Deeper Understanding of Sustainability: Ecological Self as Core Competence of Social Work Students in Fieldwork Teaching

Abstract

The ecological self is a core competence in social work education. This study aims to deepen the understanding of sustainability for social work students through rural fieldwork in China. Based on home visits with grassland families in Inner Mongolia, the research employed immersive engagement with nature and communities to foster ecological humility and responsibility among social work students. Findings show that students developed a multidimensional view of sustainability, integrating health practices shaped by the environment, women’s roles in maintaining family’ ecological resilience, and kinship metaphors derived from human–animal relations. The study concludes that the ecological self enables a deeper, relational interpretation of sustainability, moving beyond technocratic approaches toward embodied, context-sensitive, and intergenerationally conscious practice. It underscores the need to embed ecological consciousness in social work fieldwork training to strengthen both professional identity and transformative engagement with sustainable development.

1. Introduction

The ecological self is a crucial concept for helping social work students develop a deeper understanding of sustainability. This concept is fundamental in rural social work education and practice. As rural social work increasingly prioritizes sustainability, the knowledge base of social work education can continue to evolve and regenerate [1]. Integrating the natural dimension into the social work framework fosters critical thinking and practice. Particularly, deep ecology offers a foundational theoretical perspective for this approach. Additionally, the rise in social work in the Global South and its emphasis on localization, sustainable development, and innovative indigenous methods have played a significant role in critiquing Western modernity and transforming the trajectory of social work development [2].

Social work education in China is undergoing deep reflection, focusing on two main issues. First is the “education-first” approach. Chinese scholars argue that social work education has become disconnected from China’s actual development needs. While the number of schools and graduates shows the discipline’s prominence in academia, public awareness of social work in communities remains low [3]. Furthermore, few social work graduates enter professional social work organizations. Even government agencies struggle to define specific public-facing roles for them [4]. This reveals a neglect of core competencies adapted to China’s context. Social work students and practitioners should possess core competencies to meet the specific needs of Chinese society and be irreplaceable by other professions. Second, Chinese social work education lacks an ontological turn. This can be understood in two phases. In the 1920s, Western social work entered Chinese universities via missionaries and returned scholars. This mirrors experiences in many Global South countries. Essentially, the transplant of Western colonial values and techniques launched the globalization of social work but inevitably deepened the colonization of social work knowledge in the Global South. It also fostered a class of attached intellectual elites [5]. In the 1980s, China’s market reforms separated social and market services from government functions. This created a dilemma: who would deliver social services? The Ministry of Civil Affairs turned to social work, viewing it as the discipline to professionalize and realize the function of social services [6]. The second import of social work was proactive government action, supported by Chinese sociologists and social welfare scholars [7]. This strong pragmatic focus also mirrors Western new managerialism. It overemphasizes utility and effectiveness, neglecting the discipline’s potential ontological value. Core competencies building and training are significantly lacking. Social work education in China still struggles to take deep root in society.

However, there have been many efforts to build core competencies for social work education in China. In the early 2000s, practice-oriented scholars from Hong Kong noticed social work education’s disconnect from reality. They partnered with mainland Chinese social work educators on community service projects in rural ethnic minority remote areas. This collaboration sparked mainland social work education’s engagement with rural sustainability. It also drove innovation in local practice methods. China faces frequent natural disasters. After the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, the government called for public disaster relief donations. It also encouraged social organizations to assist in disaster zones. This prompted universities’ social work teams to partner with social organizations in disaster response. It supported the registration and establishment of disaster reconstruction agencies. Moreover, it made social work educators recognize the need to train students in disaster response and sustainable development [8]. Social work education in China began focusing on green and environmental knowledge. Educators systematically examined global discussions on green social work, sustainability, and environmental practice. For example, Dominelli introduced the green social work framework and its implications for addressing China’s environmental crises [8]. At the practical level, community-focused practitioners and researchers have championed action research as a key paradigm for community practice. This approach has developed the practical methods that promote critical thinking and collaborative knowledge production [9]. These methods include using oral history to enable community members and practitioners to jointly document local historical culture and sustainable ecological practices; employing solidarity economy to strengthen rural community democracy, reduce economic exploitation, and achieve sustainable models of human-nature coexistence [8]. These practical methods aim to enhance the training of the local methodology for social work students in China.

Despite these efforts, the education system has yet to systematize local social work values. This persists even after the 2023 establishment of the Society Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which brought social work under its purview. Most Chinese scholars now strongly emphasize the profession’s political dimension. They embedded the CCP’s “serve the people” as the core value of social work in China [10]. Potentially, CCP concepts like “self-reform” could even be adapted to foster critical thinking about social work’s local values. The long-term impact of these changes on developing a distinct social work value foundation for social work education in China remains unclear [11]. The “person-centered” value paradigm still dominates. The ontological significance of social work’s natural attributes within the Chinese context is overlooked. Ecological self provides a pathway for Chinese social work students to recognize these natural dimensions. Especially in rural practice, cultivating an ecological self is the essential demand for core competencies and fieldwork teaching of social work students. Within sustainability-focused social work education, training in ecological consciousness helps students to understand that rural livelihoods and the natural environment sustain dynamic, resilience-based relationships. Meanwhile, it reveals the risks to the sustainable development of communities lacking social support.

Would integrating the ecological self as a core competence into fieldwork teaching deepen understanding of rural sustainability and sharpen the critical reflection for social work students? This study aims to stimulate discussion on cultivating social work students’ awareness of ecological self.

2. Literature Review

2.1. Deepening Sustainability Education in Social Work

Sustainability is a multidimensional concept. It is initially defined through frameworks of resource use and intergenerational equity. Social work scholars recognize it as balancing the dimensions of environment, society, and economy [12]. To enhance social work education’s response to sustainability challenges, significant research advocates embedding sustainability and environmental justice principles into both educational policies and practitioner standards [13]. Early social work focused primarily on social justice, such as addressing inequalities related to poverty, disability, illness, gender, and race through protective interventions. These efforts aimed to enhance welfare for marginalized individuals, families, and groups via charitable resource distribution or empowerment, thereby advancing societal sustainability [14]. Social work education traditionally interprets environment through “person-in-environment” and social ecosystem frameworks. Deep ecology of Naess has profoundly reshaped social work scholars’ conceptualization of “environment”. Naess reveals anthropocentric approaches as shallow ecology. Deep ecology centers the natural environment, challenging human-centered perspectives without opposing societal sustainability. Instead, it rebalances human self-interest by emphasizing nature’s sustainability [15]. Significant gaps persist and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) remain inadequately integrated into social work education [16]. So, the necessary reforms include embedding SDGs into curricula to develop aligned competencies [16] and greening social work education through fieldwork projects linking environmental rights and sustainability [17]. Researchers are now developing pedagogies for students to gain practical knowledge of sustainability from the natural environment [18].

Critical reflective practice is widely regarded as a core competence for social work students and is increasingly incorporated in sustainability themes. “Reflection” is articulated by Donald Schön [19], who emphasizes the practitioner’s competence to critically examine their own actions and experiences to improve professional practice. This encompasses both reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action. “Critical reflection” is conceptualized by Jan Fook as extending beyond technical practice improvement to interrogate the power relations, structural inequalities, and dominant assumptions that shape social work practice [20]. This form of reflection enables practitioners to recognize how their own positionality, organizational contexts, and broader social structures influence their work with clients, particularly in sustainability contexts where environmental justice and ecological ethics intersect with traditional social work concerns. Studies demonstrate that sustainability-focused critical reflection challenges knowledge hierarchies through collaborations between scientific and indigenous knowledge [21]. As social work’s signature pedagogy, field learning gains new dimensions through sustainability-oriented practices, including wilderness fieldwork that fosters spiritual connections with nature, green practices for co-designing climate resilience projects in rural communities, community gardening service-learning, and agency partnerships that drive institutional sustainability transformations. These approaches diversify experiential learning while embedding sustainability in social work education [22]. Furthermore, sustainability education strengthens global connections within social work education, particularly highlighting a distinctive role in shaping a transformative pedagogical framework across the Global South [23].

2.2. Ecological Self as a Core Competence for Social Work Students

Transformative developments of social work focused on sustainability, including research and practices in environmental social work, green social work, and ecosocial work. These demand that practitioners and students cultivate a profound understanding of environmental, social, and economic sustainability and necessitate developing competencies in ecological social practice [24]. The ecological self, conceptualized by Naess within deep ecology, represents a philosophical understanding of identity. Distinguishing between ego, social self, and metaphysical self, Naess positioned the ecological self as the metaphysical dimension—an expansion of ego-boundaries to encompass the natural environment [25]. The ecological self emphasizes self-realization through ecological embeddedness and expresses both ecological identity and recognition of differential adaptations among individuals, families, and communities across diverse ecosystems [26]. The ecological self fundamentally reconfigures identity as an integrative continuum connecting humans, environments, and objects [27]. The dimension of ecological self manifests through empathy toward biotic and abiotic elements and acknowledgment of shared fate within universal ecological cycles. Spirituality provides insight into the empathic and communicative aspects of the ecological self [28,29]). The ecological self constitutes an ontological inquiry into human-nature relationality—particularly through critical examination of self-realization [30]. The ecological self has significantly influenced ecotherapy and innovative social work practices [30,31,32]. Besthorn integrated the ecological self into social work scholarship, advocating wilderness practice as essential for strengthening practitioners’ and students’ connections with nature [30]. While Naess’s philosophy has been discussed in disciplines such as philosophy and anthropology since the 1990s, its adoption within Chinese social work education remains relatively nascent. Dedicated courses or widely adopted textbooks that explicitly incorporate Naess’s conceptual framework, especially positioning the “ecological self” as a core competence, are indeed scarce. Zapf expands social work’s ethical care to encompass planetary well-being, positioning environmental justice alongside social justice while emphasizing ecological competencies as a professional imperative [33]. Practically, social work should focus on green assessments of the natural environment’s sustainability, design, and implement ecosocial interventions and innovative practices, advocate for empowerment projects advancing environmental sustainability, and foster the professional capacity to address environmental justice and sustainability challenges [34,35].

This study discusses that ecological competence requires ontological grounding through ecological self-training. The ecological self as a center connects the individual with the natural environment [36] and transmits ethical concerns for sustainability to future generations. Therefore, sustainability is concerned not only with the intergenerational equity of sustainability but also emphasizes that social work should adopt an attitude of ecological humility when engaging with residents, living beings, and non-living components within the natural environment. Social work students in China should deepen their identification with ecological attributes and strengthen ecological responsibility to foster connections between the natural environment and local people, as well as promote sustainability. In addition, the CCP’s society work department in China is actively consolidating the political framework of the profession. This development has garnered political endorsement from numerous leading scholars within the Chinese social work academia. While some frontline practitioners may emphasize a more professional moral self, cultivating the ecological self can provide a strengthened, philosophically grounded knowledge base to support their commitment.

2.3. Self-Objectification Challenges of Social Work Students in China

Social work education in China has shifted from being an elite pursuit to a more pragmatic choice [37]. In the 1980s and 1990s, top universities like Peking University and Renmin University of China began enrolling social work students. Students at these institutions received an elite education. The elite education led graduates to mainly seek jobs in government departments or pursue advanced studies abroad. Very few graduates worked directly in urban community services or rural sustainable development within China [38]. Since the start of the 21st century, the number of universities offering social work programs has grown rapidly. There are now over 300 such institutions, with more than 180 offering Master of Social Work (MSW) programs. The annual number of social work graduates exceeds 40,000. Social work education has become a path focused on obtaining a degree. More students choose social work primarily because it offers easier access to well-resourced universities, often without fully understanding the profession beforehand or knowing what personal goals studying social work might help them achieve. For many, choosing social work is a pragmatic decision to access educational opportunities.

Social work students feel confused during internships and after graduation. They recognize the social value of social work but don’t identify with the profession itself [39]. Most graduates avoid working in social service organizations. Instead, they prioritize options like studying abroad, pursuing advanced degrees at top universities, or taking government job exams. The utilitarian view has developed that social work has a limited impact on China’s development, and offers poor job prospects or low market value after graduation. This reflects the self-objectification of social work students. Social work education fails to discover or rebuild their self-worth [40]. On the other hand, social work education still overlooks ontological grounds in China. Historically, social work education has simply copied Western values of social work [41]. In recent years, the independent knowledge system has emphasized building for social work education. Its distinct political nature still requires further exploration [42].

The ancient Chinese philosopher Wang Shouren (Wang Yangming) proposed the concept of “extending innate knowing” (zhi liangzhi), which aims to pursue the authentic self. This represents the supreme state of self-cultivation. Social work education in China should not involve technical transplantation [43]. It should prioritize cultivating the metaphysical self of students. Exposing students to natural environments during their fieldwork teaching helps them recognize China’s diverse ecosystems and community life. This fosters social work students’ ecological humility—a commitment to environmental sustainability and participation—rather than self-objectification driven by economic rationality. Meanwhile, the eco-responsibility of social work students should be developed.

3. Methods

Social work education curricula in China concentrate sustainability-related content within rural social work, evidenced by published textbooks from institutions like Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Sun Yat-sen University, and Huazhong Agricultural University, alongside specialized courses such as ecosocial work and environmental social work. Despite China’s extensive rural territories, social work education remains predominantly urban, with teaching and research primarily conducted in urban communities, while rural social work practice receives insufficient attention [44]. Nevertheless, international publications documenting China’s successful indigenous practices frequently highlight rural community initiatives—exemplified by community kitchens and greening projects—where studies prioritize methodologies including oral history assessments, participatory action research, action research, and interdisciplinary approaches [45,46]. These practices foster cross-disciplinary collaborations integrating local knowledge with architecture, art, and fair-trade systems to advance collective livelihood development, engaging rural women and elders in sustainable community-building, harmonizing initiatives with natural ecosystem sustainability, and promoting solidarity economies enhancing rural social sustainability through community democracy [47,48].

3.1. Research Design and Participant Selection

This study designed a home-visit project in Inner Mongolia’s grassland area within a family social work course, enabling students to engage with the natural environment and herding families’ lifestyles. The students participating in the project served as both participants in the fieldwork and subjects of this study. They were selected for the fieldwork project based on their voluntary participation, though their motivations varied, reflecting their diverse focuses and engagements during the fieldwork. Before fieldwork training, students received teaching in natural ecology, cultural competence for family diversity, and visual documentation techniques for home visits, with emphasis on critical thinking about their ecological identity and responsibilities through practice. The course offered optional research focuses for home visits, such as analyzing linkages between family hardships and the natural environment through students’ ecological experiences; examining women’s roles bridging ecological systems and family dynamics; and exploring how grassland families perceive interconnections between kinship and nature. Nineteen students enrolled in the course, with preferences honored for fieldwork placement: ten students selected urban social service agencies, while nine students conducted their fieldwork in grassland communities. These nine students formed three groups (A, B, C). Due to the remoteness of the grassland where communities lacked social work services and no local agencies could host interns, and students’ absence of grassland’s living experience, a seasoned herder served as the guide, with the herder’s home functioning as a fieldwork residence. During home visits, limited vehicle access and absence of paved roads necessitated hiking between family settlements typically spaced over 2 km apart, requiring ≥30 min per trek; each group visited approximately three households daily, with return to the fieldwork residence taking roughly two hours. Given these conditions, students learned to navigate the terrain and acquired emergency response skills to ensure safe return before dusk. After the fieldwork, all groups presented their findings, sharing insights into grassland family systems and deepening their understanding of nature-family interdependencies and their sustainability implications.

3.2. Data Collection and Analysis Methods

The study employed ethnographic analysis methods, which involved examining cases documented during the fieldwork, analyzing field dialogues, and critically reviewing classroom discussions to gain a deeper understanding of how social work students developed a diversified ecological self through their fieldwork experiences. The qualitative data analysis approach is guided by thematic analysis. The study opted not to use specialized qualitative analysis software, primarily because the research data volume was not large, and manual processing allowed for a more contextualized engagement with the data collected. Through manual categorization, analytical transcripts were developed for the data from each of the three student groups. Data during the fieldwork were collected through records of home visits, on-site dialogues between the author and the students regarding the fieldwork, and reflective classroom discussions on the fieldwork experience. These diverse data sources addressed the need for triangulation and the reliability of the findings. The information drawn from three distinct contexts allowed for cross-verification of students’ field-based feedback and reflections. The author and students repeatedly reviewed and discussed the cases derived from the fieldwork. This process included verifying the students’ full engagement during home visits through on-site dialogues, as well as examining the depth of their reflections on the cases during classroom discussions. These measures were taken to strengthen the credibility and validity of the conclusions drawn. In addition to triangulation in data collection, the analytical procedure involved cross-referencing data gathered from the three student groups. While the themes explored by each group differed, these variations enriched the study’s understanding of how the ecological self can manifest across different contexts, thereby supporting the conclusions that cultivating the ecological self as a core competence in social work field education must account for diversity rather than self-centric approaches. The analysis involved generating initial codes from each group’s data, which were then synthesized to identify overarching core themes. By analyzing the relationship between these core themes and the ecological self across the three groups, the study illustrates how the awareness of students’ ecological self emerged and its significance for deepening their understanding of sustainability.

4. Findings

4.1. Understanding Pluralistic Needs in Chronic Disease Treatment Through Grassland Ecosystems

Group A students conducted home visits with families experiencing chronic illness. The team comprised two students: one student, an ethnic Mongolian, who communicated in Mongolian despite limited grassland experience as an urban resident, and another student equally unfamiliar with grassland life. Their voluntary choice stemmed from the novelty and excitement of fieldwork in the grassland. The group documented herder G (

Table 1. Thematic analysis of ecological self: understanding of contextual complexity and ecological self.

Data Sources	Records (Examples)	Initial Coding	Core Themes
Records of Home Visits	Herder G, 53, has chronic knee pain from decades of herding. He continues to work without adequate rest. His son works in the city, leading to intergenerational disagreement over marriage and his return.	Chronic illness from occupation Lack of adequate rest Intergenerational separation Misaligned role expectations	Intertwined Challenges of Health and Family Dynamics
2. On-site Dialogues	“According to the family I visited, they really should pay more attention to their own health… They only go to a hospital in the city when the condition becomes really severe. This often leads to delays…” “I learned that in this family… There’s a strong expectation for the son to get married soon. They are… hoping for a new child to carry on the family line.”	Perceived low health awareness Delayed medical checkups Strong expectation for marriage Desire for family continuation	Superficial Needs Assessment based on Outsider Interpretation
3. Reflective Classroom Discussions	The family used multifaceted treatments (lama healer, Mongolian, Chinese, Western medicine). Modern medicine offered short-term relief but required travel; traditional methods were promising but financially burdensome without reimbursement. Students recognized the need to understand the client’s environment, shifting from a clinical lens to seeing the person within their ecosystem.	Pluralistic treatment-seeking Rationale for treatment choices Policy constraints (reimbursement) Shift to contextual understanding Recognizing client-in-environment	Contextual Complexity and the Emergence of the Ecological Self

). Group A students identified the family’s core challenges as insufficient health awareness, delaying medical checkups, occupation-induced leg pain exacerbated by inadequate rest, and family separation compounded by misaligned role expectations and relational discord. Based on these demands, they designed a family service plan targeting health literacy enhancement and kinship mediation. During classroom discussions, when questioned about the family’s efforts to treat G’s leg condition, students supplemented their report: the family had pursued multifaceted treatments, including visiting a grassland lama monk healer to seek medical and spiritual healing, Mongolian traditional medicine, Chinese medicine, and Western medicine. From the family’s perspective, modern treatments provided short-term pain relief without curing the chronic illness, and required long-distance travel from the grassland to urban areas despite the advantage of national healthcare reimbursement eligibility. Conversely, Mongolian traditional medicine and spiritual healing demanded long-term commitment but promised healing without disrupting grassland livelihoods; however, exclusion from the national healthcare reimbursement system increased family financial burdens that prevented consistent treatment. Through this case, students recognized that needs assessment transcends superficial client-assessor interactions or subjective interpretation of narratives. It necessitates extending self-awareness into the client’s natural environment to understand contextual complexities. Consequently, sustainability-oriented family service design requires a multidimensional framework integrating pluralistic treatment needs, national welfare policies, and localized advantages of traditional and spiritual therapies.

Building upon the above findings, the case of herder G served as an experiential ground for the students’ development of an ecological self. Initially approaching the family’s health challenges through a conventional clinical lens, the students’ understanding was transformed through critical reflection. When they discovered the family’s simultaneous utilization of modern medicine, Mongolian traditional therapies, and spiritual healing, they moved beyond a fragmented, problem-solving approach. They began to perceive herder G not merely as a patient with a diseased knee, but as a person whose health and well-being are interwoven with the grassland ecosystem, its cultural heritage, and its socio-economic systems. This shift in perspective—from analyzing an isolated individual to understanding a node within a complex network—marks the emergence of an ecological self. It embodies a relational way of knowing where the self extends its awareness to empathically encompass the client’s entire life-world, recognizing that sustainable well-being is co-constituted by human, cultural, and environmental relationships. The impact of this ecological awakening on the students was profound. Their final service design, which integrated pluralistic treatment needs with policy and local resources, demonstrated a significant cognitive and ethical expansion. The students’ ecological awareness not only enriched their immediate practice but also strengthened their commitment to a form of social work that champions sustainability, positioning them to better navigate the complex interplay between personal troubles and environmental contexts in their future careers.

4.2. Women’s Natural Connections and Resilience in Family Roles

Group B students focused on women’s roles in grassland families. They were curious about the grassland nature and culture, wanting to understand cultural fragments and piece them together. For example, while men’s heroic spirit is encouraged, the students explored the other side—women’s nurturing qualities. The grassland women were fascinated by the saying “The grassland is a mother, to stay too long is to lose her” [49], wondering why grasslands are compared to women and why nomadic life makes more sense than settling in the grassland. With this curiosity, they joined the fieldwork. Group B had three students: two city residents and one rural Mongolian student who spoke Mongolian but lived in a farming village without grassland experience. They presented a case of herder W (

Table 2. Thematic analysis of ecological self: from gender roles to understand ecological self.

Data Sources	Records (Examples)	Initial Coding	Core Themes
Records of Home Visits	Herder W, 54, burdened with all housework and pasture work due to her husband’s chronic leg pain. She settled conflicts between her daughters and admitted feeling closer to the younger one.	Women’s central role in labor Burden of multiple responsibilities Conflict mediation in family Emotional preferences	Gendered Labor and Centrality of Women in Family Resilience
2. On-site Dialogues	“Ms. W has a strong personality. When her children question her decisions, she often doesn’t explain the reasons behind them.” “She should let her children make more of their own decisions, rather than making decisions for them.”	Perceived need for change Authoritative communication style Intergenerational decision-making conflicts	Outsider Interpretation and Cultural Gap in Assessing Family Dynamics
3. Reflective Classroom Discussions	“Only one student in our group could ask questions in Mongolian, so the rest had to rely on translation.” “She kept looking out to check on her sheep… some questions didn’t get her full attention.” Students recognized W’s role in “holding the grassland family together” and connecting family members to both urban life and grassland living.	Cultural and linguistic limitations Attention divided between human and non-human concerns Women as connectors across domains Resilience through active bonding	Ecological Awareness and Relational Resilience through Cultural Humility

). Group B set intervention goals to strengthen family members’ self-differentiation, reduce emotional projection, and improve family communication. During class discussions, students recognized that their home visit revealed a W-centered family relationship across generations. W actively placed herself at the heart of solving family problems, handling various difficulties like taking over household and herding work when her husband’s health limited him, while also stepping in to settle disputes between her daughters. Through her efforts, W held the grassland family together—caring for her husband with leg pain, maintaining connections with daughters working in towns, and linking to both family and grassland living. Students reflect that they have limited cultural understanding (e.g., none spoke Mongolian or knew grassland culture well), yet observed that families like W’s showed strong resilience when facing challenges like environmental hardships or social changes. This resilience wasn’t about avoiding difficulties but about actively preserving bonds and sustainability. Students also reflected on their search for the image of grassland women. W’s family case showed women’s role in maintaining family sustainability and connecting with natural living. Students felt that they should understand ecological responsibility and ethics to care for the link between grassland families and their ecosystem.

Based on the case of herder W, Group B students experienced a significant shift in their understanding of the ecological self, moving beyond a purely individualistic concept to one that is relationally and culturally embedded. Initially, they perceived ecological responsibility as primarily about individual environmental awareness. However, W’s identity was not confined to her individual attributes; it was interwoven with the well-being of her family and the grassland ecosystem. Her momentary distraction during the conversation, as she glanced at her sheep, was a poignant illustration of this extended selfhood, where attention is continuously distributed across human and non-human relationships. This challenged the students’ initial, more abstract curiosity about why the “grassland is a mother,” grounding it in the daily, practical reality of a woman whose consciousness and actions are deeply tied to the grassland. This encounter profoundly impacted the students’ own development of an ecological self, primarily by fostering critical cultural reflection and relational resilience. The students’ reflection on their linguistic and cultural limitations—relying on a single translator—triggered a self-critical awareness of their position as outsiders. This awareness is a crucial step in ecological self-development, as it involves recognizing the situatedness of one’s own knowledge and the need to engage humbly with other ways of being. Furthermore, W’s demonstration of resilience in the face of environmental and familial challenges provided a powerful example of adaptive strength rooted in connection rather than control.

4.3. Expressing Family Ties and Emotions with Animal Relationships

Group C students aimed to describe grassland family relationships in detail. Before fieldwork, they read about diverse expressions of family Genograms and studies viewing pets as family members [50], hoping for discoveries. The four-member group—three city residents and one farming village student, all without grassland living experience—built good communication during home visits despite no Mongolian language skills. Though conversations paused sometimes due to Mongolian or dialect use, they relied on concrete words over abstract ideas. They documented Han ethnic herder H (

Table 3. Thematic analysis of ecological self: animal metaphors and the development of students’ ecological self.

Data Sources	Records (Examples)	Initial Coding	Core Themes
Records of Home Visits	Herder H described his wife as “a stubborn goat” and himself as “a gentle sheep” who stepped back. He saw his relationship with his daughter like “sheep and horses”: natural partners. He rarely mentioned his son.	Animal metaphors for family roles Relational dynamics through nature Emotional distance with son Naturalized conflict resolution	Ecological Metaphors as a Relational Language
2. On-site Dialogues	“When H has conflicts with his wife, he always avoids dealing with them directly… This could lead to a situation where all their problems suddenly erupt at once…”	Concern about conflict avoidance Fear of grievances Potential for crisis	Outsider Interpretation Based on the Framework of Family Therapy
3. Reflective Classroom Discussions	Students noted that herder describe “family relationships more like nature itself—using observations of animal behaviors.” They concluded this reflects “nature’s sustainable ways”, linking family life to the environment and creating deep emotional connections. Students imagined H’s bond with his son resembled “livestock and wild donkeys”—distant yet protective neighbors.	Cultural recognition of nature-based understanding Sustainability through acceptance Developing relational imagination Metaphorical competence	Cultivating an Ecological Self through Metaphorical Relationships

). Based on fieldwork records, Group C set their family service goals as encouraging H to express his views and changing communication patterns with his wife.

Reflecting on their grassland experience, students noted that herders describe family relationships more like nature itself—using observations of animal behaviors and their ecological connections to explain family bonds. Emotions among grassland families build on accepting each other, much like describing traits through animals: instead of forcing change, they adapt communication styles to fit these natural patterns. Group C concluded that such understanding of family relationships reflects nature’s sustainable ways, linking family life to the grassland environment while keeping nature in balance and creating deep emotional connections. The case of herder H provided Group C students with a profound lesson in the cultural and metaphorical dimensions of the ecological self. By using animal metaphors—the “stubborn goat” for his wife, the “gentle sheep” for himself, and the imagery of sheep and horses for his relationship with his daughter—H demonstrated a mode of understanding human relationships that is deeply embedded in the natural world. This was not merely symbolic language but an expression of a worldview in which the self is not separate from the ecosystem; rather, human emotions, roles, and relational dynamics are perceived and articulated through the observable behaviors and ecological roles of animals. The students recognized that this metaphorical thinking reflects a form of culturally mediated ecological awareness, where the boundary between the human social world and the natural environment becomes permeable. The self, in this context, is understood through its affinities and contrasts with other living beings, revealing a relational ontology that is both practical and deeply rooted in the grassland lifeworld.

This encounter significantly advanced the students’ own development of an ecological self by fostering metaphorical competence and relational imagination. The students approached family relationships through standardized genogram templates and abstract psychological concepts. However, H’s animal metaphors offered them a new, more visceral language for understanding human dynamics—one that is grounded in observation, coexistence, and acceptance rather than judgment or forced change. This shifted their professional perspective, encouraging them to appreciate and utilize clients’ own culturally and ecologically resonant narratives in assessment and intervention. Furthermore, the students’ reflection on the potential relationship between H and his son—imagining it as akin to that between “livestock and wild donkeys”—demonstrated their growing ability to think ecologically and relationally. They began to conceptualize family ties not as fixed structures but as dynamic, adaptive relationships that mirror the complex interdependencies found in nature. This expansion of their professional imagination marks a key step in cultivating an ecological self, enabling them to better perceive and support the sustainable, often non-verbalized, emotional bonds that connect individuals, families, and their environments.

5. Discussion

5.1. Expanding Students’ Ecological Self and Deeper Understanding of Sustainability

Social work education and services in China heavily focus on professional skills. After the CCP established its social work department, the political role of social work became clearer. Both professionally and politically, social work’s practical role in China’s development is clear [51], thriving by meeting government needs for social talent training and public participation under CCP leadership. It serves as a technical tool for social governance within China’s welfare system. However, Western methods of social work lack connection to China’s cultural history. Standard casework, group, and community approaches often confuse participants, lowering engagement rates. This happens partly because early social work training copied Western values without adapting them locally, and partly because Marxist values shape society, making social work reflect CCP ideas like serving people wholeheartedly or volunteering. Notably, sustainability-focused rural projects in western China are creating new locally rooted methods, offering practical foundations for education. Most social work students come from cities due to China’s rapid urbanization (67% urban in 2024, still rising). Second or third generation urban migrants expect university education to lead to government jobs or better careers, with little interest in going back to rural areas. Yet as more students graduate, job shortages create mismatched expectations. Without learning core values beyond skills, social work students struggle to respond to their employment challenges.

Social work education in China should move students away from elite career expectations, instead helping them grow personally, especially by reducing self-centered pride through nature-based fieldwork. Contact with natural environments and local communities builds ecological consciousness. This helps students reflect on their abilities in rural sustainability work and understand how social work’s environmental duties connect deeply with their career plans and life values. The ontological turn has primarily unfolded within anthropology and related fields, often emphasizing either alternative “natures” or non-Western modes of being [52,53]. The natural ontology turn of social work education in China needs to be proposed. This involves re-centering social work practice around the interconnectedness of human and non-human worlds. Some social workers already focus on nature and rural sustainability. For example, Guangzhou Conghua’s Shen Geng Social Work Agency members choose not to chase elite lifestyles or high salaries after university. Instead, they work long-term with villagers facing climate disasters and rural decline. Their efforts bring practical hope for local nature and rural sustainability, showing how their ecological self works for promoting social work practice in China.

5.2. Developing Students’ Ecological Self to Understand Women’s Roles in Sustainability

Chinese social work studies recognize women’s key contributions to community democracy, preserving traditional skills, and strengthening community bonds, yet they rarely explore their role in connecting nature and family sustainability. Traditional Chinese culture values yin-yang balance (the complementary cosmic forces or principles in traditional Chinese philosophy)—seen in the ancient book Zhouyi (Book of Changes), describing how opposing forces interact and support all life. Concepts like Qian (heaven) and Kun (earth) show this relationship, where “earth” represents feminine qualities like nurturing. However, imperial China reinforced male-centered social roles, creating systems where men dominated women—mirroring how humans dominate nature, as ecofeminists note [54]. Over the past forty years, rural women have still been viewed as passive and overburdened. Chinese social work should focus more on empowering women’s negotiation and leadership skills. Their unique ability to link family and environmental sustainability should be recognized.

Social work students discover through fieldwork that women in grassland areas show caring strength in both family and nature, handling hardships with resilience. They offer deep support when family members suffer, feeling similar pain when nature is harmed—an ability to empathize with all living things. This reflects the ancient Daoist parable “Zhuangzi Dreams of a Butterfly” from Chinese philosophy: Zhuangzi dreamed he became a butterfly, fluttering freely among flowers. Upon awakening, he questioned whether he was now a butterfly dreaming itself to be Zhuangzi. Fieldwork teaching should create experiences to develop students’ ecological self of universal connection. For example, female students facing job market challenges can use such ecological self to value their strengths, serving as bridges between nature and rural sustainability. Women play vital roles in sustaining the natural world.

5.3. Deepening Understanding of Relationships and Sustainability Between Residents and Animals

Animal-assisted social work since the 2000s mainly focuses on therapy, yet few studies use human–animal connections to help families, even though animals are part of ecosystems. In China, research on human–animal ties mostly happens in anthropology. Social work rarely uses animal understanding in services. Fieldwork shows students must reflect on animal metaphors beyond human relationships. Residents and animals shape each other, so students should learn to think through animals and nature, understanding how these bonds affect family relationships and service approaches in communities. Fieldwork reveals that students must learn to interpret animal metaphors not merely as cultural symbols but as expressions of a relational worldview. For instance, when herders describe family dynamics through analogies to goats, sheep, or horses, they articulate a form of kin-centric relatedness [55], where humans and animals coexist as part of a plural life world. This perspective challenges the anthropocentric assumptions prevalent in social work and invites students to reflect on how residents and animals mutually shape each other’s existence. By engaging with these metaphors, students can begin to “correspond” [56] with the lived experiences of grassland families—attending to the ways in which relationships are woven into the fabric of the natural environment rather than imposed upon it.

To advance the sustainability of nature and local families, social work needs not just cultural skills but ecological competence. Specifically, through the ecological self, social work students could see that sustainability depends not on dominant human actions but on the overall balance of nature—including people, animals, plants, and all living things. This aligns with Ingold’s concept of “correspondence” [56], which emphasizes attentive, creative engagement with the world rather than detached observation or control. The ecological self should move beyond self-centeredness to reconnect with the original natural state [30], reconciling individual existence with the whole natural world. In practice, fieldwork teaching should help students understand sustainability as an intergenerational goal while experiencing nature’s deep connections through their ecological self, what Naess called self-realization [57]. Developing the ecological self means returning to the innate bond with nature, unlocking understanding of universal interconnectedness.

6. Conclusions

The ecological self is ontological to developing ecological competence in social work fieldwork teaching. The ecological self helps students to deeply understand how nature and local communities sustain themselves. Social work fieldwork teaching needs to prioritize cultivating the ecological self. While sustainability is now a key reform focus in social work [58], the studies connecting service providers, students, and nature through the ecological lens are still lacking. This study explores social work fieldwork teaching focused on the ecological self in China. Training students in ecological competence lets them see their self-growth and eco-responsibility, moving beyond narrow job-focused thinking that causes low self-worth in urban job markets. The ecological self offers a powerful way for students to deeply understand sustainability for addressing rural China’s social work challenges, such as worker shortages, low professional value, and declining service quality due to a lack of environmental care.

Based on fieldwork design in a family social work course, this study aims to develop students’ ability to understand the nature and local community sustainability. Through home visits, students experienced how chronic illness management, women’s roles, and human–animal relationships reflect interconnected needs within broader ecological systems, not self-centered views. Social work education in China can draw from traditional ecological wisdom like Wang Yangming’s philosophy of extending innate knowing, which emphasizes returning to one’s moral core through inner reflection. The ecological self represents this inward-expanding capacity to understand all beings within natural contexts. As Chinese social work students face employment pressure, undervalued rural practice, and profit-driven imbalances, cultivating the ecological self rebuilds students’ confidence in their profession and deepens their commitment to sustainability.