Social Justice in the Social Work Classroom: Applying a Professional Value to Social Work Education

Abstract

Social justice is a primary value of social work and therefore has a place in discussions of social work education pedagogy. This is especially true for conversations pertaining to students who are underprepared, due to educational inequalities, for successful completion of writing assignments at the undergraduate level. If underprepared students are treated as equals to prepared students, then the social inequalities that contributed to or caused a student to be underprepared are perpetuated rather than challenged. The authors explore responses to underprepared students that are consistent with social work's professional value of social justice.

Keywords::

• Social work education
• Social justice
• Inequality
• Underprepared college students
• Social work values
• Social work ethics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.