ABSTRACT
In the current context of the neoliberal subordination of social work education and practice to market demands and public austerity, this chapter argues that there is an urgent need for ‘critical pedagogies’ in social work education, enabling practitioners to understand and respond effectively to the conditions (many of them global in scope) that give rise to so much avoidable suffering in the lives of the people we work with. This chapter traces the historical development of critical pedagogy and its anchorage in critical theory, highlighting their potential to reinvigorate social work education as an emancipatory practice. This chapter also introduces The Routledge Handbook of Critical Pedagogies for Social Work as part of an alternative or ‘counter-hegemonic’ vision of the fundamental role of social work and related professions to how they are currently framed by neoliberal governments. As such, the collection is presented as a catalyst for mobilising resistance to dominant and destructive social trends by addressing the lack of critical theorising around pedagogy within social work, and offering educational alternatives to work toward a more socially just world.
