Chapter 3: Teaching Crises: The Uncomfortable Place of Ecosocial Work Within Social Work Education

Full acceptance of the current state of the world challenges our existing ways of education and thinking. Teaching ecosocial work and being part of transformative education (SDG Target 4.7) are overshadowed by unsustainable material consumption, increased risks, and profound changes within societies. Fully understanding this has a disruptive effect on mental well-being, including eco-anxiety. Learning about climate, biodiversity, resource depletion, water scarcity, forced migration, and global inequality causes cognitive dissonance in young students who hold a progress-oriented worldview. Eco-anxiety and cognitive dissonance require understanding of and support for ecosocial work at institutional level. This chapter draws on the author’s teaching of the global challenges to discuss the need, possibility, and conditions of an eco-centered worldview in social work education in general.