Transformative Social Work

This book brings together a range of contributors to reconsider transformative social work, focusing on concrete examples in academic settings both inside and outside the classroom.

Jan Fook is professor and chair of the Department of Social Work at the University of Vermont. She is an internationally recognized scholar who has held academic positions at universities in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Norway. She has published extensively on various topics including practice research, critical reflection, and critical social work.

Danielle Jatlow is a lecturer and the coordinator of the BSW program in the Department of Social Work at the University of Vermont. She has worked with adolescents, young adults, and their families for more than eighteen years as a social work practitioner. Jatlow is currently a PhD student at Simmons University.

Maree Higgins, University of New South Wales:
Luminous and illuminating, this vital resource exemplifies the finest qualities of social work scholarship today. Aligning with ecological, decolonial, and lived-experience-led scholarship, deeply personal accounts of transformative social work weave vision and values to ignite and sustain social change. Comprising robust theoretical and practical insights, this work provides embodied, contextualized, and reflective perspectives that enable readers to reevaluate their relationship with themselves, others, and the social work profession.

Hye-Kyung Kang, author of Racism in the United States:
In Transformative Social Work, Jan Fook and Danielle Jatlow provide a comprehensive and insightful guide for applying a transformative perspective to all aspects of academic social work, including administration, curriculum design, pedagogy, research, practice, and field education. This book fills a significant gap in the field by bringing together national and international perspectives on the topic and providing specific examples for building a transformative academic culture.

Malcolm Payne, author of Modern Social Work Theory:
This book provides innovative ideas about how to practice creatively to transform lives. It shows how social workers engage their persona, their qualities, and their skills in a reflective relationship with both people and organizations. The contributions explore the details of this transformative practice in diverse social work projects in several countries.