Re-Imagining Social Work Education Using Critical Disability Theory and Critical Feminism: An Analytic Autoethnography

Overview: This presentation challenges participants to re-imagine social work education using critical feminism and critical disability theory. Using an analytic autoethnography, the presentation seeks to: 1) re-conceptualize a social work practice course; 2) disrupt ableism within social work education; and 3) provide recommendations to educators seeking to re-envision social work education.Proposal text: Ableism is widespread in higher education institutions (Brown & Leigh, 2018) and social work programs specifically (de Bie et al., 2020; Healy et al., 2015; Kattari et al., 2018; Sellmaier & Kim, 2020). Although paradigm shifts of disability from stigma to equity in social work education exist (Katsui et al., 2020), traditional understandings that decenter the voices of disabled people persist. The predominant discourse on disability in social work and social services perpetuates the medical model of disability (Hiranandani, 2005; Oliver et al., 2012), a deficit-based approach that tries to ameliorate disability through individualistic approaches (DePoy & Gilson, 2002). On the contrary, we frame disability as an aspect of identity and culture that holds inherent value in our communities and professional spaces (Hanebutt & Mueller; McRuer, 2006).

In this paper, we present an analytic autoethnography (Anderson, 2006; Witkin, 2014) of our personal and reflexive accounts of problematizing and re-imagining Eurocentric social work education by integrating critical feminism and critical disability theory into our pedagogy. We use our involvement as course coordinator and sessional instructor of a social work practice course to illustrate how we disrupted and challenged traditional medicalized and ableist approaches reflected in the course content and development. Moreover, we offer new definitions of critical feminism in social work and strengthen our understandings of systemic inequities experienced by disabled people by engaging with intersectionality and disability justice principles.

We outline key theoretical ideas for social work practice and education by utilizing crip theory, a merging of critical disability studies and queer theory, with intersectionality. Crip theory (McRuer, 2006; Shelton, 2020) recognizes disability as an aspect of identity that holds inherent value, questioning deficit perspectives and what is lost when disability considered a problem to be fixed (Hanebutt & Mueller, 2021). Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1991; Hill Collins, 2019), which articulates how multiple and interacting experiences of oppression create inequities, helps frame ableism as it interacts with other forms of oppression. After conceptualizing an intersectional, crip theoretical model, this paper articulates the process of re-imagining a social work practice course on individuals and families, and the process of identifying and challenging concepts presented.

Case examples are provided to illustrate how an intersectional, crip lens shifts social work education in crucial ways. We conclude by discussing four implications for social work education: 1) universal design vs the neoliberal agenda; 2) centering of voices through client-involvement in social work education; 3) re-envisioning course content (e.g., stage models of family therapy; definitions of family) and commonly taught models of practice within social work (e.g., structural family therapy; cognitive-behavioral therapy); and 4) critically examining and disrupting inherent ableism within educational structures, spaces, and policies.

Findings from this analytic autoethnography indicate that critical disability theory and critical feminist theories can be effectively applied to disrupt ableism within social work education and may be effective in re-envisioning key concepts in teaching social work practice and theory. Teaching guidelines are outlined to support social work educators in re-envisioning their courses in similar ways.