Challenging anthropocentrism and speciesism in social work education

INTRODUCTION: Socially and legally acceptable views toward other animals are changing throughout the world. However, most social work education does not reflect such changes. Non-human animals are still viewed as tools for improving the wellbeing of human animals. To promote the development of social work education and practice responsive to today’s human and non-human animal relationships, this article discusses much-needed theoretical developments in social work education. APPROACH: We examine recent changes to the Canadian Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics and Canadian Social Work Education Accreditation Standards to assess the current frameworks for its education. These have recently added a focus on Environmental Justice, Sustainability and Ecological Practices to address growing concerns about climate change, yet do not consider animals explicitly or recognise the impacts of speciesism. Achieving a collective vision of social, economic, and environmental justice for all beings cannot be realised without considering non-human animals and actively challenging anthropocentric ontologies and epistemologies. CONCLUSIONS: We argue for a double-pronged approach addressing both ontologies and epistemologies of social work and discuss integrating key concepts from Critical Animal Studies (CAS) such as: anti-anthropocentrism, anti-speciesism, intersectionality, truncated narrative of dominance, and trans-species social justice, into social work education. By sharing authors’ teaching experiences, we demonstrate how such a theoretical orientation helps to critically analyse hierarchal relationships and envision practice to dismantle oppressive social systems that intersect with human and non-human animals. Thus, such theoretical changes, with a double-pronged approach in education, can strengthen social workers’ capacities to address justice.