a particular way of seeing the world.

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Ideology

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The dominant ideas about the way things are and should work.

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Postmodernism

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The term many people use to describe contemporary culture. They suggest that global electronic communications are the foundation of postmodern culture, exposing people in advanced capitalist societies to media images that span place and time and allow them to splice together cultural elements from these different times and places.

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Practice Orientation

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Explain what people do as thinking, intentionally acting persons who face the impact of history and the restraints of structures that are embedded in our society and culture. Asks how social systems shape, guide, and direct people's values, beliefs, and behavior. Asks how people, as human actors or agents, perpetuate or shape social systems.

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Race

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First and foremost a system of social identity.

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Racism

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The term for thinking and acting as if phenotype and these other capacities are related and imply inferiority or superiority.

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Socioeconomic Status

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A dirty word among people in the US, who generally believe that any class differences that may exist are of one's own making. Class differences do exist and they document another form of cultural inequality, as well as imperfections in our capitalist economic system.

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Symbol

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Something verbal or nonverbal that comes to stand for something else.

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Traditions

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Cultural beliefs and practices so taken for granted that they seem inevitable parts of life.

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Worldview

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An idea of reality, a concept of nature, of self, of society.

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Strengths Perspective

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Identifying strengths can change the social worker's view of where to begin and create a hopefulness about the future so that the climate changes from one of despair over an overwhelming multiplicity of problems to an appreciation of how the family meets challenges to the best of its ability.

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Triangulation

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Occurs when two family members inappropriately involve another family member to reduce the anxiety in the dydadic relationships. Married couple struggling with marital problems, focusing on child's school problems instead to relieve the tension in the marital relationship.

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Linear Time

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Future time.

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Cycles

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Reverse direction repetitively; daily, weekly, monthly, seasonally, annually, or in some other regular or partially regular pattern.

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Trends

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Move in a general direction but are not as invariable as constants.

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Shifts

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Sudden abrupt changes in direction./

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Cognition

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Conscious or preconscious thinking processes- the mental activities of which we are aware or can become aware with probing.

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Psychology

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Mind and mental processes.

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Emotion

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A feeling state characterized by our appraisal of a stimulus, by changes in bodily sensations, and by displays of expressive gestures.

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Affect

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Often used interchangeably with emotion; but refers only to the physiological manifestations of feelings.

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Unconscious

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Those feelings of which we are not aware but which influence our behavior.

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Mood

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A feeling disposition that is more stable than emotion, less intense, and less tied to a specific situation.

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Schema

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An internalized representation of the world or an ingrained ands systematic pattern of thought, action, and problem solving.

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Emotional Intelligence

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A person's ability to process information about emotions accurately and effectively and consequently to regulate emotions in an optimal manner. It includes self-control, zest and persistence, ability to motivate oneself, ability understand and regulate one's own emotions, and ability to read and deal effectively with other people's feelings.

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