Where Have All the Teachers Gone? The Selling Out of Social Work Education

Abstract

This article addresses a significant challenge in social work education: the move to emphasize research and the downgrading of teaching and practice. We argue that this is a disturbing trend that has the potential to diminish the education of social work students. Grant-funded research has become the end all of social work education. We propose that the profession needs to endorse the scholar-teacher-practitioner that will be able to combine scholarship, teaching, and practice so that students will benefit from teachers who bring their scholarship and practice into the classroom. Further, we argue that teaching requires a great deal of investment and the focus on grant-funded research ignores the investment needed for teaching.