Broadening the Vision: An International Review of Law Teaching in Social Work Education
Preparing students to engage with social change is a key focus of education practice. Because social work is in part influenced by the legal mandates of the national contexts within which it is practised, law is commonly a core component of the curriculum. In the UK it is a component prescribed by government. The teaching of law, however, tends to be constrained by the national context within which the training takes place. The legal framework in the UK, for example, takes a remedial approach to need, allowing services to compensate for perceived deficits in individuals' circumstances but not to address broader mechanisms of exclusion. Exclusion and oppression are construed as individual rather than collective experiences.
In contrast, global developments require social work to develop a broadened vision. The movement of peoples between jurisdictions, for example, challenges the preoccupation with national legal contexts. International frameworks such as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration and European Convention on Human Rights are arguably important tools for social workers seeking to engage with the social context in which human need arises. In addition, professional values and the voices of people who use services call for responses to human need that step beyond individual deficit and engage with social change.
Educators must arguably help students move beyond a view of law as a tool for individual intervention, to seeing it as a proactive tool for change.
This paper will draw on findings from a systematic review of knowledge on law teaching in social work education, focusing on content, process and outcomes of learning. The review, commissioned for 2003-04 by the Social Care Institute for Excellence in the UK, comprises a research review of the international literature and a practice survey. The analysis presented will consider the extent to which law teaching engages with global frameworks and with collective as opposed to individual constructions of need, and draw conclusions on whether existing education practice incorporates strategies to address exclusion and oppression, and prepares social workers for action in reclaiming civil society.