Date of Award
Spring 4-17-2025
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
D.S.W. Social work
Department
Social Work
First Advisor
Dr. Juliana Svistova
Second Advisor
Dr. Yoon Mi Kim
Third Advisor
Dr. Barth Yeboah
Abstract
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) states that the social work profession is guided by a global perspective and the enhancement of life for all people, both locally and globally. Per the CSWE Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (2022 EPAS), the social work curriculum of an integrated program includes global content that is specifically related to racism, oppression, and policy. However, literature suggests that the incorporation of global content into social work education has been slow, sparse, and siloed. The purpose of this study was to explore the extent to which social work faculty have integrated global content from the 2022 EPAS into their teaching practices and identify the factors contributing to this incorporation. A 25-item quantitative cross-sectional survey was distributed to full- and part-time faculty at social work programs across the United States and its territories. Diffusion of innovations theory, which conceptualizes the adoption of innovations among individuals and organizations, provided the theoretical underpinnings for the study. Ultimately, the findings from 546 responses indicate that faculty incorporate policy, oppression and racism, and global positionality content from the 2022 EPAS into their teaching. Global content is predominately incorporated as a tool to prepare U.S. social work students to engage in culturally competent practice with people from outside the U.S. Faculty members’ international experience, international connections, global competence, and positive attitudes toward global content were the major contributing factors to their incorporation of global content. Nonetheless, faculty identified considerable barriers to incorporating global content into their teaching, including personal lack of knowledge; a dominant focus on micro, specifically clinical, and local practice in social work education; lack of student comprehension; the vastness and complexity of global content; and the current political climate.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Speiser, Janine M., ""Guided by a Global Perspective": The Global Teaching Practices of Social Work Faculty" (2025). Social Work Doctoral Dissertations. 40.
https://research.library.kutztown.edu/socialworkdissertations/40
