SOSV3220 Social Work in a Global Context Emneplan

The aim of this course is to provide an understanding of the historical and contemporary context in which social work has been developed and is practised. The course will critically consider the Western, power-based knowledge and theoretical perspectives that inform and are reinforced in social work, and the influence this has globally. This will be considered through focus on decolonial history, intersectional perspectives and globalisation processes.

The course will also focus on how social work has been developed within specific contexts of practice. We will demonstrate how theory is connected to practice within social work. We use a case-based approach in which we explore social work, as practised in Norway and other countries, to demonstrate the importance of contextualisation as a framework for understanding social work theories and practice. Through an investigation of cases, we will also explore the ways in which practice reaffirms certain theories as ‘normal’ and ‘natural’.

The student must have passed all exams in the first and second year of the programme.

Aims of sustainable development are today broadly endorsed. For instance, the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals as well as the dominant forms of green and carbon-low transformations, are claimed as important by governments, corporations, celebrities, and even royal families. At the same time, global warming with its impacts on living conditions takes place at accelerating speed, while climate and environmental injustices grow. Meanwhile, income, wealth, and economic power is more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. Knowledge about the crisis, their causes, and the impacts of various solutions, tends to be unavailable or is inaccessible to most people, and that which is available tends to be based on an ecomodernist understanding grounded in marketisation, techno-optimism, eternal economic growth and the reduction of responsibilities to a matter of individual consumption choices. A premise of this PhD course is that in order to achieve fast and just transformations towards sustainable and low-carbon societies, citizens need knowledge and tools to understand the options and engage in suitable choices of development roads. Education stands as a social institution with the potential to make key contributions.

The course will critically examine the state of the art of present mainstream as well as critical alternatives to education about sustainability, climate crisis and environmental conflicts. Based on their own research topics, course participants will be encouraged to take part in discussing ways of drawing from combined insights from the cross-disciplinary field of political ecology, various other relevant traditions of critical empirical research, as well as critical education traditions.

This course will be taught in English.

Course context: This is the last instalment in a series of four Research Council of Norway-funded PhD courses, organized in conjunction with several Norwegian ‘nodes’ or member institutions in the international Political Ecology Network (POLLEN). Past courses in the series include Political Ecology of Pandemics (SUM/University of Oslo, 2021), Political Ecology of Scarcity, Limits, and Degrowth (Noragric/Norwegian University of Life Sciences, 2022), Political Ecology of Land and Food Systems (Department of Geography/University of Bergen, May-June 2023).

After completion of the course, the students will have acquired the following learning outcomes:

Knowledge

Students have knowledge of and insight into:

• political ecology in general and political ecology of education in particular
• green transformation alternatives and how they are or are not reflected in education approaches (including ecomodernism, the UN’s Agenda 2030 with the Sustainable Development Goals, and degrowth)
• approaches to reduce climate emissions and approaches of climate education, (ranging from mainstream to critical approaches)
• critical pedagogy / critical education (including the tradition following the work of Paulo Freire)

Skills

Students demonstrate their capacity to:

• competently understand, explain and critically discuss topics covered by the course
• competently examine how various development strategies and change options are aimed at different goals
• critically discuss consequences and alternatives to what students in a particular education are taught about sustainable or carbon-low transformation alternatives
• produce a paper relevant to course topics in accordance with the required academic standards

General competence

Students demonstrate their capacity to:

• explain and discuss the various approaches (and possible combinations) that are highlighted in the course
• further enhance their academic writing and presentation skills, leveraging feedback from both senior academic colleagues and early-career research peers

Students are expected to have read the syllabus before meeting at OsloMet for a four-day seminar.

At the seminar, lectures and keynotes will be given by leading contributors to the various course contents. In addition, PhD students will participate in three breakout sessions, during which they will receive feedback on course papers from designated lecturers and their peers. One of the teaching sessions will take place as a walk-and-talk along the river Akerselva.  A final plenary event (open also to other participants) will entail a keynote presentation by an internationally recognised contributor to elements of the course content. This will be followed by a roundtable discussion. The course will entail approximately 20-25 hours of teaching and seminar exercises.

In advance of the course, all participants must complete the following activities:

• Read the course syllabus (2-4 articles per lecture x 9 lectures in total, 250 - 350 pages of literature)
• Submit an outline to the course exam paper of 2000 - 2500 words plus reference list
• Read and prepare comments on the outlines of colleagues to be provided in breakout group sessions (about 3 PhD students and 1 lecturer/senior scholar per breakout group)

During the course week, full participation is required. If a participant has attended at least 75 % of the course but less than 90 %, they must submit an extra paper of at least 2,000 words plus a reference list on a given topic.

After the course, the students must meet the deadline for handing in a revision of their course paper of 3500 - 5000 words plus reference list.

New and postponed examination

In case of a failed exam/valid absence, the candidate may have a new exam under the same conditions when a new/postponed exam is arranged. If the paper is graded with "fail", the candidate must submit a revised version within a given time limit.

All aids are permitted, as long as the rules for source referencing are complied with.

The grades are "pass" or "fail". The requirement for "pass" is that the paper builds on insights from the course and that it meets ordinary academic standards for a course paper at PhD level.

Each exam paper will be evaluated by a committee of two examiners.