James A. Forte is Professor at the Department of Social Work, Salisbury University. He is the author of Theories for Practice: Symbolic Interactionist Translations and thirty articles including many demonstrations of how to apply theory to practice in areas such as homelessness, domestic violence, bereavement, volunteer service, web-based advocacy, and multicultural practice. He has a special interest in symbolic interactionism theory use and has written on the history of partnerships between interactionists and social workers, on interactionist metatheory, and on applied symbolic interactionism (a chapter in the Handbook of Symbolic Interactionism). His other interests include the use of social and behavioral theories; the history of collaboration between pragmatists, interactionists, and social workers; the membership perspective of social work practice; policy advocacy and community service; constructionist models of personal and public problem solving, and theorizing competencies and processes. His last book, Human Behavior and the Social Environment: Models, Metaphors, and Maps for Applying Theoretical Perspectives to Practice introduced a set of four theory translation tools and translated ten major theoretical languages for use by social workers. Forte’s current scholarly project is called Theorizing Competently: A Primer for Social Workers. This book is designed to increase practitioners’ understanding of theorizing competencies and their readiness to use these competencies to guide multi theoretical assessment and intervention activities. Professor Forte has been teaching human behavior classes (development across the life course, theory survey, and macro content) for more than 15 years.
Jim Forte earned his masters of social work at Virginia Commonwealth University, and had provided directed social work services for more than fifteen years. As a social worker, Jim Forte worked with elderly persons in a community center, served as executive director of a clubhouse for persons with mental health and housing problems, created and led a group services program for nonviolent offenders, and counseled urban youth with learning challenges in a special school. For ten years Jim served as a supervisor for social work counselors and group workers.
Professor Forte has been a full time social work educator since 1990 and a teacher at Salisbury University since 2003. He was recipient of the Outstanding Virginia Social Work Educator Award, Virginia Social Work Education Consortium in October 1994. He received the President’s Award for Outstanding Teaching at Christopher Newport University, Newport News, Virginia in 1996, and the National Association of Social Work, Maryland Chapter (NASW-MD), Social Work Educator of the Year Award in March 2010.
Professor Forte can be contacted at jamesforte@mac.com.
