Routledge International Handbook of Social Work Education

Imogen Taylor, Marion Bogo, Michelle Lefevre, Barbra Teater, Imogen Taylor, Marion Bogo, Michelle Lefevre, Barbra Teater

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317495222
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Research in Education

The Routledge International Handbook of Social Work Education provides an authoritative overview of current understanding through coverage of key debates, exploring the state of play in particular social work education fields and reflecting on where the future might be taking us. The overall aim of the Handbook is to further develop pedagogic research and scholarship for social work education. Drawing on medical education as an exemplar, the contributions view social work education as a specialism and a field of expertise that counts in the same way as research programmes in more traditional areas of social work practice.

The chapters are concerned with the theory and practice of social work education at all levels; they are accessible, conceptually clear, research based where appropriate, critically reflective and ethically underpinned. The Handbook is organised into seven sections that reflect the proposed themes and sub-themes covering:

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• Social work education in context: the western drivers

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• Emerging and re-emerging social work education

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• The scholarship of learning and teaching

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• New insights into field education

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• New directions in learning and teaching

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• Future challenges in social work education

This handbook presents a contribution to the process of exchange and dialogue which is essential to global social work education. It brings together professional knowledge and lived experience, both universal and local, and will be an essential reference for social work educators, researchers, students and professionals.

Section 1

Social work education in context

The Western drivers

1
‘Think globally and locally, act globally and locally’

A new agenda for international social work education

Mel Gray

This chapter explores the complex processes surrounding the global diffusion of social work. It examines the Western drivers of international social work education and provides a critical analysis of social work’s internationalising and universalising tendencies that all too quickly run aground on the rocks of decolonisation and indigenisation, where they are seen to be culturally inappropriate and even imperialistic. The universality of social work is tested by its fit with diverse contexts and cultures through the lens of indigenisation, decolonisation, localisation, and cultural appropriateness (see Gray, 2005). The global-local debate and focus on crosscultural dialogue and exchange in the late 1990s attempted to capture these paradoxical processes but did not fully account for their complexity, caught, as they were, in the modernist dichotomy of localisation-indigenisation versus universalisation-internationalisation, as though there were a choice between these options (Gray & Fook, 2004; Gray, 2005; Gray & Webb, 2008). As Lorenz (2005) wisely noted, the international is not an alternative to the local: an international perspective ‘is the necessary reference point for understanding local developments in their fuller significance’ (p. 100). More than this, however, understanding internationalisation from a critical perspective enables social work academics and students engaged in international social work education to resist pressures to apply methods and approaches that do not do justice to the people they are serving. The growth in this critical understanding is shown by the changes in the language used when discussing international social work education. In this chapter, the term ‘developing nations’ is used when this was part of the language being used historically, though nowadays we use the enlightened Global North and Global South rather than the pejorative developed and developing nations.

Starting with a critical overview of the spread of Western social work and the role played by academic exchanges, the discussion moves to arguments for internationalising the curriculum, reviews contemporary developments that are changing the way international social work is being theorised, and considers their implications for social work education. Most notably, the increasing mobility of people and the emergence of transnational lifestyles are changing the meaning of international social work, for we do not have to go far to encounter and learn from other cultures or to become global citizens. Moreover, international catastrophes have ripple effects and global problems all too quickly have national and local impacts, and vice versa, in this increasingly interconnected world, hence the need for social work education to teach us to ‘think globally and locally, act globally and locally’ (Furman, Negi, & Salvador, 2010: 4).

Critical overview of the spread of Western social work

Social work is a Western invention in that it spread from the West to the rest and promoted Western values, theories and methods (Gray, Coates, & Yellow Bird, 2008). Its history is rooted in Europe and North America, from where it spread to Africa, Asia, South America, and the Arab world as part of the colonising mission to embed Western-style development and progress. Colonisation wrought havoc for Indigenous Peoples and ran roughshod over traditional cultures, with its harmful effects still evident today (Singh, Gumz, & Crawley, 2011; Rao, 2013). It left many countries struggling to make social work fit. Western social work has proved extremely difficult to unseat, given the enormous pressure exerted by international social work organisations since the 1950s to promote social work as a universal profession.

From a critical perspective, the professional project to find a common, universal identity was – and continues to be – grounded in Western worldviews, individualistic values and methods, and social and behavioural theories drawn from higher-status professions, such as medicine, psychology, law, and psychiatry. Social work has always been ancillary to these professions and found its niche when colonial administrations introduced social welfare services in the post-war colonial era. These welfare structures persisted post-independence and proved extremely difficult to maintain in situations of fluctuating resources and political conflict (Gray, Kreitzer, & Mupedziswa, 2014). Colonised nations were caught between Western social welfare systems and post-war development policy that set them on a path of economic progress tied to foreign aid and development. Social work came to the developing nations with its social investigation – casework – method grounded in values and ideologies stemming from ‘capitalism, Social Darwinism, the Protestant ethic and individualism’ (Nagpaul, 1993: 214). As Midgley (1981) noted, its emergence was intimately tied to the development of welfare services and the need for professional bureaucrats in colonial administrations. From a critical perspective social work was shot through with Western understandings, rooted in modernising individualism, cultural superiority, racial prejudice, and economic progress. It was assumed to be eminently transferable to the colonies (Midgley, 1981; Kendall, 1998).

It was the United Nations (1969, 1971) that pushed colonial administrators to import social work to Africa and Asia, as Western professionals were commissioned to conduct needs assessments and advise colonial administrators while they depleted natural resources in the colonies and destroyed traditional ways of life (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 1989). Most early local social workers had been educated in the West. Hence, Western Judeo-Christian norms permeated these institutions and were imposed on traditional cultures (Gray et al., 2008). They led to a focus on individually oriented practice and the dominance of casework. Where practised, even group and community work were geared towards making individuals fit into, or adapt to, colonial society. The theories used to explain human behaviour in the social environment as having individual psychosocial causes persist today. Colonial social welfare institutions remained after colonisation, perpetuating the need to educate people to maintain these systems to help individuals adapt to society. As de Jongh (1972) observed: ‘I do not know of any developing country in which social work education was an original product of national development; the origins can always be traced back to strong foreign influences’ (p. 23). As a result of these foreign influences, the colonisers, and social workers among them, completely disregarded traditional cultures and support systems based on collective values.

Post-independence, these nations were increasingly urged towards structural adjustment as the international community imposed economic policies that were beneficial to the rich countries in the West and depended largely on free or unrestricted trade between Western and post-colonial nations. Structural adjustment necessitated a move away from government-centred welfare provision towards social development programs focused on poverty eradication via economic growth.

Social work was slow to see the relationship between welfare and development, only latterly embracing social development as part of its global agenda. Its individualistic models were deemed irrelevant to social development. Most social workers are employed within government welfare services in better-resourced urban centres. The strange brew of Western-style welfare – child protection, mental health, and disability services – exists alongside development initiatives to improve the quality of life for the 80% of the world’s population in the developing world. In countries where the bulk of the population is poor and rural, grassroots community engagement and services to meet basic needs take priority. Hence, social work continues to struggle for legitimacy and status in the Global South, despite its presence in higher education institutions.

Against this backdrop, one can better understand Nagy and Falk’s (2000) argument that ‘social workers should be prepared to work locally’ (p. 57, emphasis added). They argued that, for the most part, social work education focused on country-specific policies and problems, and there was great variability in the amount of international and crosscultural content in the social work curriculum (Nagy & Falk, 2000). Beyond content, efforts to internationalise social work failed to take into account unequal North-South relations characterised by a history of colonialism and current-day imperialist practices built on privilege (Razack, 2000, 2012; Drucker, 2003; Wehbi, 2009; Rao, 2013). Even today only wealthy students, relatively speaking, get to go to university, where social work must be studied and only academics fortunate enough to secure funding sources can engage in formal international social work activities. Better access to funding privileges Northern universities over their Southern partners (Samoff & Carrol, 2002). Hence the spread of social work internationally through international academic exchanges and student field placements, as well as calls for an international curriculum, have come mainly from Northern universities, and most of the literature on international educational partnerships comes from academics in the North writing about social work education and practice in the South.

International academic exchanges

International academic exchanges have a long history. As noted, the United Nations played a major role in social work’s internationalising project. Consequently, social work’s international leaders modelled the profession’s international structure on the UN format of five regions with representation from each on international boards and committees. Social work gained official UN recognition in 1951 (McDonald, Harris, & Wintersteen, 2003). However, establishing strong regional leadership networks proved extremely difficult outside the USA and Europe, with countries in the Global South always the weaker, structurally speaking. The strong lone voices from these parts of the world over the years have given rise to claims of elitism and questions as to their representative status (Gray & Rennie, 2007). Language and money limited the participation of the South, hence the dearth of material from the South in the dominant English social work literature. Unilingualism has been problematic for the internationalisation of curricula.

International social work education through faculty exchanges and visitations, student travel to and from foreign countries, and the infusion of a global perspective into course and program content, nevertheless, made strident progress with the help of the Internet and World Wide Web (Cornelius & Greif, 2005). By far the dominant partner in international exchanges has been the USA (Samoff & Carrol, 2002), and a weakness has been their reliance on individual champions – from international and local partners – making it difficult to sustain these collaborations and partnerships over time (Cornelius & Greif, 2005). They are, therefore, not a systematic requirement and arise haphazardly through contact between the individuals involved and resources available to them. Exchanges are often motivated by the status and kudos this attracts for the international – Northern – institution. For example, publications with international collaborators are believed to result in higher citation rates and contribute to the international academics’ esteem factors. Publications, therefore, are unlikely to be in the language of the foreign partner, meaning many cannot access what Northern academics have written about them.

There is, too, the ongoing problem of relevance. Asamoah, Healy, and Mayadas (1997) claimed that US paradigms of individual dysfunction and clinical treatment were not only irrelevant to non-Western countries but also harmful, and proved extremely difficult to eradicate once embedded (see, for example, Osei-Hwedie & Rankopo, 2008, 2012; Singh et al., 2011; Rao, 2013). The problem was compounded by the fact that the vast majority of US academics did not read international social work literature.

Altbach and Peterson (1998), reporting on the 14-country Carnegie Foundation study, found that US academics were, by and large, not committed to internationalism. Findings have repeatedly suggested that US academics and students could benefit from international collaboration, not only to achieve greater awareness of cultural diversity i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the contributors
• Introduction
• Section 1 Social work education in context: the Western drivers
• Section 2 Emerging and re-emerging social work education
• Section 3 The scholarship of learning and teaching
• Section 4 New insights into field education
• Section 5 New directions in learning and teaching
• Section 6 Future challenges for social work education
• Index