Aiming for Critical, Reflexive and Transformative Global Social Work Pedagogy: Insights on Curriculum Development

Overview: This panel on global social work education applies a social justice and transformative lens to problematize western-centered pedagogy. In critically examining our processes of curricular development and teaching, we discuss possibilities and obstacles for global social work pedagogy that is transformative, challenges privilege and power inequality, and advances global justice.Proposal text: Background/Rationale: Incorporating a global perspective is an essential component of social work education as globalization and neoliberal forces continue to widen the gap between the Global North and Global South in income, wealth, and health disparities and exacerbate social issues tackled by social workers and social work educators (1,2,3). Global issues, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, migration/demographic shifts, technological advances, continued wars, armed conflict and ethno religious persecution, and the persistence of racial injustice, pose both new and ongoing challenges to social work education (3,4,5,6,7). To prepare students for working with diverse and global populations and contending with historical and structural inequalities globally, we must go beyond teaching about cultural competence and provide future social workers the skills for meaningful dialogue with global populations, critical thinking, reflexive practice and transformative leadership (3,7,8,9). In 2021, after years of development, our School of Social Work launched a new MSW specialization in Global Social Work that grew out of principles centered on advancing global social justice.


Objectives: In this panel, we will describe the process of formulating a new Global Social Work curricular specialization including: (a) conceptualizations of global social work to inform and motivate our curriculum; (b) social work values and principles that have been intentionally incorporated and implemented into our curriculum, including human rights, global social justice and transformative social work; (c) approaches for developing and implementing globally focused courses, field placements, international institutional partnerships, and experiential curricular options; and (d) dilemmas and challenges we have encountered thus far with implementing the curriculum.
Our panel will tackle issues such as sustainability, reciprocity, financialization, and diversity, equity and inclusion as elements relevant to curriculum development for global social work. Specifically, our panel aims to problematize global social work pedagogy that is ethnocentric and too centered on a Western lens, and calls attention to issues of power and positionality within global social work pedagogy in its micro, mezo and macro dimensions.

Implications: Social work educators, practitioners, and researchers will gain insights that will inform their own work in developing social work curricula, courses, and research with a global lens. Further, panel discussions will contribute to establishing meaningful multilateral partnership across the globe in sharing teaching, practice and research. A critical and reflexive introspection into our own ways of teaching, practice and research, informed by a rights-based, social justice orientation to global social issues and motivated by social work values, would help yield social work pedagogy that is transformative and responsive to heightening inequality/injustice globally and a diversifying global community.