Abstract

Where is knowledge and intelligence situated? Where and how does learning occur? These questions, or perhaps more succinctly, these challenges to our prevailing andragogical assumptions of how and where education occurs have fundamental implications to social work education. While social work has long embraced an ecological perspective, it has failed to further explicate the application of ecological theory to social work education. This paper explores ecological learning theory and how it disrupts our present understanding of knowledge, intelligence, and the individual. As with most disciplines, social work is well entrenched in a prevailing Cartesian dualism which dictates that knowledge is something that is outside the individual and that intelligence is an attribute within the individual that allows them to make use of this knowledge. Ecological learning theory’s fundamental understanding of intelligence breaks away from this paradigm and offers a very different understanding of cognition and intelligence. Moving the focus of education from studying about the world towards being part of the world means that a completely different way is needed to understand knowledge and learning (Davis, Sumara and Luce-Kapler, 2000). It is ironic that while other disciplines are discovering the power of ecological learning, social work has largely abandoned ecological theory. Moreover social work, perhaps due to the artificial limits placed on ecological theory by its early proponents, has never fully integrated ecological theory and practice in its approach to education. In this paper we will outline how ecological learning theory can bring coherence, as Carol Meyer once noted as the promise of ecological theory, to our current educational practices and how it could contribute to our application of effective and sustainable educational strategies.