Exploring New Horizons for Decolonial Social Work Education

This book presents current scholarship designed to decolonize, reform and confront the Euro-centric dominance in social work education and practice. This compact volume strings together new content from internationally recognised authors in the field of social work to address this need.

Decolonising social work seeks to weaken the effect of colonialism and create opportunities to promote traditional practices in contemporary settings. Its focus is to draw attention to the effects of globalisation and the universalization of social work education, methods of practice and international development that fail to embrace and recognise local knowledges and methods by bringing new and fresh perspectives to social work. It can also be seen as a significant contribution to social work's more critical stance and long-standing struggle to challenge the hegemonic Euro-centric epistemology. With decoloniality becoming a global imperative, this collection brings together case studies from world scholars and decolonial voices in order to explore opportunities, challenges and trends to decolonize through culturally relevant curricula, including:

• Social Work and Decolonisation: Student Social Workers’ Understanding of the Concepts of ‘Culture’, ‘Cultural Identity’ and ‘Decolonisation’
• Developing Curriculum for Criminal Justice Social Work from the Field
• New Directions in Trauma Work? Cultural Trauma Theory as an Instrument to Contextualise and Address Histories of Pain in Global Communities  
• Analysing and Understanding Intersections: Using Nayak’s ‘Intersectional Model of Reflection’ in Social Work Teaching
• Decolonizing Social Work Education and Curriculum Utilizing Cultural Competemility and Professionalism Approach

Exploring New Horizons for Decolonial Social Work Education is essential reading for practitioners, policy makers, instructors, researchers, and other social work professionals. The book may be used as a supplemental text for social work courses. The national and international focus of the volume will be highly relevant to all social work programmes across the globe.

Carolyn Noble, PhD is Former Associate Dean and Foundation Professor of Social Work at ACAP in Sydney, Australia; Emerita Professor of Social Work at Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia; and Research Associate, Johannesburg University, South Africa. She is active in Australian, Asia Pacific and International Schools of Social Work Associations and has held executive positions in each of these organisations.  Her research interests include social work theory, work-based learning and professional supervision. Further areas of research include gender democracy, right-wing populism, and post-COVID-19 welfare state. She has published widely in her areas of research and continues to present her work nationally and internationally. She is editor-in-chief of open access social issues magazine for IASSW, Social Dialogue.     

Annaline Caroline Sandra Keet, PhD trained as a social worker at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She has a Master’s degree and PhD in social work with specialization in Employee Wellbeing Programmes, from the University of Pretoria. She has been in academia for 15 years working at Fort Hare University, Free State University (where she also served as Head of the Social Work Department), and is currently an Associate Professor at Nelson Mandela University, South Africa. Annaline authored 13 academic publications including co-editing a book and guest editing an academic magazine. She is also co-editor for three upcoming academic publications. She has been involved in the evaluation of undergraduate and postgraduate curriculums nationally and in the region. She served on the previous executive board of the Association of South African Social Work Education Institutions (ASASWEI) (2015-2017), and currently serves as the international representative of ASASWEI (2019-2023). Her primary research interests include social marginalization, cultural trauma, working with older persons and employee wellness.