Transformative learning, ecopedagogy and learning ecology: pathways for social work education

Abstract

As a profession, social work has been slow in coming to grips with the ecological crisis. While there are some encouraging signs that this blind-spot is slowly being recognised, it remains the case that despite a long-held commitment to understanding people-in-environment, the non-human world, and our relationship with it, remains a peripheral concern for most social workers and indeed for the profession as a whole (McKinnon, 2008; Molyneux, 2010; Zapf, 2010). Social work education has an important role to play in bringing ecological concerns more fully into the vision of the profession. It is timely therefore to consider the way forward for social work education and to explore the ways in which the environment might be most effectively integrated into the curriculum. In this paper a number of different pathways for social work education will be explored. An argument will be made that an opportunity exists to explore a deeply transformative approach to social work education. Such an approach would represent a radical shift away from what O'Sullivan and Taylor (2004) refer to as 'instrumental consciousness' towards an 'ecological consciousness' that more fully recognises our place in the world.

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