Connecting Learning & Practice

Connecting Teaching, Learning and Practice in Ecosocial Work

Chapter 11: Becoming Environmental Writers! The Futures of Reshaping Knowledge and Learning in Ecosocial and Post-Anthropocentric Social Work

Mona B. Livholts

In this chapter I invite social work students and practitioners to make use of environmental writing as a critical and creative methodological practice to include more-than-human perspectives into knowledge and learning in social work. Inspired by feminist and Indigenous and postcolonial writing, I use life writing genres such as diary notes, photography, and poetry to rethink and promote renewed embodied and situated practices for the futures of writing with social work.

The chapter includes illustrations and scenes thematically related to childhood memories from a farm, environmental exhaustion as an alternative to social problems in times when both human and non-human life is threatened, and water as a pathway for social justice. Each section includes brief guidelines for how to make use of one or several of the genres to conduct environmental writing. The implications of the chapter are to promote environmental writing in ecosocial and post-anthropocentric social work.

Case Study 4: Sustainability Practices in Portugal: A Reflection on Ecosocial Practice

Daniela Freitas

As a social worker with 10 years of professional experience in community intervention and as a recent researcher of ecosocial practice in Portugal, I believe that social work has a fundamental mission in promoting sustainability. Social work should include the environmental dimension in the core of its intervention. This inclusion in practical terms can be achieved through innovative, creative, and integrative community intervention models and projects, with strategies for solving/mitigating social and environmental problems. In the design and planning of the intervention projects, the different sectors of the community (citizens, groups, and public and private institutions) should be invited to look holistically at the problems and together seek resolution strategies for them.

Chapter 12: Shifting the Human-Nature Relationship in Outdoor and Nature-Based Social Work Programs: Contributions to Teaching and Learning Relational Ecosocial Work

Emmanuelle Larocque

This chapter offers an overview of the steps undertaken during an intervention-research which aimed to co-create, with various community actors, an ecosocial outdoor and Nature-based therapy program for young people. Presented as a case study, we first describe our collaborative and embodied methodology and focus especially on how connectedness to Nature can evolve and be nourished in outdoor and Nature-based intervention settings. The chapter outlines the intervention protocol, and describes the program’s theoretical underpinnings (Rosa’s sociology of our relationship to the world and Wacquant’s carnal sociology) and main practice frameworks (outdoor and nature-based therapy, narrative therapy, and yoga therapy). Implications for teaching and learning relational ecosocial work are discussed and presented as possible pathways to foster resonant and embodied human/Nature relations in outdoor and Nature-based programs. These include: 1) Multiplying experiential opportunities to transcend binary thinking; 2) Shifting from individual action to community connections; 3) Unpacking and re-storying relationship to Nature and 4) Enriching ecosocial teaching and learning through embodied practices. 

Chapter 13: The Mushroom House: A Socio-economic Learning Initiative to Carry Out Ecosocial Work in the Azores

Eduardo Marques, Elsa Alves, José María Morán Carrillo

This chapter assesses the impact of mushroom production and consumption on health and the economy and its potential role in social entrepreneurship led by social workers. The chapter offers a reflexive analysis, with a holistic approach, on the contribution of interdisciplinary approaches to the achievement of goals that promote social inclusion and sustainable development, in harmony with nature. Departing from a social work case study (Mushroom House) located in Azores (Portugal), we will demonstrate the possibilities of an ecosocial work journey through the paths intersecting the social sciences, nutrition sciences and social economy organizations striving for community well-being through circular economy.

Case Study 5: The Inner Anti-hero and Eco-anxiety: A Student Movie from Sweden

Olivia Ahlin

The World Social Work Day celebration is held annually at the University of Gävle. This event for the Year 2022 was held remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and my contribution to the celebration was through a short movie regarding eco-anxiety. Prior to the event, our bachelor programme had a course in ecological social work, where eco-anxiety was frequently discussed. In an engaging dialogue with a teacher from this course, we formulated the notion of my contribution to a creative project. The project was foremost aimed at social workers, providing an example of how expressive art can be a teaching tool.