Social Work and the Natural Environment: Embedding Content Across Curricula

ABSTRACT

Social work is a profession focused on people within their environments. This is reflected in codes of ethics, where our shared mandate is to work towards individual wellbeing and social change. Recently, social work literature has promoted green and eco-social work, drawing on climate change science, notions of expanded and future justice, knowledge of the link between health and the environment, and principles of deep ecology. However, if social workers are to take up their place in a rapidly changing, globalised world, rife with environmental concerns, their education must prepare them to do this. One way of doing this is to embed curriculum on social work in relation to the natural environment in already existing units. This paper describes two examples of how this could be done based on the authors’ experiences from their respective universities.

IMPLICATIONS

• It is incumbent on social work to respond to the mounting evidence related to the environmental crisis.

• Social work is well placed in terms of theory, values, and skills to lead the way in developing an eco-social paradigm of potential relevance across disciplines.

• Social work educators need to educate students about emerging issues, such as environmental degradation. Embedding material in already existing courses, as per examples provided in this paper, provides one way of doing this.

社会工作这个职业着眼于周遭环境中的人。在社工的伦理规范中，为个人福祉和社会变迁工作是我们的应当应分。近年来，社会工作的文献已根据气候变化的科学研究，扩展的、未来的公平观，健康与环境之间联系的知识，以及深度生态学的原则，倡导绿色和生态的社会工作。只是，如果社会工作者打算在快速变化、充满环境关怀的全球化世界中占有一席之地，他们在教育上就要为此做好准备。途径之一就是在既有的教学单元里加强社会工作与自然环境关系的课程。作者根据自己的经历，从大学的角度介绍了两个具体的案例。

KEYWORDS:

• Social Work Education
• Environmental Social Work
• Green Social Work
• Social Work Theory
• Critical Social Work
• Grief and Loss

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.