Circles of Resistance: Spirituality in Social Work Practice, Education and Transformative Change

Abstract

Spirituality comes from within and outside the self. It is meant to assist us as individuals, families and communities. It is also about resistance and it connects us to the work of social change. The topic of spirituality is an important dialogue which educators must have with their students. In my four years of teaching, I have brought spirituality into the classroom not only by speaking about it, but by doing it. What I have learned so far, is that if I open those doors by taking the lead, it creates a safe place where students can share their spirituality. As important as spirituality is to each individual’s well being and strength, each of us has a responsibility to use it in creating a better world. It is the role of the social worker to resist oppression and become involved in political activism. The structural social work approach guides us in this role, but it lacks any spiritual dimension. What social workers need is direction based on action-oriented spirituality.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 23 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.