Social Work Education
Podcast Episode Show Notes
How to cite/reference this podcast episode: Fox, M. (Host & Producer), McAuliffe, D. (Guest), Wayland, S. (Guest), Ravulo, J. (Guest), Joseph, B. L. (Producer), Murphy, L. (Producer) & Stech, J. (Producer). (2026, March 31). Social Work Education (Season No. 1, Episode No. 1)[Audio podcast episode]. In Social Work Teach. Social Work Media. https://socialwork.media/socialworkteach/episode1
Episode Title: Social Work Education
Release Date: 31 March 2026
Duration: 15 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), and Lis Murphy
Episode Host(s): Professor Mim Fox (University of Wollongong)
Episode Guest(s): Professor Donna McAuliffe, Professor Sarah Wayland, Professor Jioji Ravulo, and featuring Danny, Harriet, Joseph, and Faith (anonymous social work students)
Episode Overview: In this Social Work Teach episode, Professor Mim Fox explores social work education, emphasising the importance of pedagogy that integrates personal and professional identities, and prioritises lived experiences. She discusses with experienced educators and students the challenges and transformative nature of social work education, highlighting the need for diverse perspectives and safe, trauma-informed classrooms. Key points include the significance of lifelong learning, the role of reflective thinking, and the necessity of addressing systemic issues in social work practice. The conversation underscores the importance of inclusive teaching methods that foster critical thinking and prepares students for diverse, challenging roles in the field.
About the Guest(s)
Name: Professor Donna McAuliffe
Position: Head of Department
Institution/Organisation: Griffith University, School of Human Services & Social Work
Area of Expertise: A keen commitment to social justice and human rights and theadvancement of professional ethics and integrity in practice.
Name: Professor Sarah Wayland
Position: Professor of Social Work
Institution/Organisation: Central Queensland University, School of Social Work
Area of Expertise: Missing persons, trauma, and suicide prevention & postvention.
Name: Professor Jioji Ravulo
Position: Professor and Chair of Social Work & Policy Studies
Institution/Organisation: Sydney School of Education & Social Work, Sydney University
Area of Expertise: Health, wellbeing, youth, diversity and inclusion, decoloniality and critical Whiteness.
Reflective Prompts for Educators
How would I describe the pedagogy I apply to my teaching?
How would my students describe the learning that emerges in our classes together?
How well do I provide space for lived experience in my classes?
Podcast Episode Transcript
Dr Ben Joseph 00:13
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've been teaching social work students for almost my entire career. Soon after graduation, I started supervising social work students in the field. I then moved to running social work field education programmes, and finally, I moved into university academic roles. In this episode, I'm interested in exploring the idea of social work education. We talk a lot about it, but I'm keen to look closely at how we become educators in the classroom, and I want to start a conversation between us about what it means to be a social work educator.When I look back on my own teaching experience, I remember feeling lucky because I was orientated to the classroom by my social work colleagues. In particular, I remember being introduced to large field education seminars with 100 students in one large room, and my biggest memory is of the deafening roar that all of those small conversations make in such a big room. But what I don't remember is anyone sitting down with me to talk about why we teach in that way, why we centre conversation in the classroom, and what should guide me in all of the small decisions that you make as you're standing at the front of a class. And while some of this would be similar to other professions, the thing that keeps coming back to me is that we are training students to work with marginalised and often vulnerable people, not so dissimilar, often to the students who also sit in our classrooms. What then can I do in my classroom to make sure that I'm tailoring my teaching to this very specific cohort? I'm always needing to remember that there are students in my classroom who are often experiencing vulnerabilities of their own. I started off my thinking by sitting down with Harriet, Joseph, Faith and Danny, who are in the final year of their social work degree. I spoke to them about what they experienced in the Social Work classroom. What does social work education look like for them?
SW Student 03:30
To be in a social work classroom is to be challenged and to be, yeah, I would say, almost put through the ringer of your thoughts and how you come to know things, and to say, wait a minute and stop and think, What am I doing? For me? So much has been what I know has been completely deconstructed, and I think I'm starting to re construct or re know so many things and so many things that have been informed. I realise now I know that doesn't sit right with me. So that would be my fight if someone asked me, What does it mean to be in a social work classroom or tutorial? I say it is to be challenged. It's to be uncomfortable and to come out the other side thinking really differently, like I leave my tutorials feeling kind of energised, and sometimes I have a headache because I'm just like, wow, I've just gone through an entire almost like crisis of my being just from being in that class. So yeah, what do you guys think about that?
SW Student 04:25
I just wanted to say, Yes, oh my god yes, when you're being challenged and not just being in like, actually, like, like, not taking for granted the views that you have, and actually being asked why you have those views. Just powerful and so transformative.
SW Student 04:47
Yeah, and Harriet, I wonder how much that kind of reflection, where it's like, we have had these really impactful discussions with our peers. I wonder how much that does start even though you're like, you hesitate to do put that on the tutor as the leader. I wonder how much it does start with like a teaching a teaching framework, or like a pedagogy that really prioritises lived experience and bringing in their own lived experience, the lived experience of community members, prioritising students' lived experience. Because I don't think that that's always something that's thought about in traditional classrooms.
Prof. Mim Fox 05:26
Faith brought up the idea of a teaching philosophy and pedagogy something that we bounce around a lot in the higher education context. I'm left wondering, What does social work pedagogy look like? Is there a specific social work pedagogy that as social work educators, we embody and enact when we enter the classroom. I thought that I would talk to several leading social work academics around Australia to find out how they understand social work education and what's happening in our classrooms. I started by speaking to Professor Donna McAuliffe,
Prof. Donna McAuliffe 05:59
And so social work education means a great deal to me. I've been involved in it for a very large part of my life, and I'm really committed to it. So what it actually means for me is making sure that we can spend time with our students, giving the very best knowledge and development of skills and contemplation of values and reflective thinking that we can to enable students to be able to really understand and know themselves, so that they can then go into practice in any field feeling confident and feeling able to understand that learning is actually a lifelong endeavour. It's not something that finishes on graduation day.
Prof. Mim Fox 06:54
Donna has left me with lots of questions, but mainly I'm thinking about, how do we develop lifelong learning in students who are going to go and become practitioners, some in really isolated roles. How do we get them to start talking to each other and feeling safe to communicate about some really confronting ideas? When I think back to my formative teaching experiences, it was the noise of students talking together in comfort and safety that has stayed with me. To talk about conversation I sat down to have a conversation with Professor, Sarah Wayland. I asked Sarah to tell me a little bit more about what a social work classroom looks like, and how would we know that we've walked into one.
Prof. Sarah Wayland 07:39
I think what makes a social work classroom different is two things, one, that it's real time, and that doesn't mean that we're not using landmark readings, seminal papers, theoretical approaches, but we're taking all of that and we're applying a real world lens on it, of what's happening right now in the lives of our students, and ensuring that they understand how to make that connection day in day out, between what they're learning and how the world is moving around them. But the other thing that's different is I think that we encourage, I would hope that we encourage and that we model ourselves, that we challenge our students to not leave themselves at the door that we don't ask them to assume a professional identity from day one, but to understand the integration of their personal identity with their professional identity and build that over time. So it means that we acknowledge that everybody will come with their own lived experience to social work, and it will shape the way that they become social workers and learn how to be enough in the social work education space, but that we do it in a way that's safe and trauma informed.
Prof. Mim Fox 08:58
I feel like I'm now starting to get a sense of what the Social Work classroom looks like, and why, but I'm thinking again about our students and wondering what they think about where lived experience sits in the classroom. How important is the lived experience of our students? Really? In my conversation with Danny and Harriet, they left me with a challenge for us as educators,
SW Student 09:21
Bringing voices in, not just into the classroom, but also into the community, and for those that have not often got to have a voice, or who are afraid to speak, and how we sit with that space and that quietness and that how it is so important for people to feel heard and to invite people to share their stories.
SW Student 09:51
I think that's a big thing to think about. What we want to change for social education is why aren't certain people in this room? What are the reasons that when I look around my Tutorial as a 21 year old white woman who went to high school, is going to university, is supported by my parents. Like, why do I see myself so much around the classroom, in my peers who is being left out of these conversations, like, how are we meant to grow this profession, and feel them really make a difference and be part of different communities, and have them at the table to have the conversation, if there are so many barriers to getting this degree and doing this work, because I don't think you need this social work degree just to do this work, because I think lived experience has so much value, and I think we need to work out a different way to get conversations like this happening, because, like, it makes sense for me to be able to get through 1000 hours of unpaid work at this stage, but I don't want to be the only person, and I don't want people who look like me and have experiences like me to only the people at the table, because in reality, I need to sit back and listen a lot more, if that makes sense. So the echo chamber is dangerous if we're not stopping and thinking, who isn't here to talk about this, and what can they offer?
Prof. Mim Fox 11:19
Danny and Harriet pose such a good question, how do we really embrace diversity in the classroom, and how do we make sure that our classroom represents the diversity that we see in the community? I put this question to Professor Jioji Ravulo, who had this response,
Prof. Jioji Ravulo 11:34
it's very easy when you're out in the field to then start becoming disillusioned with the challenges that exist in and across our social systems, structures and services, but know that social work is and has a point of difference to contribute to those spaces. Have hope that your social work lens, your views, your values, your practices and perspectives, can make a difference in those spaces, with view that the people, again, the communities that we're working with, can also have hope that things can be better.
Prof. Mim Fox 12:12
After these conversations, I'm still left wondering, is there a clear way for me as a teacher coming into a Social Work classroom to understand what is social work education. I went back to Sarah and asked whether she could define social work education for me and what it means for the students who sit with us in conversation throughout their studies.
Prof. Sarah Wayland 12:34
I think that I understand social work education to be almost similar to a replication of the journey that you take once you graduate so often we talk about once you become a social worker, you begin to understand people in their environment, and you start to make connections to those pipelines of understanding, social, emotional, environmental spaces and how they create challenges and opportunities for people through their life. I think that we replicate that same journey of growing up and gaining wisdom within the social work education space, where we provide opportunities for students to understand the people in the communities that they're from and all the people and communities that they might work with, and begin to explore those relationships and interconnection so that they build over the lifetime of their degree and understanding of those pipelines and understanding all of the factors at play.
Prof. Mim Fox 13:35
Speaking with Harriet, Joseph, Faith, Danny, Donna, Jioji and Sarah, has left me with some answers, but also more questions. The challenge by our student body has been set. I'm keen now to get back into the classroom and see if I can put some of this into practice.
Dr Ben Joseph 14:02
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 Sarah Wayland, Professor Jioji Ravulloand social work students Harriet, Faith, Joseph and Danny to get in contact with us at Social Work Media, please head to our website at www.socialworkmedia. or connect with us via LinkedIn. Thanks for listening.