Social Justice Identity Among MSW Students

Background

Social work programs are designed not only to help individuals acquire theoretical and practical knowledge and skills, but also become active participants to make a difference in individuals and society. National Association of Social Work (NASW) places a great emphasis on the professionals’ embodiment of social justice values for the disenfranchised (Bradley, Maschi, O'Brien, Morgen, & Ward, 2012).  Both the NASW’s Code of Ethics and the Council on Social Work Education’s (CSWE) Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) identify social justice as an important value to be developed among social work professionals at any level (CSWE, 2008; NASW, 2008).  Thus, the commitment to social justice values must be an integral component to the social work curricula (Kirk & Reid, 2002).

Students enter an educational process with preconceived ideas about people and environment around them.  Professional education often confronts such attitudes, and reshaping of identity essentially occurs in the professional identity development (Bell & Allain, 2011). Students proceed from classrooms to fields with values that encompass their professional identity (Watson & West, 2008). Therefore, social work educators need to understand values students hold when they enter the program and how closely their values are to the professional standards.

Methods

Major purposes of this study were (1) to examine soicial justice values among Master of Social Work (MSW) students and  (2) to see how different traditional face-to-face and totally online students were in terms of their social justice values at an early stage of their education. After the approval was obtained from our Institutional Review Board, data were collected from our MSW students enrolled in the introductory social work class of their very first semester. Online surveys were distributed at the beginning of the fall semester in 2014. Of 64 students who returned the completed survey, 46 students (72%) were in the traditional face-to-face course while 18 students (28%) were in the totally online course. The surveys included questions regarding basic demographics (e.g., years of social work experience) and 50 items related to professional identity.

Results

Students with six or more years of experience in the social work field prior to entering the MSW program were less likely to agree with statements related social justice attitude and a person-in-environment viewpoint than students newer to the field. Moreover, students in the traditional face-to-face program were more likely to agree with statements related social justice and social responsibility than students in the online format. 

Implications

Students who entered the MSW program after having worked in the profession for a number of years seemed less likely to agree with attitudes toward social justice than students with less experience in the field.  This is particularly an important finding for social work educators to consider. When creating curricula, educators need to revisit the new Core Practice Behaviors of CSWE’s EPAS so as to ensure students graduating with MSW enter the field becoming socially minded and working toward advocacy for social justice for the disenfranchised.