Cultural and Community Responsive Curriculum: Transforming Social Work Education and Research

Overview: Using an Ethnic Studies pedagogy that contextualizes Filipino/x/a Americans (FAs) as diverse ethnic-linguistic groups dispels inaccurate portrayals of Asian Americans as a monolithic “model minority” and promotes cultural humility in social work curriculum. Recommendations for FA readings in social work courses will be provided to expand social work education/ research.Proposal text: Despite academia’s increased attention on dispelling the “model minority myth,” social work still upholds this concept by formulating Asian Americans (AAs) as a monolith, a concept rooted in White supremacy. Existing research is often Euro-centric and exhibits a lack of diverse curricula in social work education on AAs, specifically Filipino/x/a Americans (FAs). FAs are the third largest AA in the United States (US), with approximately 4 million individuals in 2019 (Pew Research Center, 2019). Furthermore in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a marked increase of Anti-Asian violence (Gover et al., 2020; Le et al., 2020). FAs are also one of the fastest growing immigrant groups, yet little research about this community is conducted. Social workers are ethically mandated to promote social justice, yet fall short on providing in-depth, ethnically diverse and specific training that would aid them in responsibly serving diverse communities . This challenges social workers’ ability to become human rights advocates as it does not equip them with sufficient knowledge on engaging with diverse communities through a human rights lens. In striving towards the proposed 2022 EPAS 2.0, that calls for social workers to demonstrate anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice, an adapted Ethnic Studies pedagogy applied to social work curriculum and FA history will be provided. The focused nature of the presentation on FAs will also serve as an exemplar for curriculum building with other minoritized communities and enhance knowledge on engaging with diversity.
Originally utilized in primary education, Ethnic Studies pedagogy is an anti-racist framework composed of two tenets: culturally and community responsive pedagogies (Tintiangco-Cubales et al., 2015). Culturally responsive pedagogy is a learner centered modality focused on cultivating inclusive and caring learning environments. It seeks to develop the learners’ critical consciousness and builds on their lived experiences and perspectives. This strategy helps decolonize learners' experiences while promoting critical lens development to analyze their socio-cultural environments. For instance, learning about the negative impact of the US’s colonization of the Philippines, promotes awareness of the unique positionality FAs have in the US. Community responsive pedagogy is the process of developing action-oriented learners by developing critical consciousness and agency. Panelists will apply culturally-embedded frameworks like Kapwa and Pinayism in social work curriculum to provide examples of implementing ethnic studies pedagogy.
The proposed Ethnic Studies pedagogies focused on FAs in the US address CSWE’s Educational Policy 2.0 competency, calling for the need to integrate anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion approaches in curriculum. Culturally and community responsive pedagogies can be vehicles to help transform social work education to become more anti-racist and, in turn, train social workers to become more anti-racist. If social work is truly committed to promoting social and racial justice, and educating emerging scholars to enhance cultural humility, it is necessary to intentionally curate social work curricula that is representative of the diverse communities we engage with. Recommendations and implications on how to amplify the voices of minoritized communities, like FAs, in practice and research will be discussed.