Embracing Our Values: Social Work Faculty Progressivism in a Conservative World

Abstract

Social work faculty have an ethical imperative to engage in policy and political practice. While the literature indicates that a progressive-liberal tradition exists within social work, few studies have specifically looked at faculty political inclination and even less at their social welfare policy preferences. This descriptive study used an online survey to look at the party affiliation and political ideology of United States (U.S.) based social work faculty and the influence that these have on the social welfare policies faculty prefer. The study finds that U.S. based social work faculty are affiliated with the Democratic party (78.1%) and on the liberal side of the political continuum (86.4%). Descriptive statistics show that, overall, the social policy preferences of American social work faculty reflect the progressive paradigm more than the restrictive paradigm (M = 6.06, SD = 1.23 for progressive items and M = 2.63, SD = 1.54 for restrictive items). Multivariate regression analysis results indicate that political ideology is the strongest predictor of social welfare policy preferences among study participants (β = .307, p < .01). The implications of these findings for social work education, including the alignment of a progressive ideology with social work values and ethics, are discussed. Keywords: Political ideology, social work values, social work faculty, policy preferences, pedagogy