Social work students’ perspective on environmental justice: Gaps and challenges for preparing students

ABSTRACT

The integration of environmental justice into social work education, research, and practice has grown substantially in the past decade. However, social workers still report feeling unprepared to address these challenges with their clients and communities. To understand the disconnect between education about and application of environmental justice principles, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with graduate social work students (n = 14). Findings suggest this disconnect is catalyzed, in part, by the environment’s meta nature and a lack of facilitated education on the dynamic feedbacks between the physical environment and social justice issues. Implications for social work educators are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Environmental justice
• competencies
• education
• social justice
• curricula
• international social work

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. CSWE adopted the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s definition of environmental justice from the 1994 EJ executive order, “‘the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies’” (2018), For the purpose of this study, we have used the same definition, but recognize that there is a lack of a universally agreed upon definition within the field of social work.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Denver’s Interdisciplinary Research Incubator for the Study of (In)Equality (IRISE) under a graduate student research grant.