Transformative Social Work

Transformative approaches to social work have been popular for some time. Most discussions of this perspective, however, focus on actual practice with clients or service users, not educational contexts. In addition, there is often a lack of clarity about what “transformative” really means, both in theory and in practice.This book brings together a range of contributors to reconsider transformative social work, focusing on concrete examples in academic settings both inside and outside the classroom. They illustrate theories and practices of transformative social work in the academy in detail from different standpoints. Chapters by scholars of all career stages, students, staff, and managers consider all aspects of academic work—teaching and learning, research, and administration—as well as labor that academics perform outside the university. Authors describe their understanding of a transformative perspective as well as the practices that flow from this conception, providing rich detail on how a transformative approach can be implemented.This book stands out for the breadth of its focus, its international contributions, and its openness about the new challenges involved in doing transformative work today. It develops an expansive and systematic understanding of what “transformative” can mean across the entire academic and professional context of social work education.

This book provides innovative ideas about how to practice creatively to transform lives. It shows how social workers engage their persona, their qualities, and their skills in a reflective relationship with both people and organizations. The contributions explore the details of this transformative practice in diverse social work projects in several countries., In Transformative Social Work, Jan Fook and Danielle Jatlow provide a comprehensive and insightful guide for applying a transformative perspective to all aspects of academic social work, including administration, curriculum design, pedagogy, research, practice, and field education. This book fills a significant gap in the field by bringing together national and international perspectives on the topic and providing specific examples for building a transformative academic culture., Luminous and illuminating, this vital resource exemplifies the finest qualities of social work scholarship today. Aligning with ecological, decolonial, and lived-experience-led scholarship, deeply personal accounts of transformative social work weave vision and values to ignite and sustain social change. Comprising robust theoretical and practical insights, this work provides embodied, contextualized, and reflective perspectives that enable readers to reevaluate their relationship with themselves, others, and the social work profession.

Jan Fook is professor and chair of the Department of Social Work at the University of Vermont. She is an internationally recognized scholar who has held academic positions at universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Norway. She has published extensively on various topics including practice research, critical reflection, and critical social work.Danielle Jatlow is a lecturer and the program coordinator of the BSW program in the Department of Social Work at the University of Vermont. She has worked with adolescents, young adults, and their families for more than eighteen years as a social work practitioner. Jatlow is currently a PhD student at Simmons University.