Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2011
Publication Title
Social Work Education
Volume
30
Issue
7
Pages
861-873
Publisher Name
Taylor and Francis
Abstract
Current social work education in India reflects globalization priorities and tendencies of neo-colonialism that emulate curriculum priorities and duplicate content developed in countries like the USA. Social work education as implemented by countries like the USA, has limited success in transnational training of social workers and their ability to address emerging social problems and deep rooted structural imbalances within non-USA social contexts. Yet, the concept of the world being an emerging global village is used to justify and reaffirm the colonial goals of universal education and pedagogies within social work and its application to starkly different contexts, such as India. This paper argues against the imperialist nature of social work education through examples from social work syllabi from Indian schools of social work. Secondly, this paper examines the role of academic collaborations and international organizations in addressing the challenges in curriculum development. Finally, through an example from a Curriculum Development Project undertaken in a sub-Saharan African country by one of the authors, the paper demonstrates ways of generating more local content for curricula that would create culturally sensitive social services.
Recommended Citation
Singh, S., Gumz, E. J., & Crawley, B. C. (2011). Predicting India’s Future: Does it Justify the Exportation of US Social Work Education? Social Work Education, 30(7), 861–873. https://doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2010.515303
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Copyright Statement
© Taylor and Francis, 2010.
Comments
Author Posting © Taylor and Francis, 2010. This is an Accepted Manuscript version of the following article, accepted for publication in Social Work Education. Singh, S., Gumz, E. J., & Crawley, B. C. (2011). Predicting India’s Future: Does It Justify the Exportation of US Social Work Education? Social Work Education, 30(7), 861–873. It is deposited under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.