Teaching Gender in Social Work - MailChimp

PART I – REFLECTIONS ON TEACHING AND NEW APPROACHES
An Integrative Approach to Teaching Gender and Social Work
Caroline Skehill
Abstract
The article will outline the way in which gender and social work has been
taught in an integrative way within a module and across a full qualifying social
work programme through the teaching of this author. It seeks to demonstrate
the benefits and limitations of such an approach in comparison to the design
and delivery of modules specifically designed to teach gender as a separate
component as illustrated in other articles in this book. While referring to some
of the major theories of feminism and gender perspectives, the primary aim
of this article is to comment on the process and method of teaching gender and
social work as opposed to offering a theoretical critical commentary per se. In
the discussion, an argument for how gender can be incorporated into broader
frameworks of teaching is considered. Examples of research relating to the
Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom are provided for illustration.
The aim of this article is to describe, analyse and critique a method of
teaching gender and social work which is based on an integrative approach.
This is underpinned by a broad history of the present perspective, which uses
historical perspective to problematise the present. “Integrative Learning” is an
approach which encourages students to learn across curriculum and to make
connections at various levels between a range of knowledge, values and skills.
One of the advantages of integrative learning is that it encourages use of a range
of methods of teaching and learning and encourages students to avoid the
_“silo-effect” that can often happen when subjects are broken up into separate
categories. The challenge of such an approach is that it requires creativity on
the part of the educator and learner and the outcomes can be more difficult to
measure. For this article, I wish to focus on describing the process of applying
this to learning about gender and social work for qualifying social work
students 1 using Inquiry-Based Learning, which is an approach that encourages
self-directed learning and the use of problem-based approaches. 2 The artic-
1
See the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Integrative Learning for introductory information and reference
resources http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/integrativelearning/
2
See Centre for Inquiry-Based Learning at the University of Sheffield for an introduction and resources:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/cilass/ibl.html
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