The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Work Education

This handbook addresses the issues and challenges of the delivery of social work education in the contemporary world. It provides an authoritative overview of the key debates, switching the lens away from a Western-centric focus to engage with a much broader audience in countries that are in the process of modernization and professionalization, alongside those where social work education is more developed. Chapters tackle major challenges with respect to curriculum, teaching, practice, and training in light of globalization, providing a thorough examination of the practice of social work in diverse contexts. This handbook presents a contribution to the process of knowledge exchange which is essential to global social work education. It brings together professional knowledge and lived experience, both universal and local, and aims to be an essential reference for social work educators, researchers, and students.

• International Social Work
• Social Work Education
• Globalization
• Social Work Pedagogy
• Contemporary Social Work

“The editors and contributors to this handbook are to be commended for compiling such a helpful and accessible source of information about social work education around the world today. They also provide an insightful analysis of how social work education has evolved and how it seeks to prepare students to serve their communities in many different countries. It will be a vitally important resource for social work educators, students, and researchers everywhere.” (James Midgley, Professor of the Graduate School and Dean Emeritus of the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley, USA)

“While sharing many similarities and common characteristics, such as the global definition and standard with their counterparts in other countries, social work in each country has its own uniqueness due to local socio-politico-cultural factors. In this post-colonial era, we have tried to decentre the Eurocentric discourse of social work. Knowing how social work is practiced and institutionalized in different countries will be one of the decentring strategies. Throughout the years, several sets of edited volumes have been published to introduce the social work of various countries. This new handbook is an exciting and most updated reference that documents and introduces the social work practice of forty-three countries from around the world, many of which have rarely been introduced in the existing literature. I congratulate the editorial team on this meaningful and important contribution to the global social work community.” (Miu Chung Yan, Professor of the School of Social Work, University of British Columbia, Canada)

“This handbook is essential reading for lecturers, students, policy makers, and social workers, offering an easily accessible opportunity to read how social work education is experienced in a range of different continents and countries within the same continent. These contributions include not only the usual Western suspects such as the USA, UK, and Australia, but importantly voices from nations less frequently heard in the West including Nepal, Botswana, Ethiopia, and Palestine. The book offers the reader an unparalleled opportunity to discover the width and depth of global social work education that is not evident in any other book. The book asks us to question our preconceptions about social work education, challenging us to consider its heterogeneous nature, its contextualised development, and colonial and post-colonial versions.” (Hugh McLaughlin, Professor of Social Work, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK)

“In our century—fraught as it is with rapid socioeconomic and technological change, not to forget unprecedented environmental challenges—a multifactorial analysis offered by this book opens new vistas for social work education.” (Vimla V. Nadkarni, Immediate Past President of the International Association of Schools of Social Work, and Former Dean of the School of Social Work, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India)

“This book is an important contribution to the body of literature not only on social work education, but social work and social development praxis. It has been written at a critical juncture when the world seems to be inundated with new and old threats such as inter alia: racism, xenophobia, gender-based violence, climate change, a migrant crisis, and reactionary politicians ascending to power in the traditional liberal democracies and in other parts of the globe. More than ever, social work education needs to adequately equip students with relevant knowledge and skills to respond to the aforementioned challenges. This book will be useful to educators, practitioners, policymakers, and students as it practically covers sixty chapters from forty-three countries located in different regions of the world.” (Ndangwa Noyoo, Head of the Department of Social Development, University of Cape Town, South Africa)

• Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India

  Sajid S.M.

• Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

  Rajendra Baikady

• Department of Social Work, Shandong University, Shandong, China

  Cheng Sheng-Li

• Department of Social Welfare, Ryukoku University, Kyoto, Japan

  Haruhiko Sakaguchi

Sajid S.M. is Professor in the Department of Social Work and former Pro-Vice Chancellor of Jamia Millia Islamia, India.

Rajendra Baikady is Golda Meir Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, and Senior Research Associate at University of Johannesburg, South Africa.

Cheng Sheng-Li is Professor in the Department of Social Work in the School of Philosophy and Social Development at Shandong University, China.

Haruhiko Sakaguchi is Professor in the Department of Social Welfare at Ryukoku University, Japan.

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