Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

PART III – TEACHING MATERIAL
A Photo Album About Women’s History of Social Work: The Significance
of Visual Sources in Social History Research and Education*
Adriane Feustel
Abstract
The subject of the article is a photo album of the oldest school for social
work in Germany and one of the oldest in the world, now the Alice Salomon
University of Applied Sciences. The photo album is presented as a source
for research and training on the history of social work and education. The
collection of photographs is explored in general with regard to the represented
objects as well as to the way the objects are shown. An overview is given of
the different aspects which are represented: the staff of women pioneers and
prominent social reformers, students of different decades, the social life of the
school and social projects in which the students were trained practically. Some
of the photographs are commented upon and interpreted in detail for a better
understanding of the manifold issues involved. The focus of interpretation lies
on the message of the photographs, the view of the social pioneers, as well
as their portrayal and the portrayal of students and especially clients. Finally,
there is a reflection on the specific point of view shared by the photographer
and the social worker, which should help students to become acquainted with
the history of social work in a broad cognitive sense and in an emotional way.
An extraordinary document of the Alice Salomon Archives of the Alice
Salomon University of Applied Sciences in Berlin will be presented below. The
document is a photo album, but it is not the standard album normally found
in a school‘s archives containing photographs of everyday life at the school. It is
much more than that, because it not only contains pictures of the oldest school
for social work in Germany and one of the oldest in the world – the Social
* Edited version of a lecture, held at the European Social Sciences History Conference, Amsterdam 2006.
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