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Dorothea C. Spellman (1907–1979) headed the group work specialization at the Graduate School of Social Work, University of Denver. Her primary contributions were in group work and as an advocate for a unified profession.

A great deal of scholarship informs the idea that specific teacher preparation is required for working in high-poverty schools. Many teacher-education programs do not focus exclusively on poverty. However, a growing body of research emphasizes how crucial it is that teachers understand the backgrounds and communities in which young people and their families live, especially if they are to teach equitably, without bias, and with a critical understanding of historical educational disadvantage. Research on teacher education for high-poverty schools is largely associated with social-justice education and premised on two key assumptions. The first is that teachers do make a difference and should be encouraged to see themselves as agents of change. The second is that without nuanced knowledge of poverty and disadvantage, and especially its intersection with race, teachers are prepared as though all students and all communities have equal social advantage. Through targeted teacher education, social justice teachers aquire the knowledge, skills and attributes to understand what they can and cannot do. Teachers with strong communities of practice and agency can resist the idea that they can eradicate poverty on their own, but can enact teaching in ways that are equitable and respectful, culturally responsive and safe. It is increasingly possible to observe how debates propose or challenge how preservice teachers should learn about high-poverty contexts. There are also numerous models, globally, of what works in preparing teachers for high-poverty schools; however, providing evidence or proving how specialized teacher preparation affects the educational outcomes of high-poverty students is difficult.

The relationships between curriculum studies and qualitative inquiry are built upon similar trajectories and theoretical concerns. There are key points in the histories of both of these inter/trans(un)disciplinary fields, the work of certain scholars working in both, and shared concerns. Historically, the lineage of curriculum studies and qualitative inquiry intersect around a shared investigation of education, specifically in schools. Of note is the common turn away from (post)positivism and an attentiveness to emic forms of inquiry that seek to understand from the inside out. Some commonalities include, but are not limited to, currere, duoethnography, autobiography, and broader qualitative research. Comparing the journey of curriculum studies and its qualitative forms of inquiry to traveling through the universe, travel begins on a home planet, reaching the farthest reaches of spaces, but a return is required, or at the very least, eventually inevitable. In the case of curriculum studies, explorers return to curriculum and, therefore, education. As curriculum has expanded beyond questions of knowledge to include the lives of those experiencing curriculum, qualitative inquiry has been a constant and loyal companion forging a journey that does not require one land at the place from which one launched.

Carl A. Scott (1928–1986) was assistant professor at the New York University School of Social Work. As a senior consultant on minority groups at the Council on Social Work Education he developed programs directed toward enhancing minority presence in curricula.

Norma Parker (1906–2004) is generally regarded as one of the founders of social work in Australia. In 1925, she completed a BA at the University of Western Australia (UWA), where she was introduced to the idea of social work by the head of psychology at the university. She was instrumental in establishing the national social work association and was involved in setting up the first social work (almoner) departments at several key hospitals as well as inducing the Catholic Archbishop to establish the Catholic Social Service Bureau. She was a key player among a small group of Catholic visionaries keen to develop a professional occupation specializing in helping people with their social functioning, following the upheavals of postwar Australia.

Elma Francois (1897–1944) was renowned for her Afro-Caribbean activism against the deplorable living conditions of the poor in the British colonies of the English-speaking Caribbean. She led many public demonstrations to highlight the plight of persons living in poverty. She made her greatest contribution as one of the first women in the trade union movement in Trinidad. Francois worked as a community organizer in grass-roots communities, educating persons about the importance of exercising their voices. Her approach to community organizing followed what has been taught about Jane Addams’ Settlement House Movement, where she immersed herself in communities and built strong relationships with members so she could really understand their plight and so gain their trust. Unlike Addams, Francois was from a very deprived background and was not formally educated. She is renowned as the first woman to be charged and acquitted for sedition in Trinidad during the rise of the trade union movement.

A hallmark of the social work profession is the emphasis on social justice for all. A call to action for social workers is to understand the needs of racial and ethnic groups in order to provide effective interventions. Latina/os are a heterogeneous and highly complex population that presents the social work profession with challenges in understanding diversity and what constitutes culturally and linguistically competent social work interventions. Latina/os are the second-fastest-growing racial and ethnic group in the United States. Latina/o groups must contend with strong anti-immigrant sentiment, English-only legislation, and increased discrimination and racism in the United States. Social workers need to work to reduce both external and internal institutional barriers to service delivery for Latina/os while responding effectively to their interpersonal and familial needs.

Reproductive health endeavors in regard to prevention, treatment, and emerging disparities and inequities like lack of access to comprehensive and equitable reproductive health for immigrants and LGBTQ+ populations are discussed. Practice-based approaches for reproductive health justice and access care models, to advance reproductive justice, are included. Implications for macro social work practice and historical perspectives, practices, and social movements of reproductive health justice in the United States to promote reproductive health justice in the context of political, legal, health, and social justice efforts are salient to advance social justice.

Social work and social policy are intertwined in the Republic of Namibia and heavily influenced by its complex colonial sociopolitical history, struggle for human rights, and progress toward social development. These factors inform how the social and human needs of Namibians are being met. A human rights lens was adopted in 1990 by a democratic government that guided the delivery of social services to a diverse ethnic population. Namibia has successfully integrated social work into its society, supported by (a) a social justice mandate, (b) a capacity-building framework, and (c) Vision 2030. Social and human service needs are provided naturally by indigenous families and communities, and formal services are provided by governmental and nongovernmental agencies. This article consists of an overview of the socio-historical and political contexts of social work and social policies in this emerging democracy, along with special attention to four challenging and interrelated areas of social work practice including poverty, language and national identity, intergenerational caregiving and the Coronavirus pandemic.

The National Association of Social Workers affirms a social worker’s responsibility to social change and social justice on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed peoples. Because of this directive around social justice, it is the profession’s responsibility to make connections among individual human rights issues within the broader social, economic, and cultural contexts that create conditions where injustice can take place. Social workers in the 21st century, especially those working at the policy or macro level, must be able to recognize and emphasize human rights in their practice and policy recommendations on local, national, and international levels. Social workers can bring attention to the need to craft solutions to human rights violations that take into account global human rights standards.

Language mediates every aspect of social work, and the ability to communicate effectively with and about clients is a paramount responsibility that rests with the social worker. This responsibility extends to clients who do not speak, understand, read, or write fluently in the dominant language, either because they speak other languages or because of communication-related disabilities. This category may include individuals with learning disabilities, speech disorders, aphasia, autism spectrum disorders, specific language impairment, and physical impairments that impact language production, among other conditions. Primary concerns include disparities in access to services; the need for training on working with interdisciplinary teams; minimizing bias, micro-aggressions, and stereotyping; and issues related to translation, interpretation, and intercultural communication. In addition to these concerns, linguistically diverse populations are often excluded from research, resulting in gaps in knowledge about their needs. Service accommodations for language minorities tend to focus on translation and interpretation; however, research suggests that social workers also need to understand and guard against unconscious bias, and learn to use affirmative language to support the well-being of clients rather than pathologizing them. Clients with communication disabilities, on the other hand, may have distinct or overlapping needs, and service organizations rarely address the language support needs of these two populations within one unified framework. Service providers may waste precious time and effort navigating multiple, overlapping policy directives. Information on the policy context in the United States and the European Union related to language rights and language access provides a background for this topic.

This entry discusses the relationship of war and peace to social work practice. The historic and current mandate for social workers to work for peace is presented. The inevitable tie of war to everyday social work practice is described, and the relationship between social justice and peace is illustrated.

Daniel S. Sanders (1928–1989) was an educator and a leader in the field of international social work. Perhaps more than any other social worker, he promoted the social development perspective and encouraged social work educators to consider social development approaches.

In social work practice, our ability to demonstrate culturally responsive service delivery has become a perennial challenge. The rapidly changing landscape in the context of cultural and linguistic diversity makes the urgency of establishing culturally inclusive professional practice more necessary. Evidence of its importance can be found in federal directives, state mandates and professional best practice guidelines that are undergirded by a recognition that responsive practice requires an awareness of cultural influences and manifest differences. This is particularly important as efforts to more fully engage with culturally responsive practice coincides with the push for a higher standard for professional caring to be culturally relevant. From a basic social science-informed perspective, culturally based experiences vary in such profound ways, both within and across groups and communities, that limiting practice to common or core sets of cultural meanings or shared practices for practice purposes merely minimizes the complexity of culture. Cultural experiences are experienced and expressed in complex and dynamic ways, and how cultural differences become framed has major implications for how they become recognized and incorporated into socially just practice. Various approaches to cultural sensitivity and institutional attachments appear in the literature although there is a particular need to uncover the many ways that a focus on cultural competence may impair our ability to embrace the ambiguity and uncertainty of cultural differences. Cultural humility offers a perspective that invites tolerance, inclusion, and diversity while promoting transformation, facilitation, and collaboration in knowledge development and in the search for cultural relevance in its social work application. It is a perspective that ultimately invites the sharing of both social opportunities and social fate, and is at the core of socially just empowerment

Women seem barely visible in the lively Australian literary scene of the 1950s and 1960s. Popular wisdom has it that after the war women were sent home and imprisoned in domesticity, but this was not entirely true. Significant numbers earned a living, and gained popular success, writing historical fiction, children’s stories, feature journalism, and radio and television scripts, but the growing separation of literary from popular writing meant that their work lacked serious critical attention, and still does. Others did not achieve publication for years, while those who did were rarely recognized as significant artists. As a writing generation, these women, in particular the novelists, were eclipsed from view, both at the time and in subsequent histories. One reason for this is that they tended to be detached from prevailing debates about national identity and from traditional Left-Right oppositions. Their sense of the social responsibility of writers led them to explore topics and ideas that were outside the postwar political mainstream, such as conservation, peace, civil liberties, and Indigenous rights. Four case studies offer some illustration of the range of literary activities undertaken by these women writers, and allow a consideration of the ways in which they engaged with their social and cultural milieux: Kylie Tennant (1912–1988), Nancy Cato (1917–2000), Judith Wright (1915–2000), and Kath Walker/Oodgeroo Noonuccal (1920–1993).

There are a variety of ways in which teachers engage in activism. Teachers working for social change within their classrooms and teachers who engage in advocacy and organize to influence policy, law, and society are all doing work that falls under the umbrella of teacher activism. While there are numerous catalysts, many teachers become activists when they encounter unjust educational or social structures. There are also considerable obstacles to teachers recognizing their potential power as activists. From the gendered history of teaching to the widespread conception of teaching as a solitary and not a collective enterprise, there is rarely an easy path toward activism. The importance of collective as opposed to individual social action among teachers is increasingly recognized. Many cities now have teacher activist organizations, a group of which have come together and created a national coalition of teacher activist groups. Overall, teacher activism is an underresearched and undertheorized academic area of study. Possibilities for collective action should be fully explored.

Multiculturalism is a broad term that encapsulates a number of idealistic constructs related to inclusion, understanding the diverse experiences of others, and creating equitable access to resources and opportunity in our society. Social justice activism is a core tenet of multiculturalism. In order to be optimally effective, multiculturalism needs to be an “action word” rather than a passive construct, one that is inextricably linked to the ability to commit to and engage in an agenda of social justice wherein the inclusive ideals of multiculturalism are actively sought out and fought for. One such domain where the constructs of multiculturalism and social action are playing out in real time is within U.S. sport. U.S. athletes across all ranks (i.e., Olympic, professional, college, and youth sports) are actively engaging in social justice activism by using their platforms to advocate for equality and human rights. A recent display of activism that has garnered worldwide attention was the silent protest of former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick. During the National Football League (NFL) preseason games of the 2016 season, Kaepernick began kneeling during the playing of the U.S. national anthem as a means to protest racial injustice, police brutality, and the killing of African Americans. Since the start of his protest, athletes around the nation and the world have joined the activist–athlete movement, thereby raising awareness of the mistreatment of African Americans within U.S. society. The activist–athlete movement has amassed support and generated momentum, but consulting sport psychology professionals can adopt a more active role to better support athletes, thereby advancing the movement. Consulting sport psychologists can strive to better understand the nature of athlete-activism and aspire to help their athlete clients explore and express their opinions so they can work to effect meaningful societal change, using sport as the vehicle for their message.

Social Justice is a term that encapsulates many of the problematic issues concerning modern societies. As a reflection of society, the concept has evolved to emphasize different aspects of fairness such as distribution or recognition. One often tacit but central element in this discussion is the articulation of social justice with the development of equitable education systems. In other words, what it means to pursue social justice in educational change and improvement. To address this question, contemporary ideas of social justice can be brought into the field of educational change and improvement in a more intentional and explicit way to respond to the societal imperatives for justice in education. By tracing the evolution of the key conceptualizations of social justice rooted in political philosophy, it is possible to examine its implications for educational and systemic transformation. Furthermore, from a systems perspective, understanding the ecology of equity can offer important insights into the interplay between schools, education systems, and wider society. The exploration of experiences and approaches in education that aim to disrupt inequities can be used to propose a number of key principles to guide educational change efforts from a social justice perspective, aiming to foster more equitable educational systems. These principles serve to unpack issues of social justice and move to a more complex and action-oriented perspective that places distribution, recognition, and representation as key to developing more equitable education systems. The six principles are: a focus on learning and teaching; a commitment to collaboration and networking; the use of inquiry, research, and evidence; understanding the contextual nature of justice; investing in support and agency; and building leadership capacity. The notion of a networked learning system and how this perspective can advance the discourse toward a more explicit agenda for developing socially just approaches in educational research, policymaking, and practice is also helpful. The overarching goal is to stimulate dialogue and action aimed at creating more equitable educational systems that prioritize social justice principles in all facets of education.

Human development as a concept seeks to make individuals the driving force behind state development. Even though international organizations (IOs) are formal agreements by and for the benefit of member states and have historically prioritized states’ interests, it can still be argued that human beings have long been the central concern of many IOs, even for some of the oldest surviving ones today. Nowadays, the human development framework appears to serve as the principal intellectual and normative construct regarding how to achieve national economic growth while building broad social justice and opportunity for individuals. Its allure derives as much from its coherent philosophical critique of past empirical development failures as it does from its incorporation of values and ethics appealing to a broad spectrum of professionals working in the development community. The human development approach was in part necessitated by the monopolization of economic development by states even from the advent of the enterprise in the 1950s. But despite the widespread adoption of the human development framework as an operative concept in the practice of development, it is not without controversy. Most of the critique is directed toward the underlying premises of the capabilities approach and the elements its adherents must elucidate in order to effectively implement its tenets in policy.