Abstract

The Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) of the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE, 2026) shape not only curriculum and assessment, but also the intellectual formation and culture of the social work profession. As the accrediting framework for programs across the United States, the EPAS articulate the definition of competent practice and what constitutes a shared professional identity (Zuchowski, 2024). Yet accreditation standards necessarily do more than articulate competencies; they can also shape which perspectives are institutionally centered and normalized (Sue, 2010). Professional education operates not only through explicit curricular content, but through implicit norms governing what questions may be asked, which perspectives are considered legitimate, and how disagreement is handled (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2015). Because EPAS revisions occur only once every seven years, each iteration exerts long-term influence on the profession’s norms and priorities, shaping social work practice for years thereafter.

Document Type

Editorial

Source Publication

Research on Social Work Practice

Version

Published Version

Publication Date

4-13-2026

First Page

1

Last Page

7

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

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The Author(s) 2026

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