Final Paper (8-10 pages). The final paper assignment is an integrative theory paper about a topic or practice situation of your choice that is of special interest to you. The paper will be an original and creative think piece that demonstrates your own reflections and thoughts, and your ability to acknowledge and build on the ideas from the theories in the text in an applied and integrated manner. You will select a topic or practice situation of special interest to you about which you would like greater insight, one about which you have unanswered open-ended or “why” questions. The topic can be a personal issue, a public issue, or both, but it must be relevant to human behavior in the context of social work practice.
Structure. Begin your proposal with the topic or practice situation and a title, followed by an introduction to your topic or practice situation, including a compelling Rationale stating why you chose your specific topic or practice situation. The rationale is comprised of two parts: personal and professional reasons for choosing the topic. Flowing from this rationale will be a statement of two or three specific and intriguing open-ended “why” questions about which you do not have answers. Drawing upon theories from several chapters in the course text, proceed with an analytical discussion that addresses each of your questions. To facilitate this, you may want to select articles from the course bibliography. Your analytic discussion should creatively extrapolate, synthesize, and appropriately apply in an integrated manner concepts and ideas from at least three different theories, helping you to answer your questions. End with a summary of implications this new insight has for you and your social work practice in terms of social work knowledge, values, and skills at micro, mezzo, and macro levels and at the engagement, assessment, and intervention phases of generalist practice.
Guidelines. The paper should be 8-10 pages long, closely following APA style. You will submit the final paper on Taskstream via Blackboard. Your instructor will grade the paper according to specific criteria documented in the rubric at the end of the syllabus. The purposes of the final paper are to encourage you to 1) demonstrate that you have read and understood theories discussed in the text; 2) use critical and creative thinking to compare and synthesize ideas from these theories; 3) apply theory to real-life situations/ conditions; and 4) articulate your own ideas about human behavior and critique what you have learned. In addition to the rubric guidelines, general criteria for grading the final paper will consider the extent to which the paper follows the assignment, shows insight and originality, is clearly written, organized, and carefully proofread, demonstrates knowledge of theories discussed in the text, use of critical and creative thinking to compare and synthesize theories and ideas, ability to apply theory to “real life” practice, articulates ideas about human behavior and critiques of learning.
Essentials of Human Behavior Integrating Person…