Repositioning Power Relations in Indigenous Social Work Education

Abstract

In this article, we present the history of social work education in Greenland, from a professional training school in 1985 to a university BA-level education in 2008 and onwards to the present day. Mainly, we discuss how the education of Greenlandic social workers continually reflects on the decolonising elements of the curriculum. The latest step in this process has been the development of a new curriculum, which came into effect in the summer of 2022 after approval from students, external boards and the academic university board. The article will discuss the repositioning of power in the new social work curriculum, aiming to gradually make education more student-centred through a higher degree of collective responsibility for learning and by engaging in problem-oriented group work with self-determined research questions at the core of Greenlandic, thematic, social worker projects.

Keywords

• education
• social work
• decolonisation
• empowerment
• Greenland