Mapping the Evolution of Gerontological Education in Social Work: A Scoping Review

Background: Gerontological social work struggles with a shrinking workforce despite growing demand. Prior research with schools of social work has found programs struggle to maintain enrollment in aging-related minors, concentrations, or certificate programs. These pressures come during an unprecedented period in higher education marked by financial instability, enrollment decline, and political and regulatory pressure. Sustaining and fostering interest in gerontological social work remains a persistent, long-term challenge. Considering the workforce’s present precarity and the complexity surrounding the need to innovate in gerontological social work education, this scoping review aims to identify and synthesize literature focused on social work’s vision for the provision of gerontological education.

Methods: An a priori protocol leveraging the Population-Concept-Context framework was developed. Inclusion criteria included opinion or review-style publications written in English published in social work journals or by a first author with a faculty appointment in a school of social work, discussing the concept of advancing gerontological social work education in the U.S. A search strategy was developed for all databases available via Boston College libraries for literature published before 1967. For literature published after 1967, the search was restricted to databases with relevant disciplinary focus (e.g., AgeLine). A modified template developed by Schaub et al. (2022) was used to extract data, focusing on author, year of publication, purpose, methods, findings, and recommendations.

Findings: Of the 229 results acquired using the established search strategy, 65 were eligible for inclusion in this review. The majority of articles focused on critical recommendations for the field moving forward, frequently connecting their vision propositions with the state of gerontological social work practice at the time. This focus on contextualizing gerontological social work education into direct social work practice is important, but also skewed visions towards a clinical or micro lens in its approach, leaving out potential job functions at the macro-level of social work practice with broader potential appeal to social work students. A minority of scholars asserted social work has failed to fully embrace a vision for gerontological social work education. The discipline’s vision for gerontological education has long grappled with key issues such as: increasing demand for social workers with gerontological expertise, advocacy for increasingly progressive changes in the field, and ongoing pressure to preserve the discipline’s expertise despite greater multidisciplinary collaboration pressure in higher education. Articles reviewed lacked use of multicultural or intersectional theory and discussions about the intersection of technology and gerontological social work, which would potentially strengthen our understanding of this issue as students become increasingly diverse and technology-savvy.

Conclusion: This scoping review begins to amalgamize a discipline’s vision to address a long-term problem – safeguarding the solvency of and ensuring gerontological education has a future in schools of social work. Implications of this review for social work education and the AASWSW’s Grand Challenge to advance long and productive lives, such as the opportunity for social work to lead and develop school or university-wide gerontological curricula or advocate for organizational policies and programs incentivizing cross-department and cross-degree program collaboration will be discussed.