Summer 2026 SOWK 588 Class 04 Weekly Email

MyHeritage Syllabus Presentations Emails

Unit Introduction and What You Will Learn

Week four is asynchronous. In Edin and Shaefer (2016), students will read about the impact of poverty on housing. Students read two chapters in Linquiti (2022), focusing on logical reasoning and how we collect and evaluate evidence in policy analysis. There are forums where students can reflect on housing challenges, engage with the textbook’s end-of-chapter discussion questions, practice applying reasoning methods, begin developing the evidence base for their policy analysis papers, and examine the distinction between advocacy and neutral policy analysis. I will have a lecture video talking about logical reasoning and how it can be applied to policy analysis. The agenda is to be determined.

The learning objectives this week include:

• Distinguish between deductive, inductive, abductive, and probabilistic reasoning and identify how each applies to social policy analysis.
• Examine the impact of housing instability on individuals and families living in extreme poverty and connect those challenges to policy-level gaps and responses
• Describe the distinction between policy advocates and policy analysis professionals and reflect on its implications for social workers who occupy both roles simultaneously
• Evaluate the strength and appropriate use of different types of evidence in the construction of policy arguments.
• Begin identifying and organizing evidence for the policy analysis paper topic.

Unit Assignments

Content

• Read Edin and Shafer (2016) Chapter 3: A Room of One’s Own
• Read Linquiti (2022) Chapter 5: Using Logic to Identify Tentative Truths
• Read Linquiti (2022) Chapter 6: Collecting and Evaluating Evidence for Use in Policy Analysis
• Watch my lecture video

W-04 A-01 Asynchronous Participation and Engagement

The expectation is that each of your replies will be substantive and provide meaningful perspectives, contributing to the forum’s conversation and scholarship. They can be related to the prompts or building on conversations shared by peers. There are six forums for this week, and you are expected to make at least five replies across any of the forums. These forums include the following:

• Reflection on Challenges of Housing in the $2 per Day Community is a forum where students can reflect on their reading in chapter three and/or share examples of the impact poverty has on housing.
• There are forums for the added discussion questions at the end of each chapter: Chapter Five Discussion Questions and Chapter Six Discussion Questions.
• Reasoning Examples provides a space for students to define methods of reasoning and give an example.
• Students should be working on their papers for this class. Identification of Evidence Related to Your Social Policy Paper is a place for students to share some of their thinking and planning related to this.
• In the forum, Characterization of Advocates versus Policy Analysis Professionals, I ask students to consider the discussion in the textbook and their alignment.

A-03 Take Home Exam 01

You can find A-03 - Take Home Exam 01. It is due Monday, 6/22 at 8 am.

Unit Resources

You can listen to a podcast episode for this week’s reading Chapters 5 and 6 Logical Blueprints for Social Policy, or see the entire series Podcast Series.

I’m working on a lecture video and will post it by the end of the day on Tuesday. I’ll post it here when it is done.

Reference

Edin, K. J., & Shaefer, H. L. (2016). $2.00 A Day: Living on almost nothing in America. HarperCollins.

Linquiti, P. D. (2022). Rebooting policy analysis: Strengthening the foundation, expanding the scope. CQ Press.

To-Do List

• Read chapters 5 & 6 of the textbook and A Room of One’s Own in the $2 per day book
• Complete at least five replies across any of the six forums
• Complete the first Take Home Exam
• Be working on your papers