Advancing Critical Anti-Racism Dialogues for Action: Re-Examining Our Curricula, Program Content, and Policies

Overview: Through exchanging ideas about anti-racist approaches to inform the review of course curricula, programs, and their policies, the presenters will introduce various dialogic, theoretical, and action tools with an intentional focus on human rights as integral to macro social work education and practice.Proposal text: In recent years, the US has made a perceivable shift in examining how the synchronous forces of white supremacy and racism continue to permeate its mainstream culture and social institutions (Dunbar-Ortiz, 2014; Hwang, 2021; McCleary & Simard, 2021; Tatum, 2017; Taylor, 2016). Social work has been similarly inspired. We are currently self-reflecting on our professional participation in white supremacist and racist practices, acknowledging our historical roots and present –albeit oftentimes unintentional— program-level involvement in practices that counter human rights practice and advocacy rather than proactively address systems of racial and ethnic oppression (Almeida et al., 2019; Reisch, 2021). Such violations include evidence of systemic white supremacy within social work education, and simultaneous devaluation of the knowledge, perspectives, history, and experiences of BIPOC educators, students, practitioners, and client systems (King-Jordan & Gil, 2021; McCleary & Simard, 2021; Yearwood et al., 2021).

Research on intergroup leadership has been found to be psychologically empowering (Steop et al., 2020) in-line with social work literature on the benefits of teaching collaborations for professional development through reflexive discussion (Roy et al., 2014). The co-facilitators of this workshop represent a larger community of social work educators from a diverse group of US programs and schools. Since first convening in 2021, their focus has been on dialogue surrounding anti-racism social work education. This includes unearthing the biases and unrecognized racism and settler colonialism within social work educational systems and processes and assessing the language of privilege and oppression within the content and structure of social work education. Such co-collaboration identifies practices and policies within our individual courses, curricula, and programs that are racially, ethnically, and otherwise intersectionally comprehensive and accessible (hooks, 2014; King-Jordan & Gil, 2021; Masocha, 2015). The facilitators perceive their collective vision as utilizing critical theoretical perspectives to action systemic, multi-level pedagogical change in social work education to serve and value a multitude of human experience, expressions, and contributions.

Workshop facilitators will provide examples from their own coursework and programs and engage workshop participants in conversational exercises towards moving from personal reflections to actions. Examples will include uncovering the unconscious centering of whiteness in learning materials such as course syllabi and assignments; developing modalities of student learning evaluation; and creating classroom and program cultures of belonging (Arday, 2018; hooks, 1994; Linely, 2017; Lykes et al., 2018; Yeung et al., 2013). This workshop will model the creation of brave learning spaces through honest and reflective dialogue of experiences and introspections between presenters and attendees. It is intended that attendees, from students to full professors, will recognize aspects of their own experiences in presenter stories, and feel welcome in furthering their own processes of unlearning and restructuring as we collectively strive towards building processes of engagement and belonging in social work education. Furthermore, attendees gain a better understanding of their own strengths and growth areas in relation to anti-racism, anti-oppressive, and intersectional pedagogical practices. Social work educators and administrators have the responsibility of creating learning spaces that honor the inherent human worth and lived experiences of our students.