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Social work is distinguishable from other disciplines by its emphasis on producing change that affects clients and their environment. This emphasis has influenced the nature of social work practice research, which calls for attention to the development, design, and implementation of change strategies through the use of the science of intervention research. This paper provides a definition of intervention research, highlights its culturally congruent elements, and addresses its implications for social work evidence-based practice and practice guidelines.

Petra de Joya (1913–1987) was an eminent educator and social administrator. She spearheaded the professionalization of social work in the Philippines by advocating for the passage of laws that were instrumental for the development of social work in the country. The following laws were enacted as a result of her advocacy: (a) Republic Act regulating the social work profession in the Philippines and requiring social welfare agencies to hire professional social workers; (b) a Republic Act elevating the Department of Social Work to the Institute of Social Work and Community Development at the University of the Philippines; and (c) a Republic Act transforming the Social Welfare Administration (SWA) into the Department of Social Welfare (DSW). She was appointed as one of the first board of examiners for social work.

The study of aging and cognitive skill learning is concerned with age-related changes and differences in how we gather, store, and use information and abilities. As life expectancy continues to rise, resulting in greater numbers and proportions of older individuals in the population, understanding the development and retention of skills across the lifespan is increasingly important. Older adults’ task performance in cognitive skill learning is often equal to that of young adults, albeit not as efficient, where older adults often require more time to complete training. Investigations of age differences in fundamental cognitive processes of attention, memory, or executive functioning generally reveal declines in older adults. These are related to a slowing of cognitive processing. Slowing in cognitive processing results in longer time necessary to complete tasks which can interfere with the fidelity of older adults’ cognitive processes in time-limited scenarios. Despite this, older adults maintain comparable rates of learning with young adults, albeit with some reduced efficiency in more complex tasks. The effectiveness of older adults’ learning is also impacted by a lesser tendency to recognize and adopt efficient learning strategies, as well as less flexibility in strategy use relative to younger adults. In learning tasks that involve a transition from using a complex initial strategy to relying on memory retrieval, older adults show a volitional avoidance of memory that is related to lower memory confidence and an impoverished mental model of the task. Declines in learning are not entirely problematic from a functional perspective, however, as older adults can often rely upon their extensive knowledge to compensate for certain deficiencies, particularly in everyday tasks. Indeed, domains where older adults have maintained expertise are somewhat insulated from other age-related declines.

In the first part of the 21st century there has been a turn to practice in the social sciences including organizational studies, critical management sociology, philosophy, and some domains of education inquiry. Despite a rich tradition of epistemological and ontological debates, educational leadership scholarship has been slow to recognize the productive nature of the practice turn. This is partly due to its historical location in North American pragmatic traditions and a concomitant privileging of more instrumentalist, positivist, and functionalist accounts of how we come to know, be, and learn to go on in the social world that constitutes educational organizations. Educational leadership scholarship has had two dominant tendencies when it comes to explaining the phenomenon of organizational change. The first relies on individualist and frequently decontextualized accounts that privilege individuals, for example, the hero leader who turns around a “failing” educational organization. The second draws on dominant societist accounts that foreground systems, for example, principals as role incumbents in schools. In so doing, the latter privileges the system above the lifeworld of educational organizations. In contrast, a practice account of leadership or leading draws our attention to the materiality and “happeningness” of leading practices as social phenomena, unfolding in the ontological specificity of particular sites at particular times, rather than as a set of espoused ideals. It foregrounds the cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements or practice architectures that hold in place particular educational practices, and that in turn create the kinds of enabling or constraining conditions for educational transformation to occur. By understanding the practices and arrangements that hold particular kinds of educational practices in place, we are better able to understand possibilities for educational change and transformation.

This entry examines the common factors approach in social work and in related professions. The term “common factors” refers to a set of features that are shared across different specific models of psychotherapy and social services, but may not always be conceptualized as being curative influences. The common factors approach broadens the conceptual base of potentially curative variables for practice and research. The history of common factors, the research designs and statistical methods that have led to the approach’s elaboration, the approach’s empirical base, and its fit with social work’s person-in-environment perspective are each explored. The intersection of the common factors approach with the evidence-based practice movement is examined. The role of common factors in the psychotherapy integration movement is also discussed. The implications of the common factors approach for research, policy, and practice in social work are identified.

In 2021, school social work celebrated 115 years as a vibrant profession. This entry details the genesis and development of this particular specialization, exploring the history of the profession, including policy and legislation that has either resulted from or affected schools on a national level. Additionally, the entry explains the knowledge base of school social work and, to some degree, examines the regulation and standards for both practice and practitioners and considers future trends for the field.

Solidarity is one of most contentious and contested concepts in European Union (EU) politics. At the same time, it was, and remains, a central value of European integration that has been more and more institutionalized over time. The numerous codifications in the EU treaties and the Charter of Fundamental Rights, along with the increasingly frequent references to the value in political declarations and decisions, prove the value’s growing significance. Yet, there also exists a fundamental divide between rhetorical commitments to solidarity and the practice of the EU and its member states. The most recent crises of the EU have shown the instrumentality and strategic use of the concept in order to promote particular political positions rather than work toward a more common understanding of European solidarity. This makes the application of solidarity in the EU a question not just of arriving at definitional clarity, but also of developing practices that reflect solidarity in concrete cases. Such practices are inextricably linked with three grounds for action: voluntariness, selflessness, and identification. Despite, or precisely because of, these difficulties in defining, concertizing, and implementing solidarity as a European value, there is a rising interest in solidarity in various fields of studies, such as political science, sociology, philosophy, law, and history, making it an interdisciplinary and multidimensional subject matter.

Intersectionality is a critical framework that provides us with the mindset and language for examining interconnections and interdependencies between social categories and systems. Intersectionality is relevant for researchers and for practitioners because it enhances analytical sophistication and offers theoretical explanations of the ways in which heterogeneous members of specific groups (such as women) might experience the workplace differently depending on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, and/or class and other social locations. Sensitivity to such differences enhances insight into issues of social justice and inequality in organizations and other institutions, thus maximizing the chance of social change. The concept of intersectional locations emerged from the racialized experiences of minority ethnic women in the United States. Intersectional thinking has gained increased prominence in business and management studies, particularly in critical organization studies. A predominant focus in this field is on individual subjectivities at intersectional locations (such as examining the occupational identities of minority ethnic women). This emphasis on individuals’ experiences and within-group differences has been described variously as “content specialization” or an “intracategorical approach.” An alternate focus in business and management studies is on highlighting systematic dynamics of power. This encompasses a focus on “systemic intersectionality” and an “intercategorical approach.” Here, scholars examine multiple between-group differences, charting shifting configurations of inequality along various dimensions. As a critical theory, intersectionality conceptualizes knowledge as situated, contextual, relational, and reflective of political and economic power. Intersectionality tends to be associated with qualitative research methods due to the central role of giving voice, elicited through focus groups, narrative interviews, action research, and observations. Intersectionality is also utilized as a methodological tool for conducting qualitative research, such as by researchers adopting an intersectional reflexivity mindset. Intersectionality is also increasingly associated with quantitative and statistical methods, which contribute to intersectionality by helping us understand and interpret the individual, combined (additive or multiplicative) effects of various categories (privileged and disadvantaged) in a given context. Future considerations for intersectionality theory and practice include managing its broad applicability while attending to its sociopolitical and emancipatory aims, and theoretically advancing understanding of the simultaneous forces of privilege and penalty in the workplace.

Ongoing shifts in demographics, knowledge, and expectations require continuous critical reflection on the leadership of K-12 schools. The models of school leadership offered in the past, which focus on management, are no longer adequate. Today, leaders must also ensure that all the students in their care are being provided high-quality, developmentally appropriate, and challenging educational opportunities that prepare each student for college, careers, and life. In other words, leaders must engage in “Inclusive Educational Leadership.” Inclusive Educational Leadership is a reconceptualization of traditional education leadership, which is dedicated to equity, quality and inclusion. We emphasize “inclusive” because it is our contention that providing a quality education experience that is both equitable and fosters equitable outcomes requires an intentional focus on inclusion. Inclusive Educational Leadership has three key areas of emphasis: place, preparation, and practice. Place refers to social practices and policies that reflect competing meanings and uses of spaces, the role people play in a given space and articulations of locations (geographic positions), environments (conditions), and ranks (hierarchies). Preparation refers to education, training and mentoring that is provided to leaders, and practice refers to the work leaders do to cultivate dispositions that support inclusion, support inclusive and culturally responsive practice, and develop an inclusive school culture. The goal of inclusive leadership is to cultivate an inclusive, caring, and supportive school culture that promotes the academic success and well-being of each student. In other words, its goal is to offer more than expectations that lightly touch on all students; its goal is to deliver results for each student. Thus, the work of Inclusive Educational Leadership involves a restructuring of the education experience to prevent marginalization, while creating school cultures based on dignity and respect and focused on achieving equity, high-quality educational experiences, and life success for all students.

Educational reforms have become the normal condition of education, and educational reforms will come ever more frequently due to rapid and accelerated changes to the world in which we live. Reforms are always concerned with anticipating the future due to the belief that education can be done better in and for the future. When pedagogy orients itself towards the future, demand for a solid basis for its decisions becomes pressing. Therefore, trend analysis has become an industry that seeks to establish an (you might say) uncertain certainty about an uncertain future as a basis for reforms in and of the educational system. In its orientation towards the future, education seems to be in a process of transformation into new combinations of tradition in the sense of normative, philosophical considerations and evidence for what works in education and for ensuring that students can achieve their best, which is the purpose of teaching and education.

Museums, zoos, aquariums, parks, after-school clubs, summer camps, community workshops, and other informal education spaces are becoming the sites of new teaching and learning for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). In all of these settings, facilitators (alternatively known as docents, explainers, educators, volunteers, or leaders) are key individuals who create learning opportunities with visitors of all ages and interests. They provide demonstrations of STEM concepts, lead tours and school groups, design activities, and support learners in making and tinkering activities—and this work is inherently complex and is intertwined with strands of pedagogy, role negotiation and identity, and labor. Educational approaches of constructivism and constructionism are clear in facilitators’ commitments to creating opportunities for learners to connect their own personal knowledge and experiences with STEM and to build new things from a variety of analog and digital technologies that can be displayed and shared with others. These pedagogical interactions are also social interactions, and facilitators work to invite learners into activities, guide and encourage them, and introduce new STEM content learning goals, even as they negotiate tensions involved in balancing these learning goals with interactional power dynamics and individual learner interests. Additionally, traditional tensions arising from the perceived binary of child-centered and adult-centered pedagogies are being challenged by research that highlights the ways in which intergenerational and equitable teaching and learning can take place as joint activity between adult facilitators and youth in informal STEM settings. Rather than trying to classify facilitation practices as child-centered or adult-centered, we should attend to the when and how of facilitation practices, which highlights their complexity and has implications for how to design and facilitate equitable informal STEM learning opportunities. Finally, the complexity of informal STEM facilitation is made visible when educational researchers consider the impact of institutional constraints on pedagogy and labor, factors that are often invisible or missing in observational studies of facilitator practices. Facilitators also adapt and improvise around these constraints to perform the behind-the-scenes labor of infrastructuring—the emergent, ongoing creation of support systems involving people, objects, and practices that are necessary for the success of new educational innovations. Future directions for research in informal STEM facilitation include greater attention to settings other than science museums, further research into informal computing and mathematics facilitation, and an explicit focus on equity in informal STEM facilitation.

This article examines scholarship in the field of foreign policy analysis inspired by the philosophy and social theory of American Pragmatism. Pragmatism is reconstructed as a unified theory of human thought and action emphasizing the primacy of practice and situated creativity. It has been largely ignored in International Relations (IR), in general, and foreign policy analysis (FPA), in particular, during the 20th century. Given the fact that pragmatism is widely taken to be one of the few genuinely “American” social theories, its marginal role in IR scholarship is astounding since the discipline has rightly been characterized as an “American social science” (S. Hoffmann). Against this background the article highlights one of the prominent disciplinary dualisms, the distinction between “systemic” theories of international politics/relations on the one hand and “sub-systemic” foreign policy analyses on the other. It does so, however, as an entry point for a different perspective. Pragmatist thought entered the field in the mid-1990s at a moment when increasing numbers of scholars felt uneasy about this dualism because it severed human agency from internally connected transformations at the global level of political interaction. The proliferation of paradigmatist scholarship about German foreign policy after the country’s unification in 1990 illustrates both how established “paradigms” grappled with “change” and “continuity” in German foreign policy and how pragmatism was mobilized as a theoretical resource in order to respond to this challenge. Pragmatism is a distinctive social theory that starts with what people do (primacy of practice) and that conceives of theories as tools for coping. Rather than distinguishing between thought (or theory) on the one hand and action (or practice) on the other as separate activities, pragmatism emphasizes the unity of all problem-solving forms of “inquiry” (J. Dewey). Inquiry removes doubt and enables us to form beliefs (as “rules for action”). Methodologically this understanding translates into a rejection of the separation of “theory” and “subject matter” in favor of empirically grounded reconstructive approaches. In addition to pragmatist perspectives on epistemology and methodology, the article highlights different ways of substantive theorizing in IR/FPA such as habits, practices, and loyalties but also normative accounts.

In the social sciences, IR included, the study of practices starts from a very simple intuition: social realities - and international politics - are constituted by human beings acting in and on the world. Their ways of doing things delineate practices that enact and give meaning to the world. When seen through these lenses, the concerns of other IR approaches – war, peace, negotiations, states, diplomacy, international organizations, and so on – are bundles of individual and collective practices woven together and producing specific outcomes. Rather than as a unified approach, the Practice Turn (PT) in International Relations Theory is best approached through a series of conceptual innovations and tools that introduce novel ways of thinking about international politics. The review article here first introduces the main conceptual tools in PT’s toolbox focusing on defining practices, the logic of practice, field, capital, and symbolic domination. It then situates PT within IR, and shows how it departs from both rationalism and constructivism. The article closes by focusing on the methodological, epistemological and normative debates among practice turners.

K–12 education and higher education in the United States were drastically affected by COVID-19. Local, state, and federal leaders’ decisions in response to the pandemic were meant to protect the health of their communities. These decisions included school closures across the country, vaccine mandates in some states, and bans on vaccine mandates in other states. Additionally, educational institutions made adaptations to education that resulted in widespread differences in students’ educational environments. These adaptations included remote learning in the K–12 and higher education contexts, changes to student support services, and changes in standardized testing requirements for higher education admissions applications. The result of these decisions and adaptations were educational laws, policies, and practices that were not equally enjoyed and experienced by all students but rather further exacerbated preexisting educational disparities. Marginalized students, including low-income individuals, students of color, first-generation students, and English Learners, already faced significant barriers to fully engage in their education prepandemic. The inequities of pandemic responses only served to further entrench these disadvantages. These efforts raise important considerations for future research, policy, and practice that can curb the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and future crises.

The word “magic” refers to a broad range of beliefs and practices that include animism, charm(s), divination, enchantment, fantasy, fetish, glamour, illusion, miracles, the occult, shamanism, sorcery, spells, the supernatural, superstition, taboos, trickery, and witchcraft. Magic―once thought a core feature of “primitive societies,” abandoned by more rational, bureaucratic and progressive beliefs―is, in fact, thriving in contemporary life, and central to practices of capitalism as well as to everyday behaviors. Magic is practiced in fields of finance, government, law, medicine and health, technology, advertising, marketing, sports, the gaming industry, and theatrical performances, among other institutions. When situations allow for the assemblage of a “magician,” “rite,” and “representation” within these complex social networks and when professional skills, ideas, conditions, contexts, media, and meanings align, magic acts as an agent of change. Magic is also practiced in everyday situations in which people need to feel a sense of control in circumstances where it’s lacking, such as performing well under competitive conditions or during times of crisis with indefinite outcomes. Consequently, they rely on magical thinking—in the forms of superstitions, wishful thinking, and taboo avoidance—which is often accompanied by charms, amulets, or acts of faith to guide them through uncertainty. Conjuring terms such as “fate” and “luck” to ward off illness or improve one’s chances at getting a hit in baseball, are, in fact, ways of expressing ambiguities and dealing with conflicts of temporal existence that all humans face in one form or another. Magic structured in institutions and practiced in everyday situations is a prime example of contradiction in contemporary life. Objective knowledge of facts is increasingly understood as contingent rather than permanent, leaving room for uncertainty, mystery, the unknown, and seemingly nonrational alternatives. Scientific evidence becomes as valid as alternative facts. Documenting recent developments, it is suggested that rationality and magic are not mutually exclusive. Rather, rational behaviors and practices are suffused with magic. Magical beliefs and specific rituals complement practical knowledge so as to enhance knowledge as a way to secure success. All of these ways of thinking and social practices have something at stake, in that risk, uncertainty, and ambiguity of outcome are prevalent, and hence call on magical practices to bring about change.

Educational reform measures adopted in India since early liberalization led to systemic changes in the provisioning and practice of school and teacher education. Despite judicial intervention, the state withdrew from the responsibility of developing institutional capacity to prepare teachers, leading to a de facto public policy that undermines the potential role of teachers and their education in achieving equitable, quality education. The policy narrative constructed around quality and knowledge created the logic of marginalizing the teacher, undermining the teacher’s agency and the need for epistemic engagement. Commitment to the Constitution-led policy frame was gradually subverted by a polity committed to privatizing education and a bureaucracy committed to incrementalism and suboptimal solutions to the several challenges of universalizing quality education. A discourse constructed around teachers, their education, and practice led to narrowing curriculum to a disconnected set of learning outcomes and putting the onus of learning on the child. In the absence of robust institutional monitoring of the Right to Education effort and poor fiscal and teacher provisioning, this act too became a target of neoliberal reform, leading to dilution. The wedge between the constitutional aims of education and market-based reforms has become sharper as the practice of education prioritizes narrow economic self-interest over crucial public and social concerns. This has gradually hollowed out the Constitution-centered national policy perspective on education as critical to the needs of India’s disadvantaged and plural society. A major fallout of this has been the decoupling of concerns for social justice from those for quality education.

Cultural anthropologists work with US military organizations in a wide variety of employment situations and roles. Some who work full-time within these organizations conduct research on personnel or teach in schools, holding roles and doing work similar to anthropologists in academia. Others are external consultants, providing advice and research in ways similar to practicing anthropology in other sectors. Others work in less common capacities, such as providing scientific advising, conducting analysis, or designing and administering programs. Most forms of engagement or employment with military organizations are controversial within the discipline of anthropology. The controversy is an important source of caution and critique. However, it sometimes masks the complexity of the work and context. Few large institutions are truly homogenous. The several million uniformed and civilian personnel who work in US military organizations have diverse, often conflicting perspectives on important issues and varying degrees of agency to effect or resist change. Consequently, the opportunities and constraints anthropologists have to affect the institution depend heavily on not only their specific roles but also on where they work within the institution and who their colleagues are. The broad range of the roles and positions anthropologists hold in military organizations, coupled with the complexity of the work context, create challenges for developing ethical and practical guidelines. Practicing anthropologists in this sector must collaborate with colleagues to interpret and meet disciplinary professional standards for ethics, transparency, and quality. The work context and controversy also create challenges for building and maintaining an identity as an anthropologist. As is the case with practicing anthropology in all sectors, anthropological work with US military organizations also has broader implications for the discipline. Connections to powerful institutions, such as corporations or government entities, always bring with them legitimate concerns about how the biases and intentions of the institutions might reshape the field. There are also significant questions about how colleagues can assess ethical decision making and evaluate the work of those employed in nontraditional roles and settings. In addition, the field continues to grapple with how anthropologists practicing in this sector can communicate most effectively what they learn about military organizations back to the discipline.

With the rapid rise of the aging population, how to provide support and care for older adults has become an increasingly important issue across the world. One way of such provision in many societies has been through adult children. An important concept, attitude, and practice in this regard is filial responsibility. This article first looks into the definition of filial responsibility and its ethical foundation or theoretical underpinning as manifested in various theories. Next, the article examines changes and continuity in filial responsibility in the face of modernization and other social and cultural changes. To better understand the many faces of filial responsibility, the article discusses parental expectations of filial responsibility and the attitudes and practices of adult children. The extent of offspring’s filial responsibility attitude as a predictor of actual support and care to parents is discussed. In addition, to comprehend the effects of filial responsibility on individual well-being, this article examines not only the effects of parental expectations of filial responsibility on their well-being but also the consequences of fulfilling filial responsibility on offspring’s well-being. Finally, the article examines the relationship between filial responsibility and policy and the implications of filial responsibility for the helping professions, including social work.

The social work profession has evolved extensively since its inception in 1898. The profession began with a focus on helping others and recognizing social injustices as its core charges. The profession is now being called to view human rights as its professional responsibility, too. As driving forces behind this new charge, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) and the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) are taking concrete steps to ensure that the human rights perspective is being integrated into social work education and practice.

At the end of the 20th century, psychologists reacted to what they perceived as a negative bias in their field by launching the positive psychology movement. This movement had influential effects on organization studies; much scholarly attention was devoted to studying positive organizational phenomena. The article provides a brief, selective introduction to some of the developments resulting from the early-21st century focus on positive work and organization (PWO) studies. Findings of PWO are described in six different domains: psychological capital, organizational virtue, positive relationships, leadership, positive states and outcomes, and positive practice. The article also describes some outstanding challenges and promising directions for future development, including the nature of positivity, construct clarity, and the risks of co-optation.