Teaching approaches are needed that can normalize students' process of exploring emotions related to their learning and support the internalization of the professional social work values (i.e. human rights and social justice). Within the literature on social work education, the importance of affective processes to support the students' learning of…

The 2022 Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) from the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) definitively identifies anti-racism as a necessary component of social work education. This change supports an effort to ensure that coming generations of social workers are more than culturally competent, but rather actively anti-racist…

COVID-19 has revealed and intensified economic and health disparities, prompting a profound national and global examination of racist systems perpetuating such disadvantage. The historic confluence of COVID-19 with movements for social justice offers a window, which COVID fatigue may already be closing, for us to enact true change in the process…

The Zeitgeist of our time calls on social workers and the social work profession to reconsider the ways in which we practice, teach, and learn. The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2021 reawakening of the racial and social justice movements profoundly influence how social workers approach the directive from our accrediting body (CSWE) calling on us to…

Although social work, as a profession, has increasingly emphasized the importance of evidence-based practice (EBP), social work students do not consistently learn to infuse EBP as a process in their daily practice, contributing to low EBP uptake in the field. Communicating evidence to clients is an ethical imperative for informed consent and a…

This paper discusses the utilization of a cultural humility model to educate social work students in understanding the importance of diversity, power, privilege, oppression, marginalization and social and economic justice in an increasingly diverse society. Social work programs are required to teach students to effectively engage a diversity of…

Over a quarter of the members of the social work profession are working in health related settings yet preparing students to work in such multi-disciplinary environments, with hierarchical organizations and problem-focused systems, can create value conflicts, principally with the strengths-based paradigm inherent in social work practice. In order…

Social work programs are facing the need to gain further clarity about how to leverage instructional strategies specific to the course modality (i.e., traditional, hybrid, online hybrid, and fully online). At its heart, this challenge is an analogical transfer problem: practice instructors must adapt what they do in one modality to new modalities…

The transition to a financialized economy has had a devastating impact on workers and consumers and exacerbated wealth and income inequality in the United States and around the world. In this article, the authors explain financialization, a two-fold economic strategy whereby individual corporations invest in the financial market- rather than make…

This article offers some general guidelines to social work faculty seeking to be promoted to the rank of Full Professor, guidelines that we hope will provide a beginning discussion for individual programs to develop more transparent criteria and expectations for promotion to the highest rank in the academy. Specifically, we offer guidance about…

The number of adjunct faculty members in higher education has been increasing nationally over the past two decades, and schools of social work are no exception to this trend. There has been robust debate about adjunct use, given concerns about low pay, poor access to benefits, lack of inclusion in academic decision making, and little support…

This article focuses on group work principles to emphasize the importance of collaboration and community as an effective pedagogical approach to teaching in online higher education. Online communities can serve as support groups by bringing together people going through the shared experience of higher education and providing the opportunity for…

The Policy Field Unit (PFU) is an independently designed practicum placement for School of Social Work (SSW) students at a large, urban Midwestern university. The placement provides students an opportunity to engage with the policy process as macro social work practitioners in a variety of settings. Increasing social work students' efficacy in…

Opioid addiction is a widespread problem that social workers will undoubtedly face in practice. Curricular infusion is an approach that has gained recognition in social work education for integrating critical, contemporary topics into courses. This paper details a project that infused opioid addiction in baccalaureate of social work (BSW) courses,…

This article addresses the concerns brought forth in this special issue by offering "a detailed and conceptually focused description and rationale for future plans" of addressing anti-Black racism across the social work curriculum. We focus on a less-discussed experience of anti-Black racism -- the experience of internalized racial…