A Mixed Methods Study of Culture and Fixed and Growth Mindsets in Clinical Social Work Education

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 15. Methods in Cultural Sociology

Abstract

While a number of sociologists have called for increased attention and integration of insights from the psychological and cognitive sciences as a means for pursuing this goal, it is less common for sociologists to do so in practice. One psychological approach to understanding the self and motivation through understanding people’s implicit theories, or "mindsets", or their beliefs about domain specific abilities. Implicit theories have been shown to reliability predict different learning behaviors, but has often been measured as individual level variables unrelated to context, culture, or history. Sociologists tend to assess culture more broadly as a repertoire of cultural content, or as semi-autonomous transposable schema that constrain and enable action and meaning making. This project attempts to empirically assess the relationship between cognitive, cultural, and behavioral factors through a mixed methods study of social work students in an introductory clinical skills course during the Fall, 2015 semester. Data collected includes: (1) a survey assessing students’ mindsets (n=161); (2) semi-structured interviews about students’ social worker identities and learning histories (n=28); and (3) video data (n=38) of students performing a simulated therapy session. These data provide a unique opportunity for assessing the relationship between individual level cognitive factors (i.e., mindset), cultural and contextual interview data, and behavioral data within the relatively controlled context of a masters program. Findings from this study will be discussed in light of a larger interest in discussing the potential for integrating cognitive and cultural data in sociological research.

Author

• Michelangelo Trujillo, University of Michigan