ABSTRACT

As environmental crises continue to rise, the profession of social work in the US is being called to incorporate environmental justice content in the training and education of social workers to prepare them for addressing the effects of environmental injustices; however, students’ awareness of the profession’s environmental justice mission is uncertain. The current mixed-method study sought to explore this issue amongst a sample of social work students (N = 724) in the US. Overall, students mildly to moderately believe that environmental issues are part of practice, and regression results revealed that greater support was associated with the belief in climate change and completing a university course that included environmental injustice. Content analysis of an open-ended question that asked students to define ‘environmental justice’ revealed that students primarily defined this term within the context of general environmental harm (28%) and 15% linked this term to a disproportionate exposure to hazards among people who have been historically oppressed and marginalized. Together these results suggested that further educational efforts may be needed to expand students’ knowledge of environmental (in)justice and how it is part of practice across the micro-macro continuum.

摘要

随着环境危机不断上升，美国的社会工作专业被要求将环境正义内容纳入社会工作者的培训和教育中，以使他们为应对环境不公正的影响做好准备；然而，学生对该专业的环境正义使命的认识是不确定的。目前的混合方法研究试图在社会工作学生样本中探索这个问题（N= 724) 在美国。总体而言，学生轻度至中度认为环境问题是实践的一部分，回归结果显示，更大的支持与对气候变化的信念和完成包含环境不公正的大学课程有关。对要求学生定义“环境正义”的开放式问题的内容分析显示，学生主要在一般环境危害的背景下定义该术语（28%），15% 的学生将此术语与不成比例地暴露于危害环境的人联系起来。历史上一直被压迫和边缘化。这些结果表明，可能需要进一步的教育努力来扩大学生对环境（不）正义的认识，以及它如何成为微观宏观连续体实践的一部分。