The Implicit Curriculum in Social Work Education: Where are Human Rights?

Overview: Despite the addition to social work education accreditation standards, several US-based social work programs show inadequate curricular inclusion of human rights. A critical review of knowledge and policy on implicit curriculum is employed to analyze the emphasis on human rights in social work education in the United States.Proposal text: The deconstruction of contemporary social work narratives and investigating historical and cultural locations of the social work knowledge base is critical to advancing human rights in social work education (Brantley et al., 2021). The delayed discussions on human rights philosophy in the 1990s (Steen, 2021) and the unsettling history of human rights (Brantley et al., 2021) symbolized the slow-moving attitude towards human rights in social work education. Notably, the CSWE (2008, 2015) has advanced the inclusion of human rights through accreditation requirements. Still, around 12% of US-based social work programs did not include human rights in their curricular design (Quzack et al., 2021; Gatenio Gabel & Mapp, 2019). Moreover, the implicit curriculum was found to underpin social inequities (Bhuyan et al., 2017). As the field education structure affected students economically (Smith et al., 2021) it has become evident that implicit curriculum lacks the much-needed human rights lens within social work education itself. To reinforce the process of maximal inclusion of human rights in social work education, implicit curriculum befits a more appropriate avenue as it provides a value-based educational climate. However, the measurement of educational outcomes through the implicit curriculum in social work shows less or no direct inclusion of human rights (Petracchi & Zastro, 2010; Grady et al. 2011; DeLong et al. 2011). The earlier conceptual works on implicit curriculum by Gutiérrez (2012), Bogo and Wayne (2013) do not show effective addition of human rights. Regardless of the existing status of human rights in implicit curriculum, its operative role provides assurance due to its ability to surpass the formal structures of education and create professional human rights socialization for practice. Therefore, it is essential to develop the conceptual understanding of implicit curriculum with human rights focus along the line of values and ethics of social work and further inform its measurement.

Based on the ethical statements and standards provided by the CSWE and the NASW an analytical framework is devised. Within the framework, social work literature on conceptualization, inclusion, and measurement of the implicit curriculum with respect to human rights will be searched. The critical analysis of existing knowledge on human rights inclusion in the implicit curriculum is undertaken to further explicate the nature of inclusion, gaps in the conceptual understanding, and challenges involved in training US-based social work students on human rights through the implicit curriculum.

Results: Considering the applied nature of human rights, the measurement of the implicit curriculum is essential. The review of existing knowledge on implicit curriculum and its measurement show inadequate emphasis on human rights. To overcome the gap in the inclusion of human rights, advancing the implicit curriculum is implied.

Conclusions: The nature of inclusion of human rights in the curricular designs of social work education is primarily associated with the comprehensive nature of the implicit curriculum. To ensure policies, procedures, and processes to integrate demonstration of human rights implies targeted human rights education interventions beyond the curriculum to all constituents of the educational program to form a powerful implicit curriculum.