The Social Work programme of 30 credits is organized in the spring semester and aims at offering higher education from an international, intercultural and interdisciplinary point of view. Studies have shown that exchange experiences have long-lasting positive effects on students. Collaboration, networking and connection are important action tools for every social worker to win the battle against social inequity. Therefore as a future social worker it is very important to stimulate international awareness and exchange to understand and address global social issues.
The programme is open for Belgian and international students and aims to develop international and intercultural competences facing current and global topics for social work. The programme stimulates exchange and collaboration between social work students from different countries, offering field visits, guest lecturers and study trips abroad.
Practical info
- Welcome days: 5 and 6 February 2026
- Start programme: 9 February 2026
- Start of the exams: 26 May 2026
- End of the exams: 26 June 2026
Questions about the content of the program?
Contact your International Academic Coordinator: nicole.vanhoucke@hogent.be
Practical questions?
Contact your Incoming Student Advisor: incoming@hogent.be
This programme offers the following courses during the spring semester for a total of 30 credits
- History (international) social work and the social schools
- Social work as an international profession
- International organizations, federations, networks and associations social work
- International social work practice: basic social work methods, community development
- International Themes of Social Work: Current Challenges for the Social Professional and Social Work Practice
This course invites you to approach social work from a broader perspective and to explore (social work practices) beyond the boundaries of your own context. As an Erasmus student you follow this course together with the regular social work students of HOGENT. In this way we stimulate both formal and informal and non-formal learning of students. A short mobility (to Portugal or Italy) also takes place in this course (travel costs borne by the student). We enter into (online) dialogue with students from Portugal and/or Italy and have (foreign) guest speakers who share their expertise with us.
Community building offers a unique perspective for understanding human rights in social work. In this course we explore community building practices in constructing, deconstructing and reconstructing human rights 'from the bottom up'.
In the first part we discuss different perspectives of community building on human rights. The following theoretical frameworks are discussed, among others: social movements and human rights, human rights and shadow work, non-formal approaches to human rights, an Ubuntu perspective on human rights and human rights-friendly cities and communities.
In a second part, we examine current cases at the intersection of human rights and community building. Different domains of injustice are studied from the perspective of human rights and community building, such as e.g. (child) poverty, social inequality, migration and food aid. When exploring human rights and community building, the diversity of cultural horizons will be taken into account as a precondition for 'human rights of down' to understand.
Sustainability and eco social inequality and injustice are an international issue. Every country, across borders gets confronted with the effects of climate change: migration, war on resources, floods, heatwaves, wildfires, economical inequality they are all interconnected and globalised and need system change across borders.
In this course we learn to look at our society from an eco-social work perspective. We look into the roots of eco social injustices, climate change and search for ways to improve our society to develop into a strong sustainable society.
Questions we will address are for example:
- Why is sustainability a wicked social problem?
- What role can we play as social workers?
- How did we end up with these eco social injustices (colonialism, capitalism and racism/whiteness)?
- How can we make changes and develop a hopeful future?
- How do we manage eco anxiety and other health problems linked to climate change?
- How can we tackle the challenges linked to climate change?
- What do we have to advocate on? Who has a lack of agency? What role can we play as social workers?
- How did we end up with these eco social injustices (colonialism, capitalism and racism/whiteness)?
- How can we make changes and develop a hopeful future?
- How do we manage eco anxiety and other health problems linked to climate change?
- How can we tackle the challenges linked to climate change?
- What do we have to advocate on? Who has a lack of agency?
We use the framework of Devolder & Block to discuss sustainable projects and social work practices.
Important decisions on whether and how to prevent drug abuse, criminal behaviour and violence are too often made based on shallow grounds.
Social workers and health promotors need to have a grasp on the science base of prevention. They need the capacity to translate it to the floor of practice addressing not only youth in schools, but also adults in the workplace or people in the community.
Peer van der Kreeft leads a European network of researchers and practitioners establishing a standardized training model on prevention.
The robust training is delivered to the students in an interactive way.
It is appropriate to justify why this course was included in the programme. Flanders and Europe have been the subject of different historical migrations and form a community of different cultures.
We live in a multicultural society. Moreover, the increasing economic globalization and the development of new and faster forms of transport and communication have caused distance and time to shrivel. The world has become a "global village". The care worker is increasingly confronted with people from different cultural backgrounds and should handle those differences properly and be aware of his own "cultural" glasses.
The course is based on the TOPOI model. TOPOI is the abbreviation of language, structure, persons, organization and effort. These are the five areas in which cultural differences and misunderstandings can take place. The TOPOI model includes a practical analysis and intervention framework to detect and deal with these cultural differences and misunderstandings in an intercultural contact.
Co-design (co-creation) is a form of experiential learning in which we, together with stakeholders, create opportunities in complex situations. Every limitation (in possibilities, resources, time, mandate) is an opportunity for creativity. By trying out and failing as an opportunity, the solution becomes tangible. In doing so, together we build up 'locally situated knowledge' that is much more useful than 'expert knowledge'.
All this is applied to the context of inclusion and participation. In this way, inclusion and participation are further conceptualised together. Students are included in the most important concepts of co-design: flow, surprise (expected the unexpected), design paradox, iteration and prototyping. They are trained through exercises to work efficiently and methodically themselves and thus facilitate co-creation processes in situations where 'impossibility' threatens to take over.
ABR: Students become familiar with practice-based research from a doctor-based research perspective. ABR is an extensive field of opportunities for qualitative research and lends itself perfectly to contexts where social justice is under pressure. It is a form of qualitative research in which art and science are consciously interwoven. The artistic angle can be used in the data collection, the analysis and/or the representation of the research.
The students receive theory, examples (from research with all kinds of target groups) and practice in the application. In this semester, they start working with their own chosen research question or a question from the supply. They are supported to go through all the steps of ABR and complete a short practical research. In this section, we collaborate with musicians, so artistic aspects (image, word, dance, music, performance, etc.) are also strongly featured.