SpringerBriefs in Advancing Social Work and Social Work Education – serie

This book presents current scholarship designed to decolonize, reform and confront the Euro-centric dominance in social work education and practice. This compact volume strings together new content from internationally recognised authors in the field of social work to address this need.Decolonising social work seeks to weaken the effect of colonialism and create opportunities to promote traditional practices in contemporary settings. Its focus is to draw attention to the effects of globalisation and the universalization of social work education, methods of practice and international development that fail to embrace and recognise local knowledges and methods by bringing new and fresh perspectives to social work. It can also be seen as a significant contribution to social work's more critical stance and long-standing struggle to challenge the hegemonic Euro-centric epistemology. With decoloniality becoming a global imperative, this collection brings together case studies from world scholars and decolonial voices in order to explore opportunities, challenges and trends to decolonize through culturally relevant curricula, including:Social Work and Decolonisation: Student Social Workers’ Understanding of the Concepts of ‘Culture’, ‘Cultural Identity’ and ‘Decolonisation’Developing Curriculum for Criminal Justice Social Work from the FieldNew Directions in Trauma Work? Cultural Trauma Theory as an Instrument to Contextualise and Address Histories of Pain in Global Communities  Analysing and Understanding Intersections: Using Nayak’s ‘Intersectional Model of Reflection’ in Social Work TeachingDecolonizing Social Work Education and Curriculum Utilizing Cultural Competemility and Professionalism ApproachExploring New Horizons for Decolonial Social Work Education is essential reading for practitioners, policy makers, instructors, researchers, and other social work professionals. The book may be used as a supplemental text for social work courses. The national and international focus of the volume will be highly relevant to all social work programmes across the globe.

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 EducationOnline Teaching, eCourses and Innovative Programmes in Social Work Distance EducationTeaching Reproductive Justice in Social Work Education Social Work Peace Studies Social Work Values and EducationSocial 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.

It also includes important conversations about the present and future of social work practice and prepares students as well as professional social workers for practice in an increasingly globalised, dynamic and culturally diverse environment.

This book provides examples of how social workers have pushed back against neoliberalism, attempts to co-opt or silence social workers, and reproduce philosophical and ethical assumptions that divide humans from each other and from the natural world.This is the second book of a two-volume set that focuses on how authors have pushed boundaries in a particular field of practice, research or policy in social work. The books are culturally, gender-, and geographically inclusive, with contributors from every inhabited continent. It is future-focused, hopeful, and inspiring: it focuses on solutions rather than merely elaborating problems. The book includes chapters from a continuum of experienced practitioners and early career researchers; this provides a nuanced and accessible view of boundaries from both ends of the career path.The global definition of social work says that the discipline ‘promotes social change and development, social cohesion and the empowerment and liberation of people’ but in many nations where social work exists, social workers are expected to act as agents of social control, ensuring that people—particularly ‘the poor’—conform to established political and social norms. Most often social workers are initially attracted to the discipline because they want to empower and liberate vulnerabilised and marginalised people and communities. In order to accomplish these high-minded goals, social workers must occasionally push boundaries that confine their practice. This volume contains eight chapters from social workers who are challenging policy and the way social work is practiced in their national settings. Authors in this book interrogate the notion of national boundaries and contemporary populist self-interest. Not only are political boundaries considered, but the boundaries between humans and their natural environments are reconsidered. The book concludes by setting out key decisions that the global social work discipline must make in order to create its future, and identifies key markers on the path to that future.Pushing Boundaries in Social Work Around the World, Vol. 2: Policy and Global Perspectives invites social workers to reconsider their assumptions about policy practice and boundaries themselves. It encourages them to rediscover the spark that originally drew them to their work.

This book provides examples of how social workers have pushed back against civic and private corporate powers that attempt to control women, children, racialised and stigmatised groups, migrants, and indigenous peoples, and public policy agendas that continue to vulnerabilise and marginalise people.This is the first book of a two-volume set that focuses on how authors have pushed boundaries in a particular field of practice, research or policy in social work. The books are culturally, gender-, and geographically inclusive, with contributors from every inhabited continent. It is future-focused, hopeful, and inspiring: it focuses on solutions rather than merely elaborating problems. The book includes chapters from a continuum of experienced practitioners and early career researchers; this provides a nuanced and accessible view of boundaries from both ends of the career path.The global definition of social work says that the discipline 'promotes social change and development, social cohesion and the empowerment and liberation of people' but in many nations where social work exists, social workers are expected to act as agents of social control, ensuring that people—particularly 'the poor'—conform to established political and social norms. Most often social workers are initially attracted to the discipline because they want to empower and liberate vulnerabilised and marginalised people and communities. In order to accomplish these high-minded goals, social workers must occasionally push boundaries that confine their practice.This volume contains eight chapters from social workers who are pushing social work boundaries in their own social and national settings. The contents are organised into two clusters: pushing boundaries for women and children and pushing boundaries against isms and stigma. Each chapter contains learnings that are applicable in different practice settings around the world.Pushing Boundaries in Social Work Around the World, Vol. 1: Women, Children and Isms inspires social workers to push against the boundaries we impose on ourselves and our discipline. This book helps social workers rediscover the spark that initially drew them to their work.

This book serves as a compact resource for social work teaching at a time when new ways to understand the world and the people who live in it are continuously needed for social work professionals to be able to fulfill the task of social work.