"There Should be Social Work Historians Teaching the Class and then Doing That Research": Student Perspectives of Historical Social Work Education

Background and Purpose: Historical social work research plays an invaluable role in shaping the perception and trajectory of the profession. In addition to serving as the great contextualizing force aiding social workers as they “make sense” of the world, history provides the capacity to challenge false societal narratives, enhancing social workers’ ability to innovatively address social issues. Possessing the skills to critically navigate the historical record can be a formidable tool in challenging the status quo and advocating for societal change. Despite its importance, historical social work scholarship remains scarce. While some attention has been focused on the need for social work faculty to address this deficiency in the academy, limited research has been conducted to understand the perspective of social work students. This study explored the attitudes of future social workers to gain a deeper understanding of how curriculum may be improved to advance historical social work education and scholarship.

Methods: This study utilized semi-structured interviews with eight current social work students at the bachelors, masters, and PhD level at a four-year university in western Pennsylvania. Interview topics included classroom experience, professor interactions, course content, applicability to social work practice, future career and educational opportunities, and suggestions for course improvement. Interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed in NVivo using Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis protocol.

Results: All participants expressed the importance of learning social work/welfare history—primarily to learn from the past mistakes of the profession—while simultaneously identifying several key challenges to engagement with historical content. Dense and lecture heavy classes, limited opportunities for discussion and collaboration, and the lack of clearly defined relevance for social work practice served as barriers to student learning. Additionally, an instructor’s teaching style, professional expertise, and approach toward students were influential for how participants perceived the class and engaged in coursework. Participants expressed frustration with the lack of historical methodological instruction, particularly for doctoral level classes. Finally, participants reported limited exposure, if any, to social work instructors engaged in historical research and received scant information regarding historical career or scholarship opportunities.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings indicate the importance of social work/welfare history instruction making a strong connection between course content and social work practice and scholarship. Student suggestions for improving this link include classroom environments which value collaborative and activity centered instruction, greater methodological training, and the assignment of instructors with expertise in historical content and methods. These findings support a shift in course framing from one that focuses primarily on the mistakes of past social workers, to one that also incorporates lessons regarding the progressive, justice-oriented approaches still applicable today. While students support stand-alone historical social work instruction, the findings demonstrate a need for schools of social work to better draw the connections between history and practice and provide exposure to the possibilities of history centered social work.