Teaching and Learning in Ecosocial Work : Concepts, Methods and Practice

This book aims to popularise ecosocial work and facilitate teaching and learning of ecosocial work in educational institutions which offer social work or related programmes.

It is the first book to focus specifically on teaching and learning in ecosocial work and one of the first to specifically incorporate student perspectives on and initiatives in ecosocial work teaching, learning and practice.  Ecosocial work is a timely and evolving framework to learn about and practice social work from the premise that humans are part of, and dependent on, the web of life on Earth.

While this understanding should guide human activities in the first place, current massive planetary scale anthropogenic socio-environmental problems, such as the climate crisis, rapid acidification of oceans, biodiversity loss and species extinction, prove the opposite.

Moreover, along with many other professional and academic fields, social work and the social professions stem largely from the same anthropocentric and modernist world view as the current environmental problems.

Social work thus needs to reconfigure its relationship to other than human beings and the planetary limits of existence.

This calls for nothing less than in-depth renewal of social work and related professions, and ultimately an ecosocial/ecological paradigm change in which education plays a pivotal role.  The book brings together chapters and case studies on the concepts, contexts, methods, and experiences of teaching and learning in ecosocial work.

It is an account of work in progress and discusses and depicts the current terrain of ecosocial work in principle and in practice.

It provides ideas and approaches on what kinds of new thinking and skills ecosocial work requires from current and future social workers and on how these can be taught, practiced, and learned in promoting economic, social, and environmental sustainability.  Written by academics, students and practitioners living and working in different parts of the world, the book offers interdisciplinary perspectives from social work, social policy, community development and sociology.

Chapters consider the following themes, amongst others: how to navigate the conceptual jungle defining human-bio-physical environment relations; why and how to re-envision the social work curriculum to include teaching and learning on ecosocial work; how to ally social work with greener social policies; challenges facing social work education and practice in responding to environmental crisis; the importance of Indigenous knowledge in ecosocial work; and approaches to integrating social work education with innovative practices seeking to champion sustainability, climate awareness and justice.