RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF COMMUNICATION SKILLS IN SOCIAL WORK

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The purpose of our research was to develop social work communication skills that can actually be used in work places in social work, rather than translate foreign (mostly English) materials into Japanese and try to fit them into Japanese culture. During our period of study between 2002 and 2004, we published six research papers. Two of them were made public in the international conference home page, and we did one presentation in an international conference, and one in a Japanese academic society.First we did an extensive review of past studies in order to establish a research frame. Then we did case studies in communication. Out of these case studies we extracted twenty-four workable communication strategies. As a result of a survey of foreign textbooks on communication, we extracted cases of conversations that we felt were strange, and did a questionnaire survey with students and experienced social workers. As a result we posed a question against using translated foreign textbooks in … More class without modifying them to suit the Japanese culture. Furthermore, we videotaped and/or taped, at intervals for two years, conversations between clients and workers. We compared communication skills of experienced and inexperienced workers. One of the studies was on finding differences between the two groups mentioned above regarding communication strategies. The other was to extract differences between comparatively older and comparatively younger workers and we found differences in their skills of beginning, developing and ending the conversation. Younger workers took more time trying to obtain the same amount of information as compared to the older workers.Regarding the reflection of feelings about which we did a presentation in Australia, we were supported both by Asian and European researchers and practitioners, and we were accosted by Professor Trevithick of the University of Bristol and she suggested that we continue communication for future research cooperation. The papers and records of our presentation in Australia have been compiled as a booklet which is attached to this report. Less