Social work has long engaged with technology but has primarily done so as a consumer, missing opportunities for deeper interdisciplinary collaboration with technologists. This teaching note introduces public interest technology (PIT), an emerging interdisciplinary field dedicated to designing, deploying, and governing technology to serve the public interest and enhance people's well-being. The teaching note advocates for integrating PIT into social work education to cultivate PIT-literate social workers who actively contribute to technology development, ensuring its effectiveness in serving marginalized communities and advancing social justice. It provides an overview of PIT, establishes its relevance to social work's competencies through teaching examples, and discusses implications for social work education.
Social work educators are teaching in a political climate where efforts to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion content continue to grow. These pressures directly affect courses that focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer or questioning, intersex, asexual or ally, two-spirit, and other sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQIA2S+) communities, where curriculum and identity often become politicized. This teaching note describes the redesign of an undergraduate and Master of Social Work elective on social work practice with LGBTQIA2S+ individuals and communities during a semester shaped by antitrans rhetoric, a federal order targeting gender identity, and uncertainty about the future of diversity, equity, and inclusion instruction. Drawing on queer and trans scholarship on joy, belonging, and resistance, trauma-informed teaching, the work of adrienne maree brown, and Tuck's critique of damage-centered narratives, I redesigned the course to center joy and wholeness. Instructor journal entries show the emotional and political conditions of teaching in this moment and how students shaped the learning environment. The course used ritual, flexibility, and student agency to build community. Assignments asked students to engage queer cultural production and create practice briefs. Lessons highlight the need for teaching that counters trauma fatigue, protects academic freedom, and prepares students for practice in politically hostile environments.
Disability theory often notes that critical inquiry must be done within social systems regarding the continued responsibility we place on individuals to adapt to their environments, rather than pushing the system to adapt to individuals. Disability theory is then necessary to discuss in Human Behavior and the Social Environment (HBSE) courses in social work education as an imperative so that social workers can better understand how disability theory affects aging narratives within gerontological social work education. This teaching note details how to be critical of disability theory in HBSE courses to normalize disability as we age, encourage students to self-reflect on biased attitudes regarding the intersection of aging and disability, and move toward a capability approach. Specific activities will be provided for social work educators to employ in their classrooms around disability theory and aging. Implementation of these classroom activities will help students become better critical thinkers, provide safe spaces for self-reflection, and support the normalization of disability as we age to break down stereotypes about aging.
People with mental health conditions encounter stigma and discrimination, which constitute human rights violations. Social work plays a crucial role in supporting affected individuals; however, studies found that social workers and social work students may hold stigmatizing attitudes themselves. Mental health literacy is associated with reduced stigmatizing attitudes. The World Health Organization's (WHO) QualityRights training aims to reduce negative rights-related attitudes. A quasi-experimental intervention study with a two-arm pre-post design investigated its effectiveness among social work students in Germany. The study used the QualityRights Attitudes Questionnaire and the Mental Health Literacy Questionnaire for Young Adults. The intervention group showed a decrease in negative rights-related attitudes (p<.001, d=1.003) and an increase in knowledge about the rights of people with mental health conditions (p<.001, d=0.836) between T0 and T1. No significant changes were observed in the control group. At T1, the intervention group showed lower negative rights-related attitudes (p<.001, d=1.293) and higher knowledge (p<.001, d=1.076) compared to the control group. No significant changes were observed on the total mental health literacy score. These findings underscore the significance of rights-based interventions. The WHO's QualityRights training has been shown to provide a robust foundation for improving rights-related attitudes and knowledge in social work education.
The National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) are the spine of social work. NASW and CSWE play important roles in the lifespan of social workers, from cultivating students to shaping professionals. However, there is one misalignment between the two organizations regarding the area of self-care, which must be adjusted. NASW clearly asserts in the Code of Ethics and Social Work Speaks that self-care is imperative not just for professionals, but also for social work students. However, self-care is not included in any of the practice competencies outlined in CSWE's Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). To systematically ensure that self-care is included in social work education, we argue that CSWE should include professional self-care as the 10th competency in the next revision of the EPAS. Specific verbiage for this much needed 10th competency is described, and curricular activities are provided. This revision will help move self-care from an optional imperative to an ethical imperative in social work education, better preparing students to proactively engage in self-care as professionals.
Today's undergraduate social work students subsist in environments that offer 24-hour access to news, one another, and the curation of their own metanarratives (as well as both a worldwide audience and the means to construct and share their perspectives) but a finger swipe away. An ever-growing body of research considers the interplay between our media-infused sociocultural climate, our undergraduate classrooms, and the diverse experiences of students therein. Incredible potential rests in harnessing available technologies, means of media production, and young people's digital acumen within our teaching to support students' meaningful learning and emergent practice as social workers. Our students' unprecedented access to media and its machines, to telling stories and being seen, make the strategic integration of particular media arts forms, conceptualized here as documentary work, into our classrooms both timely and effective. This teaching note explores the application of documentary efforts, as a specific body of work in the media arts, as a conduit for discourse and an essentially dialectical enterprise that demands critical self-awareness and sophisticated attention to context and relationship. It joins the current conversation about social work pedagogy as it explores how undergraduate faculty might honor and employ students' digital proficiency in particularly incisive ways.
Social work education often requires grappling with complex and controversial issues, necessitating a pedagogical approach that fosters critical thinking and intellectual diversity. The Point-Counterpoint teaching methodology is a framework designed to move beyond the traditional education model as agreement toward a model of education as understanding. By emphasizing intellectual diversity, this approach equips students with the tools to engage critically with diverse perspectives, challenge their biases, and develop a nuanced understanding of social issues. Drawing from philosophical and pedagogical principles, including the Socratic method and constructivism, the Point-Counterpoint framework addresses the challenges of confirmation bias in academia, offering practical recommendations for teaching controversial topics that promote critical thinking, inclusivity, and mutual respect. This methodology builds on established teaching strategies by integrating structured debate and collaborative knowledge construction to enhance student engagement and prepare them for real-world practice.
The perspective of faculty who teach diversity is a missing yet crucial component in existing social work education literature. This qualitative study used in-depth interviews to explore the experiences of 13 undergraduate social work faculty members teaching diversity content in their programs. Participants were asked to describe their definition of diversity, how they implement diversity curriculum, whether they examine their own experiences of diversity, and how they addressed students' and their own intersectionality. Findings from in-depth, semistructured interviews show three emerging meaning units: facilitating diversity, managing intersectionality, and faculty self-reflection. Firsthand accounts of faculty lived experiences can help inform best teaching approaches and how to move students from culturally competent to culturally humble rooted in anti-racist social work practice.
The social work profession has unique opportunities and tensions associated with the proliferation of available research and assessment measures. The abundance of measures offers an opportunity for the creation of a tool to train social work students in how to examine critically the measures we use beyond assessment of established psychometric properties of the measure. Thus, the purpose of this article is to present the critical iceberg model as a theoretically and pedagogically based teaching strategy grounded in social work values of critical inquiry, social justice, decolonization, and the strengths-based perspective. The model is designed for social work educators working with graduate students and has five core elements: (a) target construct, (b) origin story, (c) normed population, (d) construction of the measure, and (e) ecological level of the measure. Through this article, the authors identify limitations with model selection based on existing psychometric properties, introduce the critical iceberg model as a complement to extant measures of model selection, demonstrate its application to a commonly used assessment in social work (Adverse Childhood Experiences questionnaire), and offer four uses for social work educators to implement this approach in social work graduate education.
Graduate school is often framed as a space for intellectual growth and professional development; however, for many Black students at historically White colleges and universities, it becomes a site of racial harm, isolation, and cumulative trauma. This qualitative study examines the compounded effects of racialized stress on Black graduate students in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd-a catalytic moment that intensified anti-Black rhetoric and exposed the limits of institutional support. Grounded in the framework of cumulative racial trauma, the study draws on Zoom-based video diaries and reflexive thematic analysis to explore students' lived experiences in real time. Findings reveal five interrelated themes: racialized academic encounters, psychological and emotional toll, political climate and safety, navigating racial identity, and strategies of resistance and survival. Participants described navigating interpersonal, institutional, and societal racism that collectively shaped their well-being and academic experiences. The findings highlight the relational and systemic nature of racial trauma and call for trauma-informed, equity-driven approaches in graduate education. This study contributes to social work education by emphasizing the need for structural transformation to ensure Black graduate students can thrive-not merely survive-in higher education.
This teaching note responds to the growing interest in using futures thinking and strategic foresight within social work education. By infusing these approaches into the nine social work competencies, educators can help students prepare for the uncertainties and challenges of the future. Futures thinking involves imagining and exploring diverse potential futures, while strategic foresight provides tools for decision making and long-term planning. This teaching note provides examples of how specific foresight tools-such as scenario planning, causal layered analysis, and the futures triangle-can enhance the teaching of social work competencies and build critical skills in areas like ethical decision making, antioppressive practice, and social justice. Equipping students with these skills can transform social work education to navigate better the futures of tomorrow and ensure that future practitioners are prepared to lead, adapt, and innovate in an increasingly complex and uncertain world.
Black women are severely underrepresented in higher education, particularly in research doctoral programs, where they comprise less than 3% of degree recipients across disciplines. Despite social work's commitment to social justice, PhD programs within colleges of social work are no exception to these disparities. The systemic barriers Black women face highlight the urgent need for intentional strategies that foster their success. This article proposes the celebration-centered model for mentoring Black women in doctoral programs, drawing on critical race theory, Black feminist thought, and Ubuntu philosophy to challenge traditional, exclusionary mentorship structures. The model emphasizes equity-based mentorship, communal scholarship, and intentional allyship to create environments where Black women scholars can thrive. In light of the Supreme Court ruling on affirmation and the recent rollback of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, the authors offer actionable recommendations for higher education institutions to support Black women as scholars, policy makers, and contributors to the academic canon. By fostering interdisciplinary collaboration and a sense of belonging, this framework aims to transform mentoring practices in PhD programs in social work and across disciplines.
Designing or redesigning a course can bring many challenges to the social work educator in the 21st century. The aim of this teaching note is to offer a novel course design framework that consists of three theory-based questions. It is written in a first-person narrative style that highlights the framework's development and case examples from more than a decade of teaching undergraduate, Master of Social Work, and doctoral-level courses in social work by the author. The three questions that form the structure of the framework are: "What is?," "Why is it that way?," and "How should it be instead?" The questions encompass the enormous range of descriptive, explanatory, and normative theories, respectively, of a given social phenomenon or social work intervention approach. A course designed in this way requires social work students to explore actively divergent points of view and engage in understanding and making the link between conceptualization, explanation, and intervention. This framework can also be used to design modules of courses, single lectures, or class sessions and can work across the social work curriculum, from practice and policy-based courses to advanced electives.
This article presents an innovative social work course on disabilities, co-developed and co-taught with service users and families. It features a unique co-teaching approach with service users and their families, enriching the curriculum with their lived experiences. A current limitation in the social work education literature is that few articles focus on the process of creating a course that engages service users. This article examines the course's development, its innovative approach to co-teaching with service users, and the challenges encountered. This approach offers a unique contribution to the field of social work education by challenging the conventional dynamics of classroom instruction by integrating the perspectives of service users and their families into the co-teaching model. The course exemplifies an approach in social work education that emphasizes the importance of service user involvement in shaping future professionals.
This scoping review systematically assesses and documents the landscape of immersive virtual simulation pedagogies used within social work education to teach students about domestic and family violence (DFV). The intent of this article is to map the existing methodologies, technologies, and pedagogical strategies employed in virtual simulations to educate social work students about DFV. In doing so, this article demonstrates the different types of virtual simulations that are used to educate social work students about DFV, the types of knowledge and skills that they seek to address, and identifies how this has been evaluated. The key findings highlight that virtual simulations are useful in building student confidence, reducing anxiety, and providing tailored exposure to complex practice scenarios. Developing insights about what has been done, the strategies used to implement them, along with gaps and limitations of virtual simulation use are instrumental in shaping future design strategies. Each contribute to building a continuation of innovative approaches to enhance social workers' education about DFV.
First-generation college students (FGCS) are more likely to face institutional barriers to education, as many maintain identity status(es) in vulnerable or intersecting oppressed groups, such as race, class, or gender. FGCS status places students at risk of experiencing increased chronic feelings of inferiority and self-doubt, common feelings of imposter syndrome (IS), during their academic career. Given the overrepresentation of FGCS attending historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), there is a strong likelihood that many students may be experiencing feelings of IS. Yet there is limited empirical evidence of associations between FGCS and IS in HBCU Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) students. The current study applied an HBCU-student success framework to social work and health sciences students (N=62) at an HBCU to model how student characteristics, learning contexts, and internalized statuses related to feelings of IS. Hierarchical regression results supported the high prevalence of IS feelings in FGCS and demonstrated the protective effect of an HBCU environment. The comprehensive model of HBCU-student success explained 32.4% variance with statistically significant main effects of student race predicting lower IS scores and FGCS status predicting higher IS scores. Identity statuses are important considerations for BSW student well-being at HBCUs.
In response to the increasing demand for accountability and evidence-informed practice, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) require that students in accredited programs demonstrate engagement in practice-informed research and research-informed practice. The CSWE accreditation involves the evaluation of how schools teach and assess the competencies and mandates that accredited schools meet EPAS standards. However, there is a knowledge gap in the different methods that accredited programs use to teach and assess students' research competency, as programs are given latitude on the methods and evaluations used. This study used a concurrent mixed-methods design, including reviews of 57 research course syllabi and 10 self-study documents, as well as focus group discussions with 22 instructors to understand the methods adopted by accredited undergraduate and graduate social work programs to teach and assess research competencies. Study findings describe curriculum structure, course content, pedagogical strategies, and assessment methods to meet CSWE EPAS competency standards. Additionally, diverse pedagogical approaches used to engage students in learning research competencies are presented. Implications include helpful andragogical practices, methods for assessing research competencies, alignment of professional training and licensing standards, and support for research instructors.
To date, the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has not developed specific accreditation standards for online courses or programs, positing that the methods of delivery do not matter in a competency-based model of education. However, CSWE has maintained standards that dictate the number of faculty and practicum hours required for accreditation, indicating that there are some standards that transcend competency outcomes given their importance. Some other professions have specific accreditation standards for online offerings. This article summarizes accreditation standards and empirical research findings that have implications for accreditation standards that would enhance the quality and equity of online social work education. Online social work education would benefit from quality control by CSWE as social work continues to realize unprecedented growth in this delivery model.
The increasing use of artificial intelligence (AI) in social work is enhancing teaching through innovative technologies and is already changing how we prepare students for the workforce. While AI offers significant potential to revolutionize social work practice and education, its integration requires careful attention to ethical considerations to ensure its responsible and equitable use. This study explores the role of AI in social work through structured interviews with 15 social work students, uncovering five key themes: the effect of AI on social work practice, policy, and research; its applications and utility in various settings; its role in enhancing efficiency; its integration into social work education; and its limitations within the field. The findings highlight students' optimism and curiosity about AI's potential to improve social work, while also holding some level of skepticism about the implications of AI algorithms for marginalized client groups. This study underscores the need for thoughtful adoption of AI technologies to support the welfare of vulnerable populations and advance social work education.
Anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) efforts are hallmarks of CSWE accreditation and are central to the profession, yet little is known about organizational interventions to advance ADEI and dismantle White supremacy in schools of social work. This scoping review identified 8 studies of organizational-level interventions that sought to dismantle White supremacy in schools of social work. We analyzed these studies across six areas: study methodologies, authors' positionalities, theoretical frameworks, interventions, and author-identified challenges and successes. Findings suggest that schools of social work can challenge White supremacy through organizational interventions, such as: strategic planning, education and training on the characteristics and manifestations of White supremacy, curriculum overhaul to focus on critical theories and approaches, creation of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)-centered initiatives to support individuals experiencing racial harm due to White supremacy, and accountability mechanisms to counteract White normativity. Based on the findings, five concrete recommendations are offered for schools of social work: (1) validate BIPOC experiences of harm, (2) collaborate to create a culture of accountability, (3) center BIPOC voices, (4) educate on White supremacy, and (5) embrace discomfort and conflict.
