Social Justice Mission Research Articles

Social workers’ perceptions and attitudes of environmental issues and sustainable development as social work practice in Aotearoa New Zealand

INTRODUCTION: Environmental and sustainable social work is gaining momentum in social work due to the rising concern of climate change and environmental degradation. Despite the social work profession being committed to social justice, the perspectives of social workers practising in Aotearoa New Zealand on environmental/green social work are yet to be explored. This study explored social workers’ attitudes and beliefs on environmental justice and sustainable practice. It also examined what factors support them to consider environmental issues in social work practice. METHODS: A survey using an online portal was conducted with qualified social workers to assess their attitudes and knowledge. Descriptive, correlation and regression analyses were used to analyse the data. RESULTS: A total of 102 questionnaires were analysed. The results indicated moderate levels of pro-ecological perspectives and awareness of sustainability attitudes, high level of agreement including Māori and other indigenous tradition and wisdom in ecological justice, strong belief in climate change and the importance of factoring environmental issues in social work practice. While over 80% of the participants thought that environmental issues should be part of social work practice, there are still gaps in translating these into practice. Participants would like to see more environmental issues being integrated into social work education to better prepare graduates entering the profession. CONCLUSIONS: Social work education is urged to incorporate the natural environment, environmental justice and values and skills across the curriculum to advance the social justice mission to reduce the disparity among those who are vulnerable and marginalised.

Furthering a Social Justice Mission

Furthering a Social Justice Mission

A Common Purpose? Social Work Students’ Social Justice Related Views in Finland and the island of Ireland

Abstract Exploring social work students’ views to understand how equipped they are to pursue the social justice mission of the profession should be of central academic and practical interest. There are, however, surprisingly few empirical studies focussing on social work students’ views on social justice-related issues from a comparative viewpoint. Such knowledge is thought to be of a wider international interest from a number of perspectives, including social work education and student exchange and, in a wider context, for the development of social work as a profession and for discussing the prerequisites for shared international notions of social work. This article explores the views of social work students studying in different socio-economic contexts and welfare regimes in relation to some key aspects assumed to be vital for the profession. The results based on survey data from student cohorts in Finland (N = 608) and the island of Ireland (N = 279) support the general conclusion that there are important, similar patterns of motivations and understandings amongst the students, despite substantial differences in histories, welfare state developments, current policies and social conditions in various jurisdictions. The results are of interest to educators across countries internationally and provide an important basis for future similar studies.

Clinical Legal Education and Access to Justice During and Beyond COVID-19: Some Reflections of Indian Experience

Legal education aims to impart legal skills and training to law students and develop them into professionals who can render legal services. Clinical legal education (CLE) bridges the gap between the theory and practice of law. CLE has dual purposes of imparting lawyering skills to law students and achieving the social justice mission of law. CLE imparts certain skills and values to students for social justice. Students’ involvement in legal aid clinics makes them more justice-oriented, empathetic and ready for social change. With such orientation, they can assume larger leadership roles as ‘social engineers’. The access to justice crisis compels us to think about legal education’s scope and purpose. In this article, we argue that CLE is indispensable for the attainment of access to justice. During the COVID-19 pandemic, students supervised by clinicians at legal aid clinics worked with communities on issues of ‘migration’, ‘health’ and ‘education’. We argue that the COVID-19 pandemic was instrumental in revealing that legal aid clinics can play a larger role in the attainment of access to justice even during ‘normal times’. This article offers recommendations in order to achieve the goal of securing access to justice for the masses.

An Exploration of Beginning Science Teacher Orientations Toward Social Justice: “What Does It Mean to Teach?”

ABSTRACT In this exploratory qualitative case study, we sought to develop a better understanding of beginning teachers’ (Scholars) ideas about justice-oriented science teaching. Data were collected from participants from the same secondary teacher education program with an overarching mission of social justice. The study spanned two academic years, including a one-year Master of Education program and the first year of teaching. Data sources included periodic semi-structured individual interviews, lesson plans, and written reflections. Findings are presented as chronological themes indicating: 1) Scholars used their own identities as a starting point for constructing their justice-oriented practice; 2) Scholars’ learning about social justice in science education varied based upon their initial teaching goals; and 3) as first-year teachers, Scholars struggled to enact their justice-oriented goals within the classroom, which enhanced their sociopolitical awareness. The implications of this study point to attending to prospective teachers’ science epistemologies and promoting critique of science and science education, as well as awareness of the simultaneity of identities they bring to the teaching of science to achieve the transformative goals of justice-oriented science education.

Integrating Technology into Social Work Practice and Study: Needs, Challenges, and Opportunities

This article reveals the views of Japanese and Lithuanian lecturers on the need for technological development in social work and the impact such development can have on the competencies of future social work professionals. 10 qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with lecturers from Lithuania and 8 with lecturers from Japan. The data analysis is based on Moor’s (2008) model of technological revolution, which consists of three stages: 1) introduction stage, 2) permeation stage and 3) power stage. The paper discusses the main categories that emerged from the data analysis: types of technology and their use in social work; personal characteristics, knowledge and skills needed by future social workers to integrate technologies into their practice; and value challenges for future social workers. The study revealed that technology integration in Lithuania is still at the introduction stage. At the theoretical level, there are discussions on the possible paradigmatic changes that the introduction of technology would bring to the social work field, at the practical level there is fragmented research on the impact of technical assistance tools on the quality of services, and in the area of values and ethics, questions about the benefits, risks and challenges of using technology are being addressed. In Japan, there is a deeper integration of technology into social work practice and studies, with more technology-oriented research, the development of the practice of technology use, and consideration of ethical aspects of technology use in practice. Lecturers in both countries fear that the rapid introduction of technology will cause the social work profession to lose its image as a “relational profession”. Furthermore, there are doubts about whether technology will help social work to fulfil its mission of social justice, as the issue of affordability of expensive technology is also raised. The views of the participants reflect concerns about changes in the identity of the social work profession, as seen through the changes in the knowledge, skills and values inherent in the profession, which are generated by the integration of technology and which lead to the idea of an emerging new identity for the profession.

The Barriers to the CLE Practice in Russia, in Comparison Light with the European Union and the United Kingdom

Clinical legal education (CLE) is commonly used to refer to a law teaching method that incorporates experiential learning aimed at development of students’ legal knowledge and skills. At the same time, CLE also has social justice mission as it serves the needs of vulnerable members of society. Like any other teaching methods, CLE requires a specific environment and factors to be in place to embrace its mission at maximum level and to allow its learners to reach pre-defined learning outcomes. While researching in three Western European university legal clinics, and then studying the legal clinics in Russia, I have reached the conclusion that CLE in Russia cannot fully exploit its mission and reach its objectives. While some barriers that prevent Russian universities to effectively run CLE are obvious, there are also the ones which will be new to a reader. Below I discuss the factors that could be considered as barriers preventing CLE practice in Russia to be effective in driving for its mission and goals, both from educational and social justice perspectives.

State of the Nation: 10 Years of Entrepreneurial Law Clinic Supervision in the United Kingdom

In July 2012, I delivered my first conference paper at the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education Conference: ‘Taking care of business: a new clinician’s experience of supervising and developing commercial case work.’ The audience was sparse. When the chair asked for questions, the room echoed in silence. A few years later, I was called a ‘danger’ to clinical legal education because my students provided free advice to entrepreneurs. The service was criticised as being at odds with the social justice mission of clinical legal education. I remember it being a lonely time. Only a handful of UK entrepreneurial law clinics existed, and we received little attention in research literature. A decade on, I am still taking care of the Business and Commercial Law Clinic at Northumbria Law School. Much has changed. We have seen the rapid development of commercially focused law clinics across the UK, with a diverse range of approaches. In this article I will make a major contribution to our understanding of the state of the nation for entrepreneurial law clinics in the United Kingdom today. Using elements of narrative inquiry and autobiographical writing, I will (a) reflect on my journey as one of the first UK entrepreneurial law clinic supervisors, (b) report on the increasing number and models of law clinics offering advice to businesses, and (c) argue for the further development of research in this distinctive and flourishing area of clinical practice.

Use of Self as an Anti-Oppressive Tool for Pedagogy

ABSTRACT The Zeitgeist of our time calls on social workers and the social work profession to reconsider the ways in which we practice, teach, and learn. The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 reawakening of the racial and social justice movements profoundly influence how social workers approach the directive from our accrediting body (CSWE) calling on us to intentionally integrate an anti-racist framework in our implicit and explicit curriculum. This paper re-introduces “use of self” as an anti-oppressive pedagogical tool that can build and hold brave spaces of transformation. Orienting ourselves to the use of self as a kind of pedagogy is one way to reengage with our social justice mission. Although we believe that pedagogy and practice are intricately connected, for the purposes of this paper, we focus on pedagogy.

The Role of Legal Clinics in Promoting Human Rights: The Experience of Nigeria Law School Yenagoa Law Clinic and The Legal Support and Care Centre at GD Goenka University School of Law Gurgaon India

Legal clinics are playing a very prominent role in promoting human rights and filling global access to justice gaps through justice education. In turn, they provide access to justice for the poor and marginalized in fulfilment of this social justice mandate. Clinicians realize that human rights and justice education is key to their social justice mission. Apart from adding statements about the importance of justice to their mission statement, clinics have in place programs fundamentally oriented around a vision of justice. Students in clinics play very important roles in achieving their clinics’ social justice mission and goals by sensitizing youths, women, children, inmates and citizens to change thought processes and mold the social fabric needed for a just society, promoting a culture of lawfulness through generating solutions to several social issues that results in good citizenship, improved policies, good governance, access to justice and effective remedies. Generally, the objective of this paper is to share case studies from the Nigerian Law School Yenagoa Legal Clinic, the Legal Support and Care Centre at GD Goenka University and Legal Aid Society at The NorthCap University, Gurugram, Haryana, India of how legal clinics are promoting human rights, access to justice, a culture of lawfulness and sustainable development through their work in communities, schools and prisons. The first section lays a background on the role of law in shaping society, the second focuses on the conceptual and theoretical frameworks. The third section examines the framework that provides the mandate education for justice and human rights. The fourth section assesses the role of law schools and clinics in promoting education for justice, human rights and a culture of lawfulness while the fifth section deals with conclusions and recommendations.

Buttered Bagels

Buttered Bagels

Lawyers in self-estrangement: resolving the challenges of sustaining university law clinics

ABSTRACT This article examines the challenges encountered by university law clinics in their legal aid projects that are designed to assuage national access to justice deficits. Towards the resolution of these challenges, it proposes a sustainability paradigm that bears significant implications for lawyers, legal educators and other clinic collaborators. The article begins by locating the pragmatic, moral and legal underpinnings of the social justice mission of university law clinics. The subsequent analysis of legal aid provided by universities is supported by data on clinic activity collected through interviews of clinic directors and focus group discussions with student leaders in university law clinics in Kenya. The findings reveal the multiple challenges that clinics confront as being in leadership, lack of representational capacity, inadequate resourcing, under-explored potential, poor institutional synergies and sub-optimal placement in university structures. The article then establishes a link between these setbacks and the sustainability of the clinics, arguing that reframing the problem in Kenya as one of sustainability yields potential avenues for addressing the challenges in ways that are progressive and impactful.

Creating safety: Group reflections on surviving as a female, social work early career academic in the neoliberal academy

Female social work early career academics (ECAs) face many challenges within a neoliberal university context. The tension between balancing the social justice mission of the profession against the consumer model of higher education is conflicting and contributes to feelings of isolation and alienation. This article documents a group of female ECAs experiences by drawing on critical, post-modern and feminist knowledge traditions. The qualitative methodology used was collective autoethnography and critical reflection where the group documented and collectively analysed individual experiences of teaching social work education as female ECAs. The purpose of collating these experiences was to explore the emancipatory capacity of female agency as well as embodying what it is to be a female ECA. Vignettes were thematically examined in a three-part process including (1) reading and reviewing data; (2) categorising and group data and (3) finding themes and connecting these to the original data ( Chang et al., 2016 ). Analysis of the vignettes highlighted the tensions of working as female social justice educators within a neoliberal university causing feelings of oppression and discomfort. In finding one another, sharing and writing stories as well as a collective response this challenged the masculinist model which has been the norm within neoliberal universities. Female led support strategies coupled with the utilisation of feminist methodologies contributes to the emergence of a new, feminist and collectively safer academic culture.

Antiracist and Faith-based: Critical Pedagogy-Informed Writing and Information Literacy Instruction at a Hispanic-Serving, Lutheran Liberal Arts University

English faculty and librarians at a Hispanic-Serving Lutheran liberal arts university collaborated to integrate critical information literacy in a first-year writing course, following the Lutheran educational tradition of valuing inquiry and aligning with a faith-based social justice mission. The authors discuss an Evangelical Lutheran tradition of education committed to antiracism, and the challenges of enacting these values of equity and inclusion while addressing institutional racism. The authors also describe how curricular revisions in writing and information literacy instruction informed by critical pedagogy decentered whiteness in the curriculum, while creating needed opportunities for students and faculty to engage in cross-racial dialogue about systemic racism.

The 70th anniversary of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education: reflections on advancing our social justice mission.

The 70th anniversary of the International Union for Health Promotion and Education: reflections on advancing our social justice mission.

Social Justice as an Organizational Identity: An Inductive Case Study Examining the Role of Diversity and Inclusivity Initiatives in Corporate Climate and Productivity

Although research has begun to establish the benefits of implementing disability inclusion initiatives within companies, there is relatively limited research examining the impact of applied diversity management practices in the employment of PWDs. This study explores the disability initiatives of an exemplar midwestern company through an in-depth case study. An inductive, qualitative design was utilized to identify themes from interviews with multiple employees. Interviews were examined to understand how the company’s social mission and corporate identity impacted productivity and perceptions. Results suggest that employees are drawn to the company by their social justice mission in hiring and creating meaningful employment for persons with disabilities. Moreover, the fact that the company sees this mission as a central part of its organizational identity rather than as an ancillary initiative motivates employees. Findings indicate that centering a commitment to hire and support persons with disabilities within the organizational identity, forming partnerships within the community, and connecting employees with a sense of meaning in their work generates greater productivity, engagement, and commitment from employees.

Social Work in the Shadow of Death

In its current form, the field of social work does not reflect the ongoing reality of Black death and the embeddedness of anti-Blackness in everyday life. This omission leads to catastrophic failures of the profession’s most essential tasks: the advancement of social justice and future social workers’ education. This paper will discuss why the police’s ongoing murder of Black people will not be resolved by simply replacing the police with social workers. We will argue that social workers serving Black people must anchor their work in theoretical perspectives articulated by Black people. Finally, we challenge social work to live up to its social justice mission by divesting from systems of social control and anchoring their work in theoretical perspectives articulated by Black people.

The Role and Responsibility of Social Work Education in Promoting Practitioner Self-Care

ABSTRACT The profession of social work faces a perfect storm of increasingly complex practice contexts, intensifying demands, and escalating burnout. This crisis requires immediate, critical, and substantive action by social work education. Social work programs function to prepare competent practitioners who can navigate these demands and complexities with efficacy, while sustaining themselves. For too long, practitioner well-being has been significantly neglected. This article promotes a basic tenet: Social work education has a pivotal responsibility and pragmatic role in providing serious, credible attention to the well-being of practitioners. Social work curricula must integrate teaching of self-care as a professional competency. This article provides philosophical rationale and practical strategies for doing so. Through comprehensive attention in implicit and explicit curricula, social work programs can prepare practitioners who can enact social work’s long-standing mission of human rights, social justice, and human well-being. Everyone (e.g., faculty, field supervisors, administrators) has a role and responsibility. The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has particular effect in setting standards for social work programs, and, by extension, the profession itself. Thus, the article concludes with a call for CSWE to include self-care in the accreditation standards core competencies required by all social work programs. The profession’s future compels taking proactive, preventative action now.

Redesigning Schools of Social Work Into Schools of Social Work and Social Justice: Opportunities for Civic and Organizational Renewal in a Justice Reform Environment

ABSTRACT This paper explores the re-envisioning of a school of social work into a School of Social Work and Social Justice. The thought experiment identifies how a school can meet its educational and social justice mission in response to the historic crises of 2020. An outgrowth of the aspirational strategic vision statement is the proposed strengthening of democratic learning spaces involving students and faculty members, better alignment of school curricular reform with human service workforce dynamics and social work practice needs, and an emphasis on culturally responsive leadership. The overall intention is to identify opportunities for social work schools and departments at public and private universities to advance anti-racist, community-centered innovations in social work education in an uncharted environment.

Critical Reflection: An Imperative Skill for Social Work Practice in Neoliberal Organisations?

Social work practice and education have been significantly impacted by neoliberal governmentality, which can greatly undermine the espoused social justice mission of social work. This study explores the research questions: How might critical reflection support social work practice in neoliberal organisations? And how might critical analysis using insights from critical theorists fortify the findings of critically reflective research? This study uses critical reflection on a critical incident (from Author 2’s practice) as a methodology to respond to the first research question. It further analyses the findings of the critically reflective inquiry by drawing on relevant concepts from critical theorists to respond to the second question and expand the possibilities for practitioners to develop emancipatory practices in neoliberal organisations. The findings suggest critical reflection on the critical incident examined was effective in improving social work practice, and that additional critical analysis of the wider issues raised by the research findings may enhance social work as a value-driven, client-centred and social change-oriented profession. The article highlights the benefits and outcomes of working in a critically reflective way, and makes an original contribution to the growing literature that suggests critical reflection is a vital skill for social work practice in neoliberal organisations.