Summary

Spirituality often plays a central role in the lives of many individuals, families, and communities, and it intersects with culture and identity. Spiritual rituals, activities and practices can be a source of strength during difficult life events and through the healing process. In fact, experiencing adverse events and trauma can stimulate posttraumatic growth. However, they can also elicit spiritual distress, rumination, pain, and a need for spiritual processing and meaning making. Social work practitioners will inevitably encounter individuals experiencing trauma and needing support, which can entail attention to the spiritual dimension of care. Further, research demonstrates that social workers are encountering spiritual concerns and working with individuals experiencing spiritual crisis and distress, and clients want their spirituality to be addressed in counselling. Therefore, social work students require the knowledge and tools for developing a spiritually sensitive approach to practice to be better prepared for professional practice. With this recognition, accreditation standards for academic institutions are beginning to include the spiritual dimension, and organizations where social workers are to be employed are including spiritual assessments as part of practice. Yet, the social work curriculum in Canada has not yet fully embraced spirituality in pedagogy for preparing students.We propose that a spiritually informed pedagogy can support social justice efforts and provide students with pathways for re-imagining healing, growth, and transcendence for their clients. This workshop will offer findings from research on an undergraduate elective social work course in spirituality designed and taught by the lead presenter at the University of Calgary. A competency framework depicting attributes of ethical practice and knowledge, skills, and attitudes for practice will be shared and participants will be invited to discuss and share how these findings might be applicable for their own educational context and share their own experiences of including spirituality in pedagogy.

Keywords (separate with commas)

Spirituality, pedagogy, social work, spiritually informed, competency, students, curriculum, evaluation