Aligning Course and Program Leadership with Social Justice Values

Overview: Academic programs are typically governed by policies that reflect the higher education system, which contributes to social inequity and systemic racism. Social Work programs can create inclusive learning environments and model anti-oppressive leadership through radically transformed administrative policies and practices that align with and advance our social justice values.Proposal text: Background/Rationale: BSW and MSW program leaders are often tasked with policy development and implementation for program governance and faculty are challenged to create and implement course level policies. These policies are often reflective of the larger institutional covenants to the higher education system within the US, which has origins in systemic racism and social inequality that must be dismantled. Social Work programs are thus uniquely positioned to create anti-oppressive academic management strategies that align with our professional values and social justice mission. As such, our programs can be a mechanism for modeling anti-oppressive leadership and promoting equitable and inclusive higher education institutions.

At the institutional level, policies and procedures for academic program management are most often informed by a legal system of justice. Management of student conduct is often punitive and lacking contributions towards student development (Clark, 2014). Students who have navigated known barriers in accessing higher education are also overrepresented in academic disciplinary processes, as gender, age, socioeconomic status, fist-generation, and international status are factors associated with disproportionately higher reported rates of misconduct (Yu, Glanzer, Sriram, Johnson & Moore, 2017; Beasley, 2016). To operate our social work programs with status-quo approaches to governance is to perpetuate the systemic oppression our profession seeks to eradicate. When we align our management strategies with our values and infuse principles of social justice, we recognize the pivotal role of higher education in our students’ development, and in tandem, we also accept our responsibility to model anti-oppressive leadership (Young, Miller, Barnhardt, 2017). Through our program modeling of anti-oppressive leadership, we equip our graduates to be a generation of explicitly anti-racist social workers.

Methods: A variety of high impact practices will be utilized to achieve the learning objectives in an interactive manner. First, a brief overview of the conceptual components will be presented using visual materials and handouts. With the conceptual framework established, a case study from the presenter’s school will be discussed as a contextual example of opportunities to embed our values in the policies and procedures that govern our courses and programs. This case study will reflect our ongoing work towards anti-oppressive program leadership, which has demanded both personal and systemic change. Opportunities will be provided for participants to examine their own course, program, and/or institutional policies and small group guided discussion will be utilized to highlight areas for potential enhancement in alignment with our professional values and restorative justice principles. Next, tools developed as a result of the case study will be provided and used in an exercise to promote peer learning and generation of additional strategies for anti-oppressive academic program management.