Centering social justice in undergraduate social work education: a scoping review of pedagogical methods of teaching

Abstract

Social justice is a foundational social work value. Scholars express ongoing pedagogical challenges with how to teach students to embody social justice values. New to the social work profession, undergraduate students are in a pivotal stage to be trained as social-justice oriented future social workers. The aim of this review is to map empirical studies on teaching methods that translate social justice value into teachable curricula. Following Arksey and O’Malley’s scoping review framework, we conducted a rigorous process in which we screened 5,953 studies and included a final 41 studies. We synthesized them into the domain, characteristics, types, and sites of social justice training in the curriculum, targets of social justice competencies, and evaluation of the teaching methods. Our findings identified four main teaching approaches: case-based learning, community engaged learning, intergroup dialogue, and simulation-based learning. In terms of competency development, most of the studies focused on awareness and knowledge versus skill building. Most included studies underlined the value of experiential learning and suggested making a fine balance between eliciting and addressing learners’ emotional experiences during social justice learning activities. Pedagogical challenges and future considerations of social justice teaching methods are presented.

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