Use of Anti-Oppression Accountability Groups in Social Work Field Seminar Courses: Lessons Learned

Overview: Critical conversations about oppression are integral to students’ learning in both the field and academic classroom. Accountability Groups are one strategy for examining positionality and systems of oppression impacting one’s social work practice. Presenters will share lessons learned from incorporating anti-oppression accountability groups into MSW Field Practicum courses.Proposal text: The practicum seminar plays a fundamental role within social work education due to its integrative nature and central location within the curriculum. It is a powerful pedagogical tool to discuss, critically examine, and refine social work skills, knowledge, and values. The structured dialogue of seminar courses help foster “transformative experiences and pedagogical interactions that challenge and facilitate critical thinking,” shape professional development, and profoundly impact students’ practice actions and decision-making (Larrison & Korr, 2013, p. 202).
As students begin to embody social justice and human rights principles at all levels of practice in the field, practicum seminar courses are a natural and important forum for examining systemic oppression, promoting anti-oppressive social work practice, and preparing social work students to understand and take action against racism and other forms of oppression (Davis, 2019). The presenters will discuss experiences of initiating accountability groups as a required component of second year MSW practicum seminar courses, in a predominantly white social work program, as one approach to strengthening students’ anti-oppressive practice.

Anti-racist and white accountability groups appear to be increasingly common in academic institutions and social work schools for faculty, staff, and students to examine and take action against systemic racism and oppression, however their incorporation into social work courses is unclear. Accountability groups broadly focused on oppression of multiple forms is one approach to supporting students’ developing self-awareness, their accountability to themselves and their professional colleagues, and mutual aid that helps students “acknowledge, normalize, and validate the inevitable emotions arising from oppression” (Jeffries-Logan, Johnson, & Okun, n.d., p.3). Awareness serves as a foundation for students’ examination of their positionality and its impact on their social work practice and as an impetus for individual and community action.

Anti-oppressive practice draws from critical theories in the social sciences and principles and values core to the field of social work (Dalyrmple & Burke, 2019). Establishment of the accountability groups was a response to (1) the MSW program’s deepening commitment to strengthen its curriculum in areas of anti-oppressive practice, (2) acknowledgement by students and field educators of the necessity of students’ training around anti-oppression before entering the field, and (3) anticipation that small, closed accountability groups would promote further engagement around topics of power, privilege and oppression in the larger seminar course.

Structured around readings, podcasts, and videos on oppression, marginalization, racism, gender, and critical self-reflexivity related to social work practice, our accountability groups are intended to be (1) spaces to reflect, discuss, learn, grow, challenge and be challenged; (2) spaces of awareness-building and call to action; and (3) spaces to support each other and keep each other accountable in reaching individual goals of being anti-oppressive social workers and the collective goal of being practitioners guided by the social work ethical principle of challenging social injustice. Details about the development, structure, resources, and evaluation of the pilot run of the anti-oppressive accountability groups will be presented.