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Motivation to Teach Social Action:
As a social work educator, clinician, and scholar, I am particularly interested in developing learning experiences that help students move beyond understanding social justice conceptually and toward identifying how they can participate in meaningful social change. Social work education provides an important opportunity to help students recognize the relationship between individual experiences and larger systems, policies, and institutional practices.
I am interested in this program because it would provide me with a structured framework for integrating social action more intentionally into my teaching. I would like to strengthen my ability to design experiential assignments that allow students to identify community or institutional concerns, examine systems of power and inequity, collaborate with others, and develop actionable strategies for change.
As I continue to grow as a social work educator, I am also excited about learning alongside other faculty who are committed to preparing students to become thoughtful, culturally responsive, and engaged practitioners. I hope to leave the program with practical tools and a framework that I can incorporate into my current and future social work courses.
Course Description:
This course prepares social work students to move from understanding social injustice to actively participating in meaningful social change. Students will examine how power, privilege, oppression, culture, policy, and institutional practices shape the experiences of individuals, families, groups, and communities. Grounded in social work values and culturally responsive, anti-oppressive practice, the course will explore advocacy, community engagement, coalition building, ethical leadership, and strategies for creating systemic change.
A central component of the course will be an experiential social action project in which students identify a social or institutional issue, examine its root causes and impact, engage relevant stakeholders, and collaboratively develop and implement a strategy for change. Students will be encouraged to connect direct practice with broader systems-level intervention and consider how social workers can use their professional roles to advance equity and social justice.
Taught By:
La'Toya Edwards
Visiting Assistant Professor
Social Work
Grand View University
Read profile here.