The Use of High-Impact Practices for Teaching Social Justice Content in Social Work Curriculum

Abstract

Social justice is an essential concept of the human service profession and a core value of the social work profession. In social work education, students acquire this knowledge through implicit and explicit curriculum. For example, students learn the concept and importance of social justice in the delivery of service in the core curriculum (i.e., human behavior, policy, research, and practice courses). This approach to learning new content is traditional in that students acquire this knowledge through readings, class discussions, and final term papers. An intentional and interactive instructional design such as high-impact practices (HIPs) may be more advantageous in teaching social justice content. Researchers used a mixed-method research design with a selfadministered survey to collect data from a convenience sample of 27 social work students on their perceptions of HIPs and its utility for advancing knowledge (awareness, understanding, and appreciation) of social justice. HIPs are teaching and learning strategies that have been proven to be beneficial to increasing students’ learning and retention of knowledge (Kuh & O’Donnell, 2013). This preliminary research strongly suggests that HIPs have an impact on participants' learning and, specifically, their understanding of social justice content for both micro issues to macro-level of concerns. Overall, students reported 1) HIPs had a significant influence on the acquisition of social justice content, and 2) having an overall positive experience with HIPs. It is recommended that faculty, regardless of discipline, explore the use of HIPs in facilitating discipline-specific knowledge.