PhD candidate New York University New York City, New York, United States
Overview: Environmental justice has garnered increasing recognition in social work education. Yet, children’s voices were generally overlooked in the social work literature on environmental issues. This proposal discusses the necessity to develop resources for social work educators and students to understand and appreciate children’s participation in the advocacy for environmental justice.Proposal text: Environmental justice has garnered increasing recognition in social work education. A growing body of literature has discussed and explored the possibility of an environmental justice framework for social work education (e.g., Nesmith & Smyth, 2015; Teixeira & Krings, 2015). There is an increasing consensus that social workers should collaborate with the affected communities to voice their opinions in the decision-making of matters affecting them (Teixeira & Krings, 2015; Schusler et al., 2019). Yet, the value of children’s voices was generally overlooked in the social work literature on environmental issues. An effective partnership with the disfranchised communities demands a comprehensive understanding of their perceptions and needs without suppressing the feelings of a specific group of community members, such as children. With this being said, social work students must be equipped with the knowledge and skills that enable them to increase children’s awareness of participation and empower children to speak out their opinions and concerns.
This proposal explains the necessity of integrating children’s voices in the advocacy for environmental justice. We argue that additional resources should be developed for both social work educators and students to understand and appreciate children’s participation in the advocacy for environmental justice. Prior literature has documented the positive relationship between environment (e.g., neighborhood built environment, safety) and children’s perceptions of their well-being (Lee & Yoo, 2015; Newland et al., 2019). Research efforts have also been made at the local level to understand youth’s perceptions of environmental issues and thoughts of resolving such problems (Schusler et al., 2019). However, children’s voices have received limited attention in teaching policy practice addressing environmental issues. Those prior research studies have provided a rich array of teaching materials for consciousness-raising among social work students. They can be infused in the teaching of environmental justice and community-based participatory research. This proposal also suggests that more teaching efforts should be made for students to learn about effective policy practice in order to ensure children’s rights in the decision-making process.
