The Social Work Classroom as a Ground for Peacebuilding

For this special edition of Social Sciences, the authors develop their previous discourse by proposing innovative and creative ways in which the social work classroom can become a pivotal space for peacebuilding. In so doing, they will present a review of pedagogic research from Northern Ireland to provide a background context for prefacing how, going forward, social work students can become better equipped to deal with the aftermath of political conflicts and how adversely these can impact the populations they serve in practice. The theoretical framework offered draws from, and builds upon, the enduring principles of the Northern Ireland Good Friday/Belfast Peace Agreement (1998). Relatedly, the conceptual CSM model, derives from the words Cultural Humility, Sympathetic Knowledge and Moral Courage and developed in 2024 by one of the authors, is advanced, through a constructivist lens, to help social work educators develop a more progressive, imaginative and neoteric approach to address conflict-related topics in the social work classroom. By examining ways in which this model can be explored and integrated into social work education curricula, this paper proposes that social work students can become empowered to not only fulfil the IFSW values and principles embodying social work’s global identity but also become more attuned in their practice responses. We contend that the current international zeitgeist, so mired by conflict and uncertainty, has created a lacuna of uncertainty for both educators and students. The CSM model can, we argue, help social work educators feel more confident in their pedagogic aspirations to deal with these challenging moments in the classroom as a ground for peacebuilding.