Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

The Roots of the Social Work Profession as a Resource in
the Dialogical Teaching of Gender
Mirja Satka and Johanna Moilanen
Abstract
This article addresses gender issues in social work, including gender order,
gendered divisions at work and gender-specific local or national practices in
social work as historically and culturally reproduced phenomena. Our aim
is to provide teachers with several dialogical ideas for making history ‘come
alive’ and to enlighten future professional actors about the deeply gendered
cultural meanings of the profession. We present some pedagogical means in a
discussion of how to address the issue of gender in teaching by using historical
narratives that have been written from a gender-conscious perspective as
a resource. We put particular emphasis on the formation of gender-specific
divisions of tasks in social work practice. A case study from Finland is presented
as an example of how feminist historical scholarship can present opportunities
for the innovative teaching of gender. The case study is followed by an
illustrative example of how to apply drama education in teaching gender in a
culturally and emotionally sensitive way. In addition, we suggest some other
alternatives for teaching based on various kinds of historical documents and
scholarly materials.
Introduction
Contemporary social issues are highly complex, globally interrelated, and
dynamic. Social workers have contradictory roles when dealing with them:
they have to act as instruments of government (the social control function)
and as advocates of people oppressed by the policies of government and other
authorities (the social change function). Under the present circumstances
social workers must be able to draw upon many sources of information and
different knowledge traditions. Accomplishing this requires them to break out
of the truths of objectifying knowledge and the traditional meta-narratives of
the profession. For this purpose, our substantial experience in teaching social
work courses has led us to develop innovative techniques and methods for
teaching, instead of merely offering lectures on the principles of helping people
or holding seminar discussions on gender issues and social problems.
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