Moving beyond the metaphor, reaching beyond the rhetoric: Social work education in a changing environment

Abstract

This article explores Australian social work's engagement with environmental concerns through a review of scholarly literature and professional documentation, and suggests the professional imagination and espoused professional identity of social work practice as expressed in Australian social work education share significant common ground with the concerns of sustainability education. This raises the question of why it is that social work has yet to infuse, embed, or otherwise engage with the adoption of the principles of education for sustainability. The review found that social work has developed some momentum in negotiating challenges emerging as a consequence of climate change and other forms of complexity, but remains educationally challenged by the imperatives that follow commitment to sustainability in practice. To move beyond the metaphorical sense in which social work has previously used the term ‘environment’ requires re-framing of social work education's purview, and rethinking of the approaches used to incorporate sustainability concerns into professional practice qualifications. Principles of inquiry based learning and sustainability education are suggested, as the next step towards integrating and embedding the concerns of the future with revised social work praxis.