Despite high rates of compassion stress within the field of social work and the growing acknowledgment that self-care is critically important to ethical social work practice and to the practitioner's overall well-being, social work education has not yet adequately responded to the self-care and wellness needs of students and new professionals, nor…

While there is mounting research on the well-known white founders of social work, documentation of Black social work pioneers and their contributions is scarce -- in both social work education and the broader telling of the profession's history. Given the systemic exclusion of Black social workers in the dominant narrative of social work history,…

The 2022 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization overturned reproductive, health, and abortion rights for women. Using the NASW Code of Ethics, a course assignment is offered for students to examine the professional, ethical commitment and responsibility of social workers to advocate for these rights and…

This paper aims to understand the impact on student learning of redesigning an elective substance use course with the intent of contextualizing the topic by modeling a structural critical lens. In addition, we look at how this shift impacts students' approaches to working with clients who use substances. Secondary data from student course…

Social work education is at a crossroads with the release of the 2022 Educational Policy Administration Standards (EPAS, 2022), which emphasize anti-racist practice. To teach anti-racist social work one must be prepared to use anti-racist pedagogical practices and be supported to do so institutionally. Freire (2020) proposes that education be a…

Across the United States, racist, hate-filled rhetoric, attitudes, and behaviors are daily occurrences. Events like officer-involved shootings of unarmed Black men, women, and non-binary individuals, along with the increase in white supremacist and nationalist groups, have cumulatively created a climate of fear and mistrust. This fear and mistrust…

Although the social work profession has focused on becoming an anti-racist profession, social work students report being insufficiently prepared to challenge and dismantle racism. Current recommendations for educating social workers on racism use findings from White students and omit the voices of individuals who experience racism. However, this…

Peer-to-peer role-play in social work education continues to have widespread use in the teaching of generalist social work skills. For many students, however, the unfamiliarity of role-playing the client in conjunction with discussing clinical concerns may lead them to become emotionally dysregulated during the social work-client encounter. To…

The 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) from the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) definitively identifies anti-racism as a necessary component of social work education. This change supports an effort to ensure that coming generations of social workers are more than culturally competent, but rather actively anti-racist…

Although several studies highlight the benefit of short-term immersion programs abroad among social work students, few studies have examined their transformative nature. In response, this study aimed to describe the transformative change experienced by MSW students from the Southwest USA who participated in a short-term, immersion program in…

On June 24, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the "Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization" decision, overturning 50 years of protected abortion rights in the United States. The decision directly impacts the way social work educators address current social issues that relate to bodily autonomy and social justice. This paper used…

As concerns for reproductive rights continue to be debated across the United States, the June 24th, 2022, U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Mississippi case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that overturned Roe v. Wade essentially upended the disciplinary foundations and ethical underpinnings of helping professions. The Council on…

The increased national focus on racism and white supremacy has encouraged social workers to look more closely at racism in the profession, which includes racism that occurs in social work education. This study specifically examines social work students' experiences with racism in social work classes. A convenience sample of current and former…

Within social work education, the literature on affective learning processes is, for the most part, poorly conceptualized and minimally researched. Affective processes that engage students' values, beliefs, and emotions are valuable resources supporting students' development of self-reflection skills, stamina for discomfort, and curiosity for…

While films are popular as teaching tools in social work education, to critique social inequalities, horror films have not been the conventional genre. This teaching note describes the creation and deployment of a course that uses horror films to address social justice issues as part of different critical reflection, which is linked to practice…