Promoting Environmental Justice in Field: Equipping Faculty and Instructors to Operationalize the Competency

Overview: This presentation will share one university’s efforts to equip field faculty and field instructors with engaging teaching modalities and tools to assist students, as they are planning practicum activities, to operationalize the environmental justice aspect of the Advance Human Rights and Social, Economic and Environmental Justice competency.Proposal text: In this presentation, field faculty share strategies regarding the critical importance of the Advance Human Rights and Social, Economic and Environmental Justice competency, as published in the 2015 Educational Policies and Accreditation Standards, with focus on environmental justice and the exploration of teaching its complex reach within field practice (CSWE, 2015). With a revitalized spotlight on environmental justice in Field curriculum, there has been a need to operationalize this competency in the practicum environment. Students are initially presented with this view of the fusion of community, human rights, and environment in the classroom setting, and upon examination through the social work professional lens, might have perspectives challenged with its broad applicability. Field instructors may not see its pathway in the field and be unclear about how to share knowledge as it relates to social work programming in the agency environment. Nonetheless, teaching this important competency continues to inspire the promise of hope and change across all domains of education and practice.

This university has worked to equip field faculty and field instructors with tools to conceptualize this theoretical and practice-based competency into achievable and engaging teaching modalities that support student demonstration and proficiency in knowledge and skills related to environmental justice practices. As an action of human rights, it is imperative for field faculty to frame environmental justice as a global issue, highlighting how to address environmental issues through its micro-mezzo-macro impact across a multitude of sectors of field practice. Exploring how environmental justice is an expansive social work issue that has implications within all settings reinforce the applicability and importance of this competency for students in agency settings that go beyond their educational tenure.

Defining environmental justice as it relates to individual agencies can be the first step to assisting field faculty to highlight the important work already established within agency programmatic structure with innovation potential for capitalizing upon strengths of student skills and knowledge. Teaching students to analyze the environmental justice elements of each field community, dissect organic or conceived resources and systematic complexities, review policies with a critical perspective and implement practice with a tone of cultural humility and compassion will lead to future social workers who are equipped to incorporate environmental justice into their professional practices. Teaching environmental justice with community-based agencies offers a social action opportunity for field partners to build and strengthen partnerships with other field agencies as common inequities and environmental injustice goals are addressed within communities, modeling collaboration while sharing ecological resources and better serving their communities in a holistic manner (CSWE, 2020; Narhi & Matthies, 2018).

One field team will share and explore different methods to differentiate between foundation and concentration year learning of this critical competency. Examples will be shared of concrete approaches to this learning with measurable outcomes from student learning contracts. Participants will be invited to collaborate in planning learning activities to address environmental justice elements across both educational levels and will be prepared with tangible ideas to share with field instructors and students.