Journal of Teaching in Social Work Improving the Cultural Competency of Social Work Students With a Social Privilege Activity (original) (raw)
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Journal of Social Work Education, 2016
Intersectionality has been gaining momentum among social workers as a framework to allow a fuller understanding of the complexity of diverse social identities and the impact of social structures on power, privilege, and oppression. However, the application of intersectionality to teaching in social work education has been relatively absent in the literature. This article describes a 3-hour graduate-level classroom exercise designed to increase knowledge and proficiency of intersectionality. Critical self-reflections of the participants' experiences are provided to illustrate the evolving growth and awareness that can result from the educational process using this framework. Examples and suggestions for reading assignments and classroom activities are offered. Implications for social work education and future directions are discussed.
Journal of Social Work Education, 2021
In this article, we argue that those in social work education should refocus how they conceptualize and teach intersectionality to produce more effective social work practitioners. We emphasize that social work should shift from educating students to evaluate diverse clients as the accumulation of individual identities operating in isolation (e.g., race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation) to recognizing how these identities intersect to influence health and well-being based on these identities’ shared roots in oppression and privilege. This emphasis is grounded in the belief that training social work students to identify the multiple forms of inequities resulting from oppression related to gender, race, and class that influence clients’ social, economic, and health (physical and mental) outcomes will better prepare them to deliver culturally responsive and structurally competent practice that aligns with and advances the mission and ethics of the social work profession. We further discuss how intersectionality should be conceptualized, defined, and taught in social work education through explicit naming and discussion of oppression and privilege, and we close by presenting some common barriers to teaching intersectionality as well as possible strategies to overcome them. You can download the original article for free for a limited time at the following link: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/XSHM3UC8CWWDHUJ2S7IQ/full?target=10.1080/10437797.2021.1883492
Teaching Note: A Social Work Program's Experience in Teaching About Race in the Curriculum
Journal of Social Work Education, 2009
Teaching about race, racism, and oppression presents higher education programs with complex challenges. This article reports on the experiences of a new MSW program in desigrung a gateway "race, gender, and inequality" course. Embracing a theoretical base of culturally competent practice and solutions to the irüierent difficulties of discussing race and oppression in diverse student groups is suggested along with six rules of engagement. Recommendations are based on the interactive experience of a highly diverse faculty and student body, literature review, student focus groups, faculty retreats, expert consultation, and curriculum refinement. DESPITE DIRECTIONS BY the Council on Sodal Work Education (CSWE; 2004) to include content on racism and oppression in social work curricula, translating this into meaningful leaming is complicated. The competing worldviews between students of color and of European-American heritage create divergent realities that confront instructors with pedagogical challenges. This teaching note is a case study of a newly established MSW program committed to infusing content on racism into its curriculum. The outlined strategy is based on teaching experiences, student and field instructor focus groups, and professional cor\sultation. Beyond the Expediency of Ahstraction: Creating a Curriculum Confronting racism and oppression of diverse disenfranchised groups represented defining hallmarks of the new MSW program. The profession has grappled with teaching about race for years (Davis, Freeman, Carter, & Cartwright, 1983). Hence, in preparing the curriculum, faculty acknowledged the need to infuse
Dismantling Privilege and White Supremacy in Social Work Education
Advances in Social Work, 2021
The primary aim of social work is eliminating social inequalities by advocating for racial, social, and economic justice for individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities. This commitment and promise starts in the classroom by providing opportunities for students and faculty to interact with each other and promote the core tenets of the profession. As the social work practices are shaped by the values promoted by the mainstream society, many argue that the profession is biased and does not meet the needs of Black, Indigenous People of Color (BIPOC). This issue is explored in the present study by interviewing six Black female social work faculty, aiming to elucidate their experiences in academia and the social work educational environment when interacting with their White counterparts, their students, and the administration. The findings yielded by this investigation have implications for academia, as well as social work education programs and their leadership.
The Quest for Inclusive Cultural Competence in Social Work Education
2017
The focus of this banded dissertation is to gain a better understanding of how undergraduate social work programs are guided to provide culturally competent practice across the curriculum. Critical Race Theory (CRT) informs this scholarship. For the first section, the author completed a content analysis of the historical EPAS to determine how CSWE guides programs in culturally competent practice. The study finds that concepts of culturally competent practice are throughout the editions of EPAS in the language, and in both the implicit and explicit curricula. However, findings suggest CSWE needs to reframe the concept of cultural competence as a multi-dimensional, developmental, and dynamic construct, changing over time in relation to continuous learning, and explicitly connecting EPAS to culturally competent practice. The second section discusses the need to integrate culturally competent social work practice throughout the undergraduate curriculum. It further articulates the use of...
Social Work Education, 2019
Teaching experience at the University of Suffolk noted anecdotally that Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students avoid discussing their identity, cultural heritage, norms and values, in lectures, tutor groups and in assignments. To improve the integration of different cultural perspectives into the social work curriculum, we devised a small-scale qualitative research project Spring, 2017, to explore students' views of teaching, learning and assessment about cultural norms and differences, seeking the views of both BAME students and white students on the programme in order to compare and contrast their experiences. Focus groups were used to gather the views of BAME and white students about the opportunities and barriers to discussing identity, culture, and antiracism. The findings raised significant issues, specifically about the barriers for both BAME and white students to considering cultural differences. Student perspectives suggest more sensitive approaches to considering cultural differences; more responsibility for white lecturers to explore white privilege and its impact; and more safe spaces to manage emotional responses to oppression to enable exchange of experience and learning about different cultural norms and values. The article analyses the findings, discussing ways forward to improve the student experience and promote good practice in teaching and learning.
Unsettling Human Rights History in Social Work Education: Seeing Intersectionality
Journal of Human Rights and Social Work, 2020
Social workers must locate their work within the history of our profession, while also recognizing how and why particular accounts are constructed, legitimized, and disseminated. The historical context of human rights work is especially significant. This narrative has been shaped by selective attention, which advances some perspectives and erases others. Intersectionality encourages scrutiny of missing elements, calling one to explore what else was happening concurrent with the mainstream account and whose perspectives are absent from the story. This paper illustrates the value of an intersectional frame by examining three erasures from human rights history in social work: the Combahee River Collective, the Black settlement house movement, and the Compton's Cafeteria Disturbance. The paper closes with implications for social work education in four areas: deconstructing contemporary social work narratives, investigating historical and cultural locations of our knowledge base, theoretically contextualizing intersectional contributions, and respecting intellectual contributions beyond refereed journals and other traditional formats. Intersectionality theory engages marginalized aspects of human rights history in educating professional social workers; however, it must avoid cooptation to maintain its vibrant critique.
Creating spaces for emancipatory praxis with social work students in a diverse classroom context
Social Work Education
Against neoliberal and new managerial pushes in higher education, educators have a responsibility to engage students in transformational learning and prepare them for the complex world of work. This article describes the use of emancipatory praxis by engaging students in identifying structural sources of advantages and/or privilege, and reports on the data obtained from the written and oral reports of undergraduate social work students taking part in a teaching session on critical reflexivity at a Norwegian University. The data reveal the power of emancipatory praxis in heightening consciousness of intersecting social criteria, such as nationality, race, gender, religion and sexuality in creating obstacles and/or access to power, status and resources. The article lends voice to the students and details their responses to the exercise.