SWRK4002: Contemporary Social Issues
- Terms Taught: Full Year
- US Credits: 10 US Semester Credits
- ECTS Credits: 20 ECTS
- Pre-requisites: None
Course Description
The module aims to develop comprehensive understanding of how powerful social structures shape lives, and to consider way to challenge them. The module encourages students to explore the forces behind today’s most pressing social issues and develop a comprehensive understanding of inequality and discrimination. Through exploring the complex relationship between individual agency and societal structures, students will begin to develop skills in critical questioning. This module is rooted in the transformative potential of social work and the aim is to inspire students to discover how injustice can be challenged, social change promoted, and individuals and communities empowered.
Educational Aims
Upon successful completion of this module students will be able to…?
- Engage with information and technologies competently and communicate insights that conform to academic conventions and regulations.
- Demonstrate understanding of the causes and impact of inequality and discrimination.
- Draw upon research and theory to consider potential ways to challenge inequalities, promote social change or impact on sustainability.
- Clearly communicate ideas and arguments in writing.
- Contribute to a learning community and take responsibility for your own learning and skills development.
Outline Syllabus
Content typically includes broad historical and contemporary causes and responses to social problems. The module considers how contemporary social problems reflect and reproduce economic and social inequalities, and how inequalities are constructed through different welfare ideologies and approaches. This leads to consideration of how to challenge inequality with the aim of promoting social change and positively impacting on individual, family and community sustainability. Research and conceptual ideas that can help us understand poverty in contemporary society are drawn upon. Students explore different ways of defining and measuring poverty, explanations of why people are poor, how the state attempts to tackle poverty and how it impacts upon the lives of individuals.
In particular the module will examine:
- How social problems come to be defined as such.
- How contemporary social work and social policy are informed by concerns of the past.
- How social work and social policy are constructed through different welfare ideologies.
- How social problems reflect and help reproduce economic and social inequalities.
Assessment Proportions
The module will be taught flexibly using a mixture of lectures, small group work in a integrated lecture/practical format, use of learning resources such as videos, quizzes and a bank of online materials. The variety of formats used in in-person teaching is intended to provide all students with an equitable and inclusive learning experience and to address barriers to learning that may be faced by students from ‘non-traditional’ academic backgrounds.
In addition to the timetabled sessions, students will have guided independent learning which typically includes tasks for them to complete prior to and post teaching session. Materials such as ‘books’, weblinks and videos as well as library resource lists will be available on and through Moodle providing easy access and support for the guide student independent study.
The assessments are designed to further develop academic and cognitive skills students were introduced to in semester one modules, and support students to communicate ideas. A wide word range is intended to offer a more inclusive experience for students (some are concise, and others take longer to express ideas).
The final element of assessment is designed to encourage engagement with the module.