Social Work and Technology: Shifting the Discourse for Empowered Socio-Technical Literacy

The Grand Challenges signify the increasing complexity of social work's research and practice landscape. The blurring and near elimination of borders that has rendered the world a global and eco-socio-technical space deepens the complexity of the challenges, but it also creates a proving ground for innovation toward change. The magnitude of the grand challenges, and in particular achieving equal opportunity, equity, and justice in the context of these challenges, makes it clear that the greatest potential to address them, let alone sustainably, requires interprofessional collaboration. This round table leverages an ongoing collaboration between social work and engineering, and rests on the assumption that the grand challenges can and should be conceptualized as inherently socio-technical.

Steeped in a rapidly shifting socio-technical context then, there is acknowledgement that “social work scholars and practitioners remain hesitant to drive and fully embrace” technological advancement (Berzin, Singer, & Chan, 2015, p. 3). We argue that technology is everywhere, so the environment within which all systems are nested cannot be fully understood in the absence of an informed socio-technical lens. Remaining hesitant in the face of this socio-technical environment could disempower the profession, and inhibit its capacity to effectively address the grand challenges of the 21st century context. In order to embrace opportunities for the profession to develop its relationship to technology, it is essential to spark new conversation to ultimately shift the discourse.

This round table session will prompt dialogue about the intersections of social work and technology, moving beyond data management and internet communication technologies, expanding the way in which technology itself is defined and understood. Presenters will first offer up a picture of the current social work and technology discourse informed by the results of a scoping study of the literature in this area, which suggested that the discourse is characterized by the idea that the increasing presence of technology is inevitable, and is something the profession has to cope with; the tone of the discourse is generally reactive. Grounded in this understanding, the presenters will then focus particular attention on expanding how we think about technology in and for social work. They will provide opportunities for participants to consider examples of the intersections of social work and technology that focus on socio-technological literacy, embedded technologies, the impact of technological contexts on client systems and exploring the potential for the profession to embrace a role of empowered agency in socio-technical developments. Presenters will use applied examples to launch a dialogue among participants to stimulate thinking, and promote a different kind of understanding about the challenges and essential opportunities that are embedded in the nexus of social work and technology. Participants will be invited to consider how this different way of defining the relationship between social work and technology can catalyze opportunities for research, practice, and policy.