Critical reﬂection in social work education

Neoliberal universities embrace the logic of acceleration where the quickening of daily life for both educators and students is driven by desires for efficient forms of productivity and measurable outcomes of work. From this perspective, time is governed by expanding capacities of the digital world that speed up the pace of work while blurring the boundaries between workplace, home, and leisure. In this article, we draw from findings from qualitative interviews conducted with Canadian social work educators who teach using online-based critical pedagogy as well as recent graduates who completed their social work education in online learning programs to explore the effects of acceleration within these digitalised spaces of higher education. We view these findings alongside French philosopher Henri Bergson's concepts of duration and intuition, forms of temporality that manage to resist fixed, mechanised standards of time. We argue that the digitalisation of time produced through online education technologies can be seen as a thinning of possibilities for deeper and more critically self-reflexive knowledge production and a reduction in opportunities to build on social justice-based practices.

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“Sense of Classroom Community” Inonline Social Work Education

Journal of Education and Human Development ◽

10.15640/jehd.v4n2_1a3 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 4 (2(1)) ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Dr. Courtney Wiest

Keyword(s):

Social Work ◽

Social Work Education ◽

Classroom Community ◽

Work Education

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Social Work and Indigenisation: A South African Perspective

SOUTHERN AFRICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIAL WORK AND SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT ◽

10.25159/2415-5829/2393 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 30 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Lobelo David Mogorosi ◽

Dumisani Gaylord Thabede

Keyword(s):

South Africa ◽

Social Work ◽

South African ◽

Social Work Education ◽

Western Europe ◽

World View ◽

Joint Decision ◽

Scant Attention ◽

Global North ◽

Work Education

For relevance to societal reality and challenges, countries should structure their social work education to deal with specific conditions and cultures. From its global North (i.e. Western Europe and North America) origins, social work has contributed to the expansion of the discipline and profession to the developing world, including South Africa. During the three decades (from the mid-1980s until the present day) during which they have taught social work in South Africa, the authors have witnessed half-hearted efforts to really integrate indigenous knowledge into the curricula. In writings and professional gatherings, scant attention was paid to curricula transformation imperatives enriching practice. To its credit, the Association of South African Social Work Education Institutions (ASASWEI) advocates for decolonisation and indigenisation of social work education. Discussing decolonisation and indigenisation in social work curricula, the paper critiques assumptions of global North ideas, cloaked as if universally applicable. An example is about some principles of social casework – a method of choice in South Africa – which mostly disregards cultural nuances of clientele with a communal collective world view that relies on joint decision-making. A culturally sensitive approach is adopted as theoretical framework for this paper. The paper concludes with recommendations that should help ensure that social work curricula strive towards being indigenous, contextualised and culturally appropriate.

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