Podcasting Pedagogy: The missing piece in Higher Education podcasting

by Jonathan B. Singer, Loyola University Chicago, USA and Mim Fox, University of Wollongong, Australia.

We know the social work classroom is changing. Students are balancing jobs, caregiving, and field placements, often accessing course content between shifts or on the go. As educators, we’re constantly looking for ways to meet students where they are without compromising depth, ethics, or critical engagement. That’s what first drew us to podcasting.

When we started podcasting, even though we were practitioner-educators, we weren’t thinking about podcasting as pedagogy. We were following our instincts grounded in the ethics and values of social work: relationality, justice, reflection, and voice. The more we worked with the medium, the clearer it became: podcasting wasn’t just supplemental. It could be central to a values-driven, theoretically grounded pedagogy.

From these experiences emerged the Fox-Singer Framework for Podcasting in Social Work Education, a model we developed for our 2025 text Podcasting in Social Work Education to help higher education instructors use podcasting intentionally and effectively in the classroom. The framework aligns with well-established teaching theories and social work principles, offering a concrete way to integrate podcasting without turning it into busywork or background noise.

Why podcasting belongs in Higher Ed

Podcasting is intimate. We record our episodes assuming that almost every episode will be experienced as an audience of one. When students listen, they’re often alone with earbuds in, commuting, cooking dinner, exercising, or following along with the transcript. They’re not scrolling through slides, watching a Zoom recording, or flipping through social media. They are in the front seat at a conversation made just for them.

Hearing someone’s real, unfiltered, emotional voice has a unique ability to cut through abstraction and foster connection. That matters in education. Especially in disciplines like social work, nursing, education, and public health, where developing empathy, critical thinking, and cultural humility is essential. We’ve found podcasting supports those learning outcomes powerfully – not as a gimmick, but as a tool for reflection, challenge, and transformation.

The Fox-Singer Framework: A brief overview

The Fox-Singer Framework (Figure 1) outlines six key constructs that support podcasting as a pedagogical practice in social work education. It’s not about adding podcasts just to seem tech-savvy – it’s about aligning content with transformative learning theory, relationship-based practice, and experiential education.

Here’s a brief look at the six components:

1. Transformative Learning – Use podcasts to introduce disorienting dilemmas and support critical reflection and perspective transformation.
2. Relationship-Based Practice – Foster empathy and trust through audio stories; encourage students to create their own episodes as a form of relational learning.
3. Experiential Learning – Simulate client interactions or field scenarios through podcasts, then build assignments around role-play or case analysis.
4. Pedagogical Blueprinting – Integrate podcasting into the curriculum and assessment plan with clear objectives—not as an afterthought.
5. Storytelling & Lived Experience – Prioritize narratives from marginalized communities to teach narrative competence and justice-oriented listening.’
6. Rigor & Relevance – Choose content grounded in research or community-defined expertise, and continuously evaluate podcasting’s pedagogical impact.

What it looks like in practice

In Chapter 8 of Podcasting in Social Work Education, Mim Fox and her co-host Lis share the story of Katie, a mature-age social work student who joined the Social Work Stories podcast team for her field placement. Katie was skeptical—she didn’t even know how to access a podcast, let alone how it would build her social work skills. But the placement quickly proved otherwise. She interviewed practicing social workers, helping them feel safe enough to share their stories—many of whom were far more comfortable offering support than being in the spotlight. Katie sharpened her professional communication, built rapport, and raised important ethical questions about story ownership and de-identification. Her curiosity prompted the team to formalize their de-identification protocols, leaving a lasting mark.

Katie’s journey captures the essence of the Fox-Singer Framework—transformative learning through disorienting dilemmas, trust built through storytelling, and experiential co-creation rooted in rigor and reflection. Podcasting, when used intentionally, turns students into knowledge-makers and brings presence, connection, and humanity back into asynchronous learning.

A call to colleagues

We don’t believe podcasting is a cure-all. But we do believe that after 20 years it is time to start thinking about the pedagogy behind podcasting. We’re biased, but we think it aligns beautifully with the work so many of us are already doing: fostering ethical practice, critical thought, and compassionate engagement.

If you’re a social work educator (or teach in a similarly relational discipline), we invite you to try podcasting—not just as content, but as pedagogy. The Fox-Singer Framework is designed to help you do that in a thoughtful, flexible, and theory-informed way.

At the end of the day, what we do isn’t about teaching. It is about what the student is learning, and how they are transforming themselves and our world.

Editor’s note: Image generated with Napkin.ai. Image created by the authors based on the Fox-Singer Framework in Fox, M., & Singer, J. B. (Eds.). (2025). Podcasting in social work education: A way forward for educators. Routledge. 10.4324/ 9781003530275 and reproduced with
permission.

Further readings