Introduction
Higher Education is nestled in a pivotal position to transform society (McNall, Barnes Doberneck & Fitzgerald, 2015; Weerts & Sandmann, 2008).Community-University collaborative initiatives should intertwine research, teaching and service to address community-defined issues as such initiatives have the potential to improve the quality of life for those in greatest need (Fitzgerald et al., 2016).
Hence "students and faculty become the agents of social change by creating, learning, and by scholarly processes that explicitly address such problems with the intent of fixing them" (Marullo & Edwards, 2000).
The proposed Curriculum for Rural Social Work has been developed as part of a group discussion held by a group of Social Work Educators and Public Administration faculty from across nine Tel Universities. The objective calls for the development of students and the community through Community Service through the medium of social work.Social work is an intense medium for community engagement engagement. Hence, development of need of the hour. The curriculum can discussed that in order to bridge the gap between the expectations and actual practices, there is a need to integrate the two important aspects viz., Living and Learning.
To instill interest and concern among the students about the dynamics of rural society, to develop community based learning, to help the students to identify and respond to community needs, students insights of broader social issues and its impact on rural communities, multiple perspectives of problem solving and foster students’ intellectual capabilities and developm as citizens, the following objectives have been framed to
1. Make use of effective communication to employ a planned change approach which supports client interventions for engagement.
2. With diverse populations, use both ethnic sensitive and socially-sensitive, generalist practical approaches for rural participation.
3. Apply critical thinking skills in problem solving with social work values and ethics, on diverse human issues for rural solution engineering.
4. Distinguish professional social work ethics, especially the values of empowerment, and regard for diversity that enables community engagement.
5. Conduct social research to evaluate the social work interventions, as well as to evaluate agency and community practice.
