"I Can't Imagine You Being a Social Worker without Upholding Social Justice:" an Exploration of How Social Justice Is Modeled In an Msw Program

Background and Purpose: Social justice is a core pillar of social work. Social workers are tasked to uphold social justice and promote social change (NASW, 2021). Social work education prepares social workers to uphold social justice, yet a unified definition of social justice does not exist in social work education or the profession (Gatenio Gabel & Mapp, 2020; Attebery Ash, 2023). Nonetheless, social justice is explicitly and implicitly modeled to social work students while in training (Miller, 2013). Educators, including faculty and placement supervisors, play an important role in modeling social justice (Verma, 2015), but how social justice is modeled is not well understood. To address this, a qualitative research design was implemented to answer the research question, how is social justice modeled to students in an MSW program? Findings seek to center social justice in social work education as social workers go on to work with the most vulnerable populations in our society.

Methods: Focus groups with MSW students and interviews with MSW students, faculty, and placement supervisors were conducted using semi-structured interview guides. Thirty participants were engaged, and data were collected between January and June 2025 from one university in the Northeast of the U.S. Participants were recruited via purposive and snowball sampling (Etikan et al., 2016; Etikan et al., 2016). Braun and Clarke’s (2022) six phase reflexive thematic analysis was utilized to move through analysis. Open coding was implemented as prior identified codes did not exist and semantic coding was used to stay as close to what participants said in their own words. After coding, reflexive and analytic memos were used to create categories, initial themes, and final themes. Participants were engaged in member checking to finalize three themes.

Results: To explicate how social justice is modeled to students in an MSW program, three themes were created: systems and policies signal commitment to social justice, experiencing and witnessing injustices based on identity, and showing how to do social justice in action develops understanding and skills. First, participants described how systems and policies signaled commitment through program structure, training, content, community, and support often leaving participants with disparate experiences. Second, regardless of the intent of systems and policies, participants described microaggressions and harm in classrooms and placements. Finally, when social justice was shown in action, students developed understanding and skills.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings highlight that systems and policies set the tone by signaling commitment to social justice. On the institutional level, without intentionally centering people, training, and support, student participants were left having disparate outcomes with how they experienced and understood social justice. Educator participants often relied on their professional and personal experiences to know how to model social justice, rather than training. Centering social justice in MSW education is crucial, particularly now as social justice is being actively contested in our current political climate and the need for social workers is only increasing. Social work education can implement transformative systems by centering social justice in policies, practices, and actions for a common good.