Developing a Poverty-Aware Pedagogy: From Paradigm to Reflexive Practice in Post-Academic Social Work Education

Abstract

Social work scholars have argued that poverty reminds us of the necessary commitment to educate professional social workers. Being inspired by a conceptual framework that captures how poverty-awareness can be the subject of teaching in social work programmes, this article offers a qualitative analysis of the reflections being made by a cohort of students about their learning process in a post-academic course. Five common themes are discussed: (i) from recognising micro-aggressions to tackling macro-aggressions; (ii) poverty is an instance of social injustice and requires collective indignation; (iii) notions of commitment and solidarity are ambiguous; (iv) poverty is an instance of social inequality rather than merely social exclusion; and (v) from being heroic agents to social change ‘from within’. Based on these findings, we raise the lessons learned for social work educators. First, they should invite students to reinvigorate the social justice aspirations of social work practices and take a stance in relation to their environment and the wider historical and socio-political circumstances. Secondly, a poverty-aware pedagogy requires collective and long-lasting supervision at the frontline individual, organisational and societal/social policy level. Collective critical reflection and supervision might open up avenues to collectively challenge and change socially unjust rhetoric and practice.

Service users' perspectives of social treatment in social service departments in Israel: Differences between standard and poverty‐aware treatments

“…The disparity found in the satisfaction levels of the two standard treatment groups, the difference between them being the PAP training and supervision that the SWs were given, testifies to the contribution of this training to practice. PAP training and supervision focus on recognising how poverty in shaping the everyday lives of SUs, their agency and their knowledge (Lister, 2004) and on challenging the role of social control that SWs fulfil and the power relations inherent in the helping relationship (Krumer‐Nevo, Weiss‐Gal, & Monnickendam, 2009; Roets et al, 2020). This finding adds to the current calls (Frank et al., 2019; Smith‐Carrier, Leacy, Bouck, Justrabo, & Decker Pierce, 2019) for the development of poverty‐aware training competent to deconstruct prevalent hegemonic attitudes, to work against the othering of people in poverty and to develop social empathy in social work practice.…”