International social work student exchange

This case study explores the nature and impact of an international student mobility initiative within Social Work and Human Services at James Cook University (JCU), in Northern Australia. This initiative sits within a discipline-wide program of internationalisation that aims to increase students’ understanding of the complex global context in which they will practice as social workers and to facilitate, motivate and empower them to contribute to the goals of global social justice, potentially as agents of social change. This mobility project is just one of a number of internationalisation activities undertaken by the discipline, including the development of international reciprocal partnerships, collaborative international conferences, international staff exchanges, and research and publication collaborations with international partners. In 2014, international student exchange experiences were incorporated into one elective unit in the Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) degree: WS2008: International Exchange, thus integrating the mobility project into the curriculum