Community development and social work teaching and learning in a time of global interruption

Abstract In a rapidly changing and unpredictable global environment, there is new impetus to draw on community development approaches in the face of complex practice challenges that include the long-term impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. As social work and community development educators in Ireland and Australia, the question becomes how can we respond in a time of major ‘disruption’ where there are both opportunities and constraints? This paper settles on this pause and uncertainty to seek new approaches to prepare social work students for changing conditions. Long-standing questions re-surface in relation to social, economic, political and environmental structures and conditions that are located in a neoliberal framework. The paper explores challenges and opportunities facing educators and social work students through a core set of principles—critical, relational and connected—that underpin our community development pedagogy. Within these themes, we explore teaching practices which seek to create a ‘Community of Learners’, generate a process of collaborative critical inquiry, engage students in reflective praxis enriched by contemporary theory and research, and foster a deep, connected and adaptive perspective on global and local issues. This stimulates creativity and meets the need for critical and adaptable practitioners capable of practical action through this period of disruption and crises of governance, climate and technologies of the future.