ABSTRACT

To an increasing extent, scholars of social work have called for social work education and practice to be more responsive to local norms, customs and needs. Commonly referred to as indigenization, these scholars argue that social work curricula should incorporate practices, theories and understandings that are developed locally, eschewing the ‘professional imperialism’ that have come to dominate the discipline. This is also the case at universities in East Africa. Over the last decades, research emerging from local knowledge has developed substantially in the region. In this article we ask to what extent this is reflected in the social work curricula at three universities in Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda, including a Norwegian comparative case. The article relies on a review of the curricula, addressing the characteristics of the teaching materials, the nationality and gender of the authors of the teaching materials, and the local relevance of the teaching materials, questioning whether they build on empirical data from a local or African context and to what extent they address issues of local or regional relevance. Our findings reveal that the presence of national or African authors and publications with a local empirical content is still marginal at the three East African universities.

摘要

越来越多的社会工作学者呼吁社会工作教育和实践对当地的规范、习俗和需求更加敏感。这些学者通常被称为本土化，他们认为社会工作课程应该结合当地发展的实践、理论和理解，避免已经开始主导该学科的“职业帝国主义”。东非的大学也是如此。在过去的几十年里，源自当地知识的研究在该地区取得了长足的发展。在这篇文章中，我们询问这在卢旺达、坦桑尼亚和乌干达三所大学的社会工作课程中有多大程度的反映，包括一个挪威的比较案例。文章以课程回顾为依托，针对教材特点​​，教材作者的国籍和性别，以及教材与当地的相关性，质疑它们是否建立在当地或非洲背景下的经验数据之上，以及它们在多大程度上解决了与当地或区域相关的问题。我们的研究结果表明，在三所东非大学中，具有当地经验内容的国家或非洲作者和出版物的存在仍然很少。