Welcome to Social Work Teach
Podcast Episode Show Notes
How to cite/reference this podcast episode: Fox, M. (Host & Producer), Joseph, B. L. (Host & Producer), Murphy, L. (Producer) & Stech, J. (Producer). (2026, March 31). Welcome to Social Work Teach (Season No. 1, Episode No. 0)[Audio podcast episode]. In Social Work Teach. Social Work Media. https://socialwork.media/socialworkteach/episode0
Episode Title: Welcome to Social Work Teach
Release Date: 31 March 2026
Duration: 5 minutes
Music: ‘Mopeds’ by Beat Mekanik (Licence: CC 4.0 International)
Produced by: Dr Ben Joseph (Western Sydney University), Professor Mim Fox (University of Wollongong), Lis Murphy and Justin Stech
Episode Host(s): Professor Mim Fox (University of Wollongong) and Dr Ben Joseph (Western Sydney University)
Episode Guest(s): Professor Donna McAuliffe (Griffith University), Professor Robyn Martin (RMIT University), Dr Margaret Spencer (University of Sydney), and Dr Joel Hollier (University of Sydney)
Episode Overview: The Social Work Teach podcast, produced by Social Work Media, explores the pedagogy and practice of social work education. Hosts for this episode, Dr Ben Joseph and Prof. Mim Fox, discuss the challenges of teaching new subjects, emphasizing the need for up-to-date scholarship and effective pedagogy. They feature insights from experienced educators, highlighting the importance of relational social work, the parallel process in teaching, and the transformative nature of social work education. They emphasise that each episode includes resources and long-form interviews with social work education leaders. The podcast aims to support current and future social workers and educators.
Podcast Episode Transcript
Dr Ben Joseph 00:14
You're listening to Social Work Teach. Social Work Teach dives into the pedagogy and practice that social work educators use to teach skills, knowledge and values, both in the classroom and in the field. This podcast aims to explore what, how and why we teach what we teach. Throughout these episodes, you'll hear from experienced educators, you'll hear from curious educators, and you'll hear from students in the midst of their studies. Once you listen to the episode, make sure you have a look at the episode show notes, where we identify a number of different resources to help you do your own deep dive into the topic and give you a way to start enacting the pedagogy that you've been hearing about. Social Work Teach is a Social Work Media production. We acknowledge the Traditional owners of the unceded lands these recordings have been made on, and pay respects to elders past and present, and acknowledge ongoing First Nations sovereignty.
Prof. Mim Fox 01:28
Welcome everyone to Social Work Teach. I'm Professor Mim Fox, and I'm really pleased in this series to be here talking all things social work education.
Dr Ben Joseph 01:36
I'm Dr Ben Joseph. In this series, I want to explore how social work pedagogy happens and what it looks like in action, or what needs to be included in the classroom. Do you remember Mim having to teach a new subject for the first time? It's hard, right?
Prof. Mim Fox 01:52
It really is hard Ben, not only you having to become an expert in a variety of topics really quickly, you're also needing to get your head around the up to date scholarship and research that's out there.
Dr Ben Joseph 02:03
That's so true. And then once you feel comfortable with all of that, you then need to think about how you're going to teach it the pedagogy itself, which is probably the hardest bit.
Prof. Mim Fox 02:15
Let's hear from some social work educators about what they think of when they think of social work education.
Prof. Donna McAuliffe 02:26
Social Work Education is a way of ensuring that social work graduates, who go out into the real world actually understand what the real world is and the knowledge skills and values to be able to navigate it with good professional integrity.
Prof. Robyn Martin 02:43
I think we need to reclaim relational social work. I think it's been under appreciated for a number of years. I think there's a need to reclaim it. I think reclaiming an ethics of care. I think things around what does it mean to engage with people? What do we really mean by co-design and co-production? What are those words really mean? I think when I think about all of those topics, they all are around that authenticity of the relationship, which I think is absolutely crucial to social work.
Dr Margaret Spencer 03:17
It's a parallel process. So what we teach, the content of what we teach, is exactly what we model in a classroom. So when we think about maybe, we're talking about practice skills. For example, we're actually modelling those practice skills in our classroom. So that's what I mean by a parallel process. There's this congruence between what we do, what we say, and how we do it in a classroom.
Dr Joel Hollier 03:46
Social work, education, for me, blurs boundaries. It defies norms. It encourages us to recognise that there is no such thing as binaries. It sits in the grey, and I think it deliberately transforms us in a way that is not just a surface level. It is identity level transformation that has to take place, and that is, I think, what is powerful when we sit in that space of unknown.
Prof. Mim Fox 04:21
My hope, Ben, for the Social Work Teach series, is that we now all have a valuable resource for both current and future social workers, educators and others who are interested in the education field. This podcast works as a resource bank, where each episode our listeners will not only get to hear conversations with social work educators who've been teaching and developing content throughout their careers, but also they get to hear from students as they're grappling with the concepts in the classroom.
Dr Ben Joseph 04:52
Then at the end of each episode, there'll be a list of resources in the show notes, so that if you're if it's your first time teaching the subject, then you'll have at least some resources to start with. Plus, as a bonus, we're going to throw in some long form interviews with the masters in social work education, these social workers who pave the way for why, what and how we teach curriculum that is now given to our social work programmes all over Australia, even around the world.
Prof. Mim Fox 05:24
This is really exciting Ben, it's a podcast series that is for the social work education community, but also it's by the social work education community.
Dr Ben Joseph 05:33
So exciting Mim.
Prof. Mim Fox 05:44
You've been listening to the Social Work Teach podcast, a Social Work Media production. The Social Work Media team is made up of Professor Mim Fox, Dr Ben Joseph, Lis Murphy and Justin Stech. Special thanks goes to Maddie Stratton. This episode was hosted and produced by Professor Mim Fox from the University of Wollongong and Dr Ben Joseph from Western Sydney University. Special guests include Professor Donna McAuliffe, Professor Robin Martin, Dr Margaret Spencer and Dr Joel Holier. To get in contact with us at Social Work Media, please head to our website at www.socialworkmedia.com or connect with us via LinkedIn. Thank you for listening.