SW 683 - Social Work With Urban Youth

3 Credit(s)

This course enriches and enhances the social work student’s understanding of and work with the urban adolescent population. The study of the growth, development, and experience of contemporary urban teenagers is grounded in a biopsychosocial and systems perspectives, which take into account influences of oppression, marginalization, and discrimination. These micro and macro forces intersect in ways that influence urban adolescents’ development and identity formation. Identity formation in adolescence is a key psychosocial task that informs the teen’s sense of self. It influences behavior, relationships, the choices an adolescent makes, and the life course trajectory. On a daily basis, urban adolescents make choices as they navigate landscapes that provide rich and layered experiences. These landscapes may also present risk, overwhelming stress, and challenge. With this in mind, a multidimensional and dynamic risk and resilience framework is used to understand typical, adaptive, and maladaptive adolescent adjustment and behavior. Course content covers theoretical and empirical adolescent psychosocial literature, both traditional and recent, and current and relevant topics/issues that shape social work assessment and work with this population.