Preparing Social Workers for Environmental Sustainability

Background/Purpose: Research suggests environmental-related crises disproportionately affect vulnerable, marginalized, and oppressed populations, but social work largely ignores the natural environment. Recently attempts have been made to bring greater attention to environmental concerns within social work. The Grand Challenges for Social Work include Create Social Responses to a Changing Environment and the 2015 CSWE Education Policy and Accreditation Standards mandate that social workers Advance Environmental Justice. However, social work education has not incorporated environmental content to prepare practitioners to work for environmental sustainability. This study analyzed social work students’ attitudes toward the natural environment. Since attitudes are often a predictor of behavior, analyzing students’ attitudes toward the environment may assist in developing curriculum on environmental justice within social work education.

 

Methods: This study employed a cross-sectional survey design using the New Environmental Paradigm Scale (NEPS) and 8 new questions regarding the intersection of social work and the natural environment. A convenience sample of 112 social work students was recruited via email. Ages ranged from 18 to 65 years with a mean age of 32.7; 86.6% identified female; 61.6% identified Caucasian/White; and 69.9% were M.S.W. The NEPS was used as a single-scoring instrument after the reversal of scores for even-numbered questions and scores were examined based on demographics. The higher the NEPS score, the more “pro-environment” the attitude. The additional survey questions were analyzed individually. A non-parametric two-way ANOVA analysis was used to compare between demographics and the average NEPS scores and additional survey questions.

 

Results: Analysis revealed the overall average NEPS score were slightly lower in this sample compared to previous studies. The youngest age group had the lowest pro-environment scores, but also scored as feeling the least informed on environmental issues. African-American participants’ scored low on feeling informed on environmental issues, feeling that human interference with the environment results in disastrous consequence, and disagreed that Earth has limited room and resources. The Caucasian/White group slightly agreed with feeling informed with environmental issues, but feels technology and human intelligence is helpful for the environment, which research shows is not necessarily the case at this time. Over half the respondents did not know where to find information on environmental issues. Only 3 respondents believe social workers do not need to know about environmental issues. All respondents agreed environmental issues affect the population’s social workers serve.

 

Implications: This study shows overall social work students want to know more about environmental issues, understand that environmental issues affect vulnerable populations, and believe that more knowledge about the environment would help them become better social workers. There are some misconceptions of the environment within this sample and it will be important for social work education to address these. Attitudes toward the environment varied greatly between ethnicities so it will be important to provide environmental justice curriculum with cultural considerations in mind. Developing research on practical methods of incorporating environmental education in social work curriculum can help social work students in the future decrease some of the inconsistencies exposed within this research study.