Critical Social Work Education Research Articles

Critically unlearning about madness and distress: Reflections on social work education and activism in Ireland

This article draws from my involvement in critical social work education and my position as an aspiring ally of the Mad movement in the Irish context. I use a reflexive auto-critique as a methodology to consider a significant shift in my engagement with Mad matters which has led to new ways of (un)learning critically about madness and distress in education and activism. This is a shift from celebrating criticality and inclusion strategies, and in particular service-user involvement in education, to problematising criticality and its potential to perpetuate power inequalities within mental health and education systems. It is a shift from viewing critical education as a process of knowing about distress and Mad people to a process of knowing with and from Mad people, service-users, and survivors. The emerging field of Mad Studies provides a conceptual framework to inquire about knowledge and knowers, to consider issues of co-option and epistemic injustice, to focus on pedagogies for unlearning, to ask questions about representational politics and the complexities of being an engaged academic and Mad positive ally. Guided by Mad Studies as a mode of analysis, I recognise that inclusion of madness in university curricula can work in ways that continue to pathologise and subjugate Mad people. This is an unsettling recognition that leads to an interrogation of my own praxis as an academic and an aspiring ally of the Mad moment. I propose that prefigurative politics are central in these considerations as genuine engagements with mental health matters need to model the changes we aim to achieve. Engaging with the tensions of inclusion politics, the complexities of madness, and the unsettledness this engagement generates, can be a source of knowing through epistemic humility and a resource for networks of solidarity.

Integrating design thinking into social work education: a scoping review of practices and identification of opportunities for curriculum innovation

ABSTRACT The contemporary context of Australian social work education creates opportunities for social work educators to reimagine curriculum design and delivery. We propose that design thinking offers one means of broadening approaches to social work teaching in creative and innovative ways. With a focus on the application of knowledge to industry ‘problems’ and ‘person-centered’ solutions, design thinking may complement the social justice values of social work and help advance the social change mandate of the profession. In educational settings, it may encourage students to engage more actively in processes of knowledge translation and in the identification of person-centered solutions to social problems. Yet there is very little literature on the application of design thinking in the social sciences and even less specifically relevant to teaching social work. Our paper reports on an international scoping review (n = 73) of existing approaches to teaching design thinking in higher education settings and considers their potential application to creative and innovative social work curriculum. This research contributes to understandings of the potential of design thinking for critical social work education in a changing higher education context.

No more deadlines? Tracing transcarceral time in ‘critical’ social work education

Colonial critical social work education is a strange place. It professes a goal of social justice but subscribes to an often-unconscious compliance with what has been named as ‘colonial’ or ‘white time’. White time sets and enforces limits for the completion of courses, programmes and assignments. Such colonial chrononormativity also sets and enforces what counts as and in history. In this article, we question this time compliance, tracing literature on critical temporalities that take up, for example, crip, queer and pandemic time. Drawing on abolitionist work, we then outline how colonial time may also be transcarceral, that is, confining and punishing, especially when we commit time-crime and ‘miss’ a deadline. Indeed, by delving into the little-known but violent history of deadlines, we hope to encourage more refusals of transcarceral time, as well as deliberate discussions that create space for a range of temporalities in our classrooms and beyond.

Preparing Social Workers for Anti-Oppressive Practice: Evaluating the Role of Critical Social Work Education

ABSTRACT Although critical social work (CSW) is an important framework for addressing racism and oppression within social work, few studies have examined CSW education. This study assessed CSW educational opportunities, student attitudes, and the effect of CSW exposure on student learning via a survey administered to undergraduate and graduate social work students (N=191). Findings suggest that students have a strong interest in CSW, but that classroom and field placement opportunities are inconsistent. Linear regression model results demonstrate that student knowledge of and interest in CSW are significant predictors of higher scores on the Diversity and Oppression Scale (Windsor et al., 2015). Based on the study findings, recommendations regarding curriculum development and field placement policies for social work educators are discussed.

Latina/o/x Critical Race Theory (LatCrit) in Social Work Praxis

We propose that the profession is theoretically at a point of convergence between CRT and LatCrit. Both theories are united in the production of knowledge to dismantle oppression. This article provides a brief review of CRT and a comprehensive understanding of LatCrit as a starting point for critical social work education perspectives. We discuss implications for social work education by broadening the racial discourse to include Latinas/os/x and suggest critical solutions and adaptations to current social work pedagogy to better prepare students to enter the social work field and respond to this growing population. We provide recommendations for reevaluating social work and find an exit from the loop of “band-aid” interventions that lack a fundamental basis for addressing the underlying causes of trauma, stress, and racism. We provide concrete examples for incorporating LatCrit into social work education, practice. We close by calling on the professions leading organizations, NASW and CSWE, to release statements addressing the recent assault on CRT (and LatCrit by way of its extension of CRT) and join other social work organizations in condemning the unfair attacks on CRT if social work is committed to the Grand Challenge to Eliminate Racism.

Contextualized Social Work Education: A Critical Understanding of the Local

ABSTRACT Because dominant social work is mismatched to many contexts, alternative practice and educational approaches have emerged. To highlight educational examples, this phenomenological study explores the experience of 28 Canadian and South African educators teaching alternative social work. These educators conceptualized a multidimensional, integrated, contextualized framework that attends to power and resistance, and extends critical social work education by its focus on the local context. Their pedagogy included experiential, intentional, relational, reciprocal, and participatory, dialogical, land-based, reflective, and reflexive aspects. Their accounts illuminate the importance of developing personal intent, appropriate policy environments, adequate resourcing, and an activist social work body toward entrenching contextualized social work education. Considerations for implementing contextualized social work education in other contexts are discussed.

Service design for social change: reflections on teaching human-centred design in an undergraduate social work degree

ABSTRACT Human Centred Design (HCD) is emerging in Australia as a participatory approach to service design in social work and human services organisations. In this article, we reflect upon our incorporation of HCD into a core unit offered to final-year students in a Bachelor of Social Work (Honours) degree, as part of a collaboration between design and social work academics. We highlight successes and challenges, and identify adaptations that can provide HCD with a stronger strength-based, critical approach that better aligns with critical social work education. We provide suggestions for social work practitioners and educators around implementing HCD, in ways that inspire critical and reflexive thinking, promote social justice and focus on designing for progressive, structural and social change.

The role of critical social work education in improving ethical practice with refugees and asylum seekers

ABSTRACTThis paper uses critical reflection as its primary methodology to research one Master of Social Work student’s former practice experiences as an Australian immigration officer. The paper contextualizes the study by offering a critical analysis of hegemonic constructions of asylum seekers in Australia, which are reflected in Australian law and policy, as well as potentially influencing social work practice. Critical reflection on one of the author’s practice provides a rich case study that reveals the tensions of government-employed social workers in restrictive environments, and the espoused social justice values of the profession. The findings hold implications for both social work education and practice, suggesting that critical social work education, and in particular, the use of critical analysis and reflection, can improve ethical practice with refugees and asylum seekers.

Drowning In Neoliberal Lies: State Responses Towards People Seeking Asylum

AbstractThis article argues that further enhancement of critical social work education and practice is needed to counter politicised and restrictive policies towards people seeking asylum in advanced globalised market economies. This means social workers giving more emphasis and prominence to the role of neoliberalism rather than solely focusing on the adverse moral and mental health impacts of state responses. Drawing on current debates and practices within critical social work and seven years’ experience in the Australian refugee sector, this article will demonstrate the punitive and deterrent configurations adopted by states like Australia to respond to people seeking asylum. The article then highlights the importance of social workers critically analysing historicised discourses which normalise such people as ‘dangerous’, ‘illegitimate’, ‘othered’ and a ‘burden’. Further interrogation of the social and cultural logic(s) of neoliberalism which serve to justify the former discourses will also be included. Finally, reflections on a range of strategies and solutions will be presented for critical social work educators and practitioners to resist and subvert neoliberalism and to secure better outcomes for people seeking asylum in Australia and elsewhere.

Promoting activism through critical social work education: the impact of global capitalism and neoliberalism on social work and social work education

The impacts of global capitalism and neoliberalism on higher education can reduce the social work curriculum to competency-based skills acquisition rather than critically reflective, transformative learning. This encourages the promotion of establishment social work approaches aimed at accepting the status quo, rather than critical forms of social work that critique the dominant social structures and power relations that cause broad social divisions. The marginalisation of critical approaches reshapes social work towards conservative, market-led demands, yet an explicitly critical social work curriculum is pivotal to the claim of social work as an emancipatory project. This article presents original research that discusses the impact of an Australia critical social work programme on students’ development as agents of change. The findings suggest that developing a curriculum based on critical social science, and using critical pedagogical processes, assists students/graduates to work effectively for social justice and promotes their participation in collective social action.

Politics and Positionality: Engaging with Maps of Meaning

This article considers critical social work education within the context of the challenges associated with the increasingly neoliberal, corporate and competitive nature of higher education and human service provision. The metaphor of maps is used as a framework for exploring the potential for transformational learning opportunities associated with alternative ways of thinking about teaching and learning. Countering the neoliberal tendency to depoliticise, metaphors of maps and map-reading, as discussed here and applied to social work education, evoke diverse perspectives and engagements in relation to the politics of knowledge, knowing, theory and practice. In emphasising the partiality of knowledge, the indivisibility of the ‘knower’ and the ‘known’ and, as such, the personal and the professional, efforts to cultivate critical consciousness, thus, enable different conversations. The central premise of this article is that in offering opportunities for engagement which open up rather than close down the space for meaningful dialogue, educators may contribute, in profound ways, to both student development and the (re)shaping of public discourse.

“Bursting Bubbles”

In this column, the author presents a brief reflection of the challenges that are associated with teaching social work from a critical, antiracist, postcolonial, feminist, antiheteronormative, and self-reflective perspective and raises questions about the future of critical social work education within changing neoliberal institutional contexts.

Returning to Silence, Connecting to Wholeness: Contemplative Pedagogy for Critical Social Work Education

This article introduces contemplative silence and the wholeness of being into critical social work education. It draws on in-depth interviews with students 1 year after the completion of a course to reflect on the impact of contemplative practice and mindfulness practice on the students' personal lives and critical social work practice. Students' reflection shows the power of contemplative pedagogy and mindfulness in deepening their awareness through the 5 senses: sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. They came to embody critical reflective practice in a way that is not achieved to the same depth through conventional teaching and learning of critical practice with only the mind.

Research on the Drug Treatment of Schizophrenia

Social work authors have presented superficial appraisals of atypical neuroleptic (antipsychotic) drugs used to treat schizophrenia. This article presents a critical overview of clinical trials and research strategies involving conventional and atypical drugs. It identifies 14 distinct methodological and conceptual failings and neglected research directions. These flaws raise serious doubts about the scientific justifications for the widespread use of neuroleptics. Implications for a critical social work education stance about psychopharmacology are discussed. Findings from psychopharmacotherapy studies cannot be taken at face value: social work educators must scrutinize the adherence of the research enterprise to the scientific method and situate its findings in their historical, ideological, and political-economic contexts.

Responding to Uncertainty

This paper examines the educational implications of recent transformations in the organization of welfare services. Three educational approaches are identified: acquiescence to the managerial ethos that increasingly characterizes public welfare provision; renewed commitment to critical social work principles; and new approaches which combine critical and postmodern perspectives and embrace uncertainty and dialogue as a basis for educational practice. The paper argues that postmodern ideas, though continuously problematic, can be used within critical social work education to continue progressive struggles under conditions of rapid change and uncertainty. The authors use excerpts from their dialogue with each other which reflect some of the differences between them and their own particular responses to uncertainty.