A Teaching Model to Address Anti-Racism: A Tool for Teaching Students

Overview: The Trajectory of Awareness model is a developmental framework emerging from recent qualitative research about internalized racial oppression, a form of racialized trauma that influences clinical work with clients. This presentation focuses on how social work educators can use this model in teaching clinical practice with diverse populations.Proposal text: Living a life free from racism and discrimination is a human right. The impact of racism on overall health has been a growing interest in recent decades but has become a more urgent issue over the last two years with the murders of Black individuals, including George Floyd, Ahmed Arbery and Breonna Taylor. The effects of racism are so far reaching that in April 2021, the CDC declared racism a public health emergency (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2021). This is a critical call to action for all helping professionals that gives attention to this public health concern and how populations are affected.
Social work as a profession has also recognized the grave need to focus on racism (Basham, 2004; Hamilton-Mason & Schneider, 2018). Though the profession has always emphasized cultural competence and prioritizing work with marginalized communities, antiracism has recently been added as a specific area of focus which should be incorporated throughout the social work curriculum across all social work competencies.
Much of what we currently know and understand about a commitment toward antiracism in social work emphasizes macro level or large-scale systemic change. Many of the efforts discussed emphasize dismantling white supremacy or decentering whiteness. Yet to be determined is how antiracism principles translate to micro level, direct clinical practice with clients, how to concretely teach antiracism to students in a way that translates concretely to clinical practice (Hamilton-Mason & Schneider, 2018), and how to assess the learned skills around antiracism practice based on the social work competencies (Copeland & Ross, 2021).
The Trajectory of Awareness is a developmental model and framework for understanding internalized racial oppression. It was developed out of a qualitative study that explored the experiences of Black women psychotherapists with their Black women clients (Author, 2020; Author, 2022). The model has two phases that span the development of understanding of what has been internalized about race, whether it be white supremacy and/or racial oppression. This presentation will explain the impetus and rationale for the development of the study, and outline the evidence that created the model. The second half of the presentation will use composite case vignettes to outline how to use the model in the teaching of clinical social work practice courses, with applications to direct practice, social justice pedagogy and field seminars.
As the social work landscape is rapidly changing to better meet the needs of marginalized and oppressed groups, students must be prepared to do this and understand how antiracism translates to all levels of social work practice, including micro level work. To that end, students must engage in antiracism work and related interventions, to understand what antiracism practice looks like in all social work practice domains, and for social work educators to be clear on how students are prepared in this manner (Copeland & Ross, 2021; Varghese, 2016). Learning about internalized racial oppression, how to assess this in clients and how to intervene in direct practice are ways to attend to this need, and is this presentation's focus.