Moving social work from international social work to global social work through aligning SDG principles and social work education standards

ABSTRACT

Much as the Sustainable Development Goals represent an evolution in shared global responsibility for development from the Millennium Development Goals, social work education can evolve from considering ‘international social work’ to thinking of ‘global social work.’ This evolution would consider social issues as shared across national borders rather than isolated to a nation or region and that all social workers, regardless of their home nation, can help address these issues. Social work educators can support this work by aligning education standards with the explicit and implicit curricula and specific examples of how this can be done are discussed. Accomplishing this will help achieve the 4^th goal of the SDGs—quality education—as well as human rights standards.

KEYWORDS:

• International
• higher education
• Sustainable Development Goals
• international social work
• global social work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).