ABSTRACT
Climate change poses significant threat to the wellbeing of global society. Addressing this
change has as yet generated no fixed blueprint for social work practice and education. This
paper reports on a formative evaluation of one Australian initiative to address this
transformative opening in social work field education. Prompted by service users’ and
workers’ experience of the impact of drought, a rurally located social work course team
amended the field education curriculum to include a focus on Environment and
Sustainability. This learning goal was added to the existing learning goals derived from
the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Practice Standards. Students and
field supervisors were surveyed on their experience of meeting this new learning goal.
While most expressed confidence in understanding the concepts involved, they clearly
lacked assurance in interpreting these in practice encounters. Considering their qualitative
input suggests that this topic is making a transition from being on the margins of social
work to becoming mainstream. Their open-ended responses indicate that the
incorporation of environmental sustainability into practice is at a threshold stage of
development. Further enactment of eco-social work at the local level is concluded to be
supported by using a transformative learning framework in facilitating critical reflection
and collaborative dialogue for effective change.
