BSW Faculty Perspectives on Environmental Justice

Overview: This presentation delineates research examining perspectives on environmental justice among Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) faculty across the United States. This study explores the characteristics of BSW faculty who teach environmental justice, faculty attitudes of environmental justice in BSW education, and curricular content related to environmental justice.Proposal text: It is well known that environmental degradation, growing concern about poverty and increasing stressors on the natural and built environments is unsustainable (United Nations, 2015). In 2015 in recognition of this growing concern, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) added environmental justice to the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (CSWE, 2015) and even developed a curricular guide (Council on Social Work Education, 2020). Yet even with this addition to the standards for social work educators, the integration of concepts of environmental justice to curricula is unclear (Naranjo, 2020) and especially so for undergraduate social work education (Halbrook, Akbar, & Eastwood, 2019; Papadimitriou, 2022). In response to this circumstance, this research seeks to examine the current state of environmental justice integration from the vantage of bachelor’s level social work faculty across the United States. The researchers collected qualitative and quantitative data from 186 undergraduate social work faculty from CSWE-accredited programs from around the country. This presentation will describe the characteristics of BSW faculty who teach environmental justice, faculty attitudes of environmental justice in BSW education, and curricular content related to environmental justice. Implications for social work education and practice also will be discussed.

References
Council on Social Work Education (2020). Curricular guide for environmental justice. https://www.cswe.org/Education-Resources/2015-Curricular-Guides/2015-Environmental-Justice-Guide-Web-Version.aspx.
Council on Social Work Education (2015). Educational policy and accreditation standards. Curricular guide for environmental justice. https://www.cswe.org/getattachment/Accreditation/Accreditation-Process/2015-EPAS/2015EPAS_Web_FINAL.pdf.aspx
Erickson, C. L. (2018). Environmental justice as social work practice. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Holbrook, A. M., Akbar, G., & Eastwood, J. (2019). Meeting the challenge of human-induced climate change: Reshaping social work education. Social Work Education, 38 (8), 955-967.
Naranjo, N. R. (2020). Environmental issues and social work education. British Journal of Social Work, 447-463.
Papadimitriou, E. (2022). Coverage of environmental issues in undergraduate curricula in social work in four European countries: The UK, Switzerland, Germany, and Greece. Social Work Education, doi: 10.1080/02615479.2022.2028763.
Papadopoulos, A. (2019). Integrating the natural environment in social work education: Sustainability and scenario-based learning. Australian Social Work 72(2), 233-241.
United Nations (2015). Transforming Our World: The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Resolution 70/1 adopted by the General Assembly. Available online at https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015/transformingourworld