No open-access location is known for this record yet.
No open-access location is known for this record yet.
Community Development occupies a marginal and sometimes uncertain place in Social Work education, particularly in the Global North (Hanna and Ife, 2019; Westoby et al., 2019) leading to questions about its relevance in a neoliberal Social Work environment that focuses on individuals and on actions to manage risk. This environment restricts collective and generative practices that attempt to engage groups and communities in processes of social change. In contemporary global conditions that bring pressing new challenges and widening polarities, Community Development’s place in Social Work needs urgent re-examination (Forde and Lynch, 2015). What is the place of Community Development within Social Work education? How can Community Development pedagogy enable Social Work students to identify and pursue social justice and human rights goals? In what ways can qualifying Social Work education prepare practitioners to use Community Development in a range of contexts and settings? What can Community Development knowledge and ideas bring to the new and emerging challenges facing Social Work? In 2018, the Joint World Social Work, Education and Social Development (SWSD) conference in Dublin drew social work educators and practitioners from around the globe. Participating in a workshop on Community Development in Social Work education, it became clear that educators from across the five continents were grappling with the effects of neoliberalism on Social Work. In every country neoliberal policies and practices have moved education and practice towards individualised, behavioural and problem-based approaches and understandings (Fenton, 2019). Educators expressed concern about the marginalization of Community Development within Social Work training but strongly agreed that teaching Community Development on Social Work programmes enables students to think critically and consider collective and grassroots approaches that can both complement and enhance their practice as Social Workers. Since 2018 much has changed globally and the emergence of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has thrown many important issues into relief, including democracy versus authoritarianism, personal freedoms versus public safety, economy versus environment and colonialism versus decolonialization. Rosie Meade’s editorial in the Community Development Journal (April 2020) identifies a set of key social, political, economic and environmental questions that arise in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In her response, Sue Kenny writes about how COVID-related circumstances are creating new challenges for groups and communities. She argues for critical changes to social arrangements and the need for community organising drawing on fundamental principles of social and environmental justice and deliberative democracy (Kenny, 2020). She highlights the urgency of what lies ahead and how current responses will be crucial in finding a way forward to address global concerns and future sustainability in the context of climate change. Similar questions confront Social Work. Fong et al. (2018) identify twelve ‘grand challenges’ (GCSW) for American Social Work, however most of these challenges also face Social Work beyond the United States. Fong et al. speak of meeting these challenges through creating ‘new partnerships, deep engagement with local communities, and innovations to strengthen individual and collective assets’ (ibid, p. 10; see also Field et al., 2020). This task will involve ‘everyone: families, communities, researchers, educators, practitioners and policymakers—all working together to achieve social progress’ (ibid, p. 16). The grand challenges include responding to environmental change with creativity, using digital technology for social good, reducing economic inequality and achieving economic opportunity and justice. This themed section will address these key areas and will be based on three main premises. Firstly, grounding Social Work teaching in values such as social justice and human rights, critical thinking and working collectively helps to nurture dynamic, innovative forms of practice that can respond to community and societal issues. Secondly, critical and network thinking can foster new ideas and facilitate influence in key areas including decision-making and policymaking where new thinking is needed now more than ever. Thirdly, engaging in a vigorous interchange of knowledge, practice and skills between disciplines like Community Development and Social Work strengthens these areas of work, side-steps separate and distinct professional silos and emphasises the importance of humanistic values and approaches. The authors of the five articles are social work educators who teach Community Development and Community Pedagogy on Social Work programmes in different countries and contexts in the Global South and Global North. All are educators and researchers and several have experience of engaging in policymaking processes. Inclusion of ideas and experiences from different countries and parts of the world provides a wide-angle lens to explore these critical themes and discuss challenges for teaching social work students in the contemporary context. This themed section offers a unique opportunity to share rich pedagogical and practice knowledge from a wide range of contexts. In the first paper Lynch, Lathouras and Forde identify the need for pedagogical approaches to prepare social workers for shifting and demanding social, economic, political and environmental conditions. Through the lens of key community development principles—connected, relational and critical—the paper explores the challenges and opportunities facing educators, social work students and practitioners. The authors argue for the generation of a process of collaborative critical inquiry between educators, students and the wider social work field. The goal is to engage students in reflective praxis enriched by contemporary theory and research and to foster a deep perspective and engagement on global and local issues that produces adaptable, critical and connected practitioners. In a world in which borders have become more porous but also more contested, it is crucial to explore how a sense of community and agency can be preserved by those who move across geographical boundaries. Marlowe and Chubb’s paper presents a longitudinal digital ethnography that examines how people from refugee backgrounds maintain relationships and community when separated from their communities of origin, and how online activism emanates from their situations. The paper argues that migrants’ use of online spaces represents an opportunity to explore the implications for social work and community development. Using the theory of the social organization of difference, this paper articulates the challenges and possibilities of digitization for social work and community development pedagogy and practice. The climate crisis demands responses that traverse north–south global divides and bring critical ecological approaches to the forefront of practices and pedagogy in social work and cognate disciplines like community development. Located within the contemporary socio-geopolitical context Ranta-Tyrkkö and Närhi mark out a new phase of ‘ecosocial transition in social work’ which they discuss as an emerging form of community-based practice. Drawing on primary discursive research into students’ attitudes to the introduction of ecosocial pedagogy to the social work curriculum, the paper isolates and discusses the key elements of this pedagogy. The aim of the paper is to nurture and empower a new generation of practitioners equipped to engage in ecosocial practices with relevant knowledge, and with a range of conceptual as well as practical tools. The global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates a renewed emphasis on critical social work practice approaches. In India, the catastrophic effect of the pandemic compounds the prevailing neoliberal landscape in which poverty is widespread and elites including corporations exert increasing control. In her paper Vyas reflects on the ‘messiness’ and complexity of the Indian community practice field, in which social work, community development and Community Organization co-exist. She questions how community practice educators should respond to the continuing concerns of poverty, inequality and vulnerability. The paper concludes by arguing for a critical, counter-hegemonic and value-infused curriculum to develop future community practitioners capable of political analysis and action. The shifting social, economic and political context and its implications for community development practice and pedagogy on social work programmes is the theme of Anleu-Hernández and García-Moreno’s paper. The paper examines the continuing socio-economic crisis in Spain and its impact on social policy, the social work profession and on professional social work formation. Drawing on an in-depth documentary review the paper seeks to establish the extent and nature of community development pedagogy on social work programmes in Spain and specifically in Catalonia. The paper reignites debate about the position of community development in both the education and practice of the social work discipline. A post-COVID-19 world is not yet imagined. As we write this editorial, the COVID-19 pandemic continues as an unfolding tragedy with deep and devastating impacts across many regions and countries of the world. Now more than ever, we see the fault lines which expose and reveal the economic, health and social disparities between peoples within and between nations and the environmental crisis that affects everyone. Grounded in the pre-eminent value of social justice as embodied in the practices and perspectives of social workers, in this themed section we move forward together with hope to meet the challenges of this human crisis of our times.
Loading…
Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 4 citations exist upstream.
Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.
Imported from OpenAlex (CC0) — nothing here is generated.