Understanding Social Justice Engagement in Social Work Curriculum

Abstract

Understanding how undergraduate social work students learn knowledge and skills related to social justice is paramount to meeting the professional imperative of social justice in social work practice. However, there is no singular definition of social justice, nor is there consistency in how social justice is taught across social work curricula. Typically, social work programs either infuse social justice across the social work curriculum or require an in-depth, social justice content-driven course. These dual inconsistencies create challenges in understanding how students learn social justice. This study seeks to understand if undergraduate students have better outcomes related to knowledge and skill in a course structured with an in-depth social justice-–specific curriculum versus a course that has social justice infused across the content. Simply knowing how social justice curriculum is taught is not sufficient; rather, we must understand how social justice engagement is learned.