This book addresses the critical question of whether social work as an universal discipline is able to respond to new social challenges that arise from a changing world that pose new sets of challenges for people in precarious situations and create calamitous psychological burden for populations. These require critical skills that need to be developed through social work education in an environment where local and global social work ethics are fused and interrogated in our classroom spaces. There is a need to address the disjuncture between curriculum content, language of text used for instruction and local realities. As a universal discipline, social work education must play a transformative role and create an enabling environment that produces graduates that are able to respond to life experiences in a global social order while also being purposeful about centering local knowledges.
Transforming social work education for a new era does not rely on singular issues but demands engagement around a multitude of issues that, if addressed, enhances the responsiveness of the discipline in different contexts. The authors, who work and teach across various settings, countries, contexts and cultures, address the role that social work ought to play during and after global events like the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and war and conflict. It speaks to a social work that acknowledges our interconnectedness with nature, offering an educational framework that centers the politics of sustainable development. Social work students come from communities where they, themselves, have different levels of access to educational spaces. The book also looks at new ways of delivering education content, making social work training accessible to a broader population. Among the topics covered:
- Learning Social Accountability Through Social Work Field Education
- Online Teaching, eCourses and Innovative Programmes in Social Work Distance Education
- Teaching Reproductive Justice in Social Work Education
- Social Work Peace Studies
- Social Work Values and Education
Social Work Education: Breaking New Grounds and Addressing New Challenges addresses a range of issues that social work education needs to craft in the future and is designed to support students and professionals for practice, in placement, and teaching and curricula practices.