Social work practice may be conceptualised in a variety of ways. Sometimes practice is referred to as ‘methods’. Some social work texts have tended to refer to different levels of practice: micro methods, including methods for working with individuals, such as casework, counselling and case management; methods for working with couples and small groups, such as family group conferencing, mediation and group work; and macro methods, which are more collective methods of practice, such as advocacy, community development, policy development and analysis, research and social action. Practice is also sometimes referred to in terms of the processes that characterise it from beginning to end – for example, engagement, assessment, intervention, termination and evaluation. This tendency to conceptualise practice in terms of ‘processes’ is mostly relevant for micro methods, and some have argued that this conceptualisation represents the imposition of ‘corporate management techniques’ and a ‘case management approach’ onto social work.

Many of the psychological topics we have discussed have focused on the mind of the individual, but humans are a fundamentally social species. Recently, the nature of our social interactions has transformed, through our new abilities to connect with people online. This chapter discusses psychological principles of social networks, and how to quantify social networks via graph theory. The chapter examines the small-world phenomenon and the role of social ties via these graph theory measures. We then look at the case of online social networks, what can be learned about you from your profile, and how their use impacts psychological measures. The chapter concludes by showcasing findings on social network representations in the brain, and touching on ethical questions related to social media privacy concerns and AI-based social interactions.

This chapter provides an overview of some of the key practice strategies that social workers use to try to challenge and arrest the massive social inequalities we explored in the previous chapters. The theory and practices of critical social work help us to devise creative and effective ways to contest and resist the harms created by oppressive social forces. Developing our capacity for critical analysis is an important first step that underpins all other practices outlined in this chapter: social policy analysis and development; social activism, allyship and participation in social movements; critical practice in organisations; and undertaking social research. These practices connect practitioners with discretionary spaces in which they can work towards social justice and emancipatory aims.

Exploration of planetary bodies beyond Earth is occurring at an ever-increasing rate. What used to be points of light in the night sky are now amazing, complicated, and intriguing objects of geologic study. For extraterrestrial bodies with solid surfaces – such as rocky planets, asteroids, and icy bodies – the study of planetary bodies as geologic objects includes careful scrutiny of their surfaces. Planetary exploration is an examination of geomorphology, as our interpretations of other planetary surfaces are largely guided by geomorphic studies done on Earth. At the same time, planetary landforms developed in different geologic conditions than on Earth – such as under different gravities, in different materials (like ice instead of rock), and beneath different atmospheric pressures or compositions.

This chapter illustrates that various geomorphic processes observed on Earth occur on other planets as well, and also how the resultant landforms contrast with those found on Earth.

As noted in Chapter 1, since writing the last edition of this text in 2019, the world has undergone rapid changes and continues to transform at an accelerated pace. Social work, often informed by social movements and community experience, aims to anticipate and respond to emerging social issues. Perhaps this is one of the defining hallmarks of the social work profession – its capacity to evolve to address new challenges and opportunities. Throughout this book, and especially in Chapter 2, we explore some of the global social forces and discourses that characterise the rapidly changing contexts in which social work operates. These changes have created new challenges that require critical responses, in some cases generating new fields of practice. In this chapter, our major focus will be on: (1) the increasing urgency of climate change, threats to the planet (and humanity) and the implications of climate change for social work; (2) global pandemics and their impacts for people and service delivery; and (3) increasing wealth inequality and associated poverty and homelessness.

We begin with a case study of a traditional small-scale face memory experiment. The chapter deconstructs the elements that prevent this experiment from being generalizable, and poses potential ways in which we can expand this experiment into a "Big Data" experiment. The chapter discusses the replication crisis in psychology as an important motivator for broadening psychological experiments, as well as common issues with data fishing or "p-hacking." At the same time, there are limitations to our ability to run perfect Big Data experiments. The chapter describes the beneficial relationship of hypothesis-driven research and data-driven research in psychology, presenting the pros and cons of each. Finally, the chapter discusses different formats of Big Data – wide, deep, and long data.

There is evidence that language has some innate basis. Babies are born with certain expectations as to how language works, and language learning, according to Chomsky, is simply a matter of parameter setting. Pinker and Bloom (1990) take an evolutionary perspective on language. Chomsky’s recent theoretical work suggests that very little of the language ‘organ’ is specific to language. Some language deficits have been traced to a malfunctioning variant of the gene FOXP2. While this initially excited attention as ‘the language gene’ or ‘the grammar gene’, subsequent research has shown the true story to be more complicated. Research suggests that language may well have been around for almost 2 million years. There are a number of hypotheses suggesting that language evolved to fulfil a social function, such as social grooming (binding groups together), the making of social contracts (to enable monogamy) and the use of language to impress potential mates.

Evolutionary psychologists use the concept of reciprocal altruism/direct reciprocation to help explain cooperative behaviour. Direct reciprocation consists of self-sacrificing acts between two unrelated individuals that are based on delayed reciprocation. Documented cases of reciprocity are known in non-human species including the giving of regurgitated blood between vampire bats and mutual aid in vervet monkeys. Tit-for-tat has been labelled an evolutionarily stable strategy, or ESS. An ESS is a strategy that cannot be bettered provided sufficient members of a group adopt it. Humans playing prisoner’s dilemma repeatedly develop the ESS tit-for-tat strategy. This suggests that humans seek a willingness to cooperate but also bear a grudge when this cooperation is not reciprocated. Aggression and violence between the sexes covers: sexual harassment, intimate partner violence and rape. While rape and sexual harassment are almost exclusively male preserves, intimate partner violence involving female-on-male acts is actually slightly more common than the reverse.

Rather than thinking of nature versus nurture it is better to think about interactions between genes and the environment. The Santa Barbara School of evolutionary psychology proposed that human cognition is the result of innately specified domain-specific mental modules. Babies have certain expectations of the way that the physical world operates. Infants of at least three months of age have the knowledge that objects exist independently of their ability to perceive them. Babies have preference for face-like stimuli from birth and learn the details of human faces rapidly. Young children have an understanding of the role of mental states as a cause of behaviour. This skill, known as theory of mind, becomes more sophisticated as children develop. It is measured by a number of tasks such as false belief task and the eyes test, in which participants are required to judge how people feel from looking at their eyes.