The consideration of animals within Australian social work curriculum

Journal article


Duvnjak, Angella and Dent, Ashleigh. (2024). The consideration of animals within Australian social work curriculum. Australian Social Work. 77(3), pp. 397-409. https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2023.2238697
AuthorsDuvnjak, Angella and Dent, Ashleigh
Abstract

There is growing impetus for social work to move beyond a human-centric social justice orientation to include the consideration of animals. Social work programs in Australia are currently not required to include content related to animals within the curricula and little is known about the extent to which this content is currently being taught in Australia. The aim of this study was to explore how consideration of human–animal relations has been incorporated into Australian social work programs. Fifteen social work educators were surveyed with three of these participants also undertaking semistructured interviews. The findings revealed that where animal-related content was included it predominantly took an “instrumental” or “anthropocentric” focus related solely to human wellbeing. Exceptions to this focus were found to exist within some ethics and theory units under topics such as “green social work”. Participants report barriers to including such content citing factors related to challenges within the university context and the perceived relative importance of other topics within a crowded social work curriculum. Despite an upsurge in interest in animal-related content reflected in the literature and a broader shift in societal attitudes towards animals, the findings of this small study indicate that Australian social work curriculum currently does not reflect this increasing interest.

Keywordssocial work education; animal welfare; animal rights; wellbeing; human welfare; human–animal relations; social justice; societal attitudes; Australia; nonhuman animals; ethical consideration
Year2024
JournalAustralian Social Work
Journal citation77 (3), pp. 397-409
PublisherRoutledge
ISSN0312-407X
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.1080/0312407X.2023.2238697
Scopus EID2-s2.0-85167809420
Open accessPublished as ‘gold’ (paid) open access
Page range397-409
Publisher's version
License
File Access Level
Open
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online13 Aug 2023
Publication process dates
Accepted17 Jul 2023
Deposited03 Apr 2025
Additional information

© 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.

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