The importance of gerontology-focused classroom and field education has been emphasized heavily in social work education for decades as the population of older adults continues to expand, as does the need to provide services to support the health and well-being of older adults. Although the need for social workers and other professionals who…

The United States is experiencing an aging of the population, and by 2030, 20% of Americans will be 65 years or older (Federal Interagency Forum, 2010). However, for many helping professions, including social work, medicine, and nursing, student interest in gerontological practice is quite low. One international study found that only 5.4% of the…

This article describes an innovative model for teaching gerontological social work that has been introduced into the social work methods curriculum in the Department of Social Work at a college in northern Israel. The basic concept of the model is to create an alternative learning environment by including older persons as full participants in the…

Workers serving Ohio's aging population will require increased levels of gerontological education. Using data from 55 Ohio counties, this project investigated the educational needs and reasons for seeking education from professionals in aging. Respondents reported interest in attaining aging related education. Preferred delivery methods included…

This article describes the goals and methods of the international Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) movement in higher education, and WAC-enriched learning approaches that the author used in teaching a social work gerontology practice course and a sociological theories of aging course. The author's in-class, low-stakes, nongraded writing…

This article presents findings from experiences of 67 projects involved in GeroRich, an initiative funded by the John A. Hartford Foundation designed to infuse, enrich and sustain aging content in BSW and MSW curricula. Thematic qualitative analysis was used to uncover themes in answers to open-ended questions contained in End-of-Year 2 project…

This article discusses and describes how to use film as a creative, powerful, and effective technique for teaching social work with older adults at both the undergraduate and graduate levels of education. An analysis of student responses about the effectiveness of this teaching pedagogy is presented. The findings support the idea of using film as…

Discusses how women's issues, domestic violence, aging, and elder abuse all relate to social work education and then suggests how they can be integrated together into the social work curriculum through teaching about elder domestic violence. (EV)

This article describes a service-learning collaboration between a research center at a graduate school of social work and a community college. While the goal of the collaboration was to conduct a community needs assessment of the older population of Bermuda, the project offered a unique opportunity to connect community service, teaching, and…