A spiral model for teaching psychosocial assessment

This paper presents a model for teaching psychosocial assessment to social work students that relies on systematic thinking based on a scientific approach. Great difficulty is experienced by teachers of social work in training their students to make psychosocial assessments and to present them coherently. The didactic model which is proposed here is represented graphically as a concentric spiral path along which data are collected and organized into five prinicipal categories. A repeating five-step procedure, beginning with data collection and ending with a synthesis of the data, has the purpose of facilitating the student's ability to comprehend the dynamic and ongoing nature of the process of formulating and testing hypotheses, which go into making a psychosocial assessment. The application of the model to the teaching situation is illustrated by a case study.