Critical Disability Studies and Building Anti-Ableist Competencies: Lessons-Learned from an MSW-level Critical Disability Course

Overview: This presentation discusses the importance of integrating critical disability studies into social work curriculum, and describes the design and lessons-learned from an MSW course on critical disability. The presentation describes the successes, challenges, and implications for future course adaptations based on student feedback and instructor self-reflection.Proposal text: People with disabilities are one of the largest minority groups in the U.S., with approximately one in four people estimated to have a disability (Taylor, 2018). People with disabilities are profoundly more likely to experience a wide range of social injustice, including discrimination, violence, poverty, unemployment, and social exclusion in comparison to their non-disabled counterparts (Schur et al., 2013). As a result, social workers will encounter and work with disabled people in their professional practice (NASW, 2006). Despite these facts, disability content has not been consistently integrated into the explicit curriculum of social work programs (Ogden et al., 2017). Similarly, the implicit curriculum of social work programs often fails to establish a learning environment that structurally centers and values students with disabilities (Kattari et al., 2020; Sellmaier & Kim, 2021). As disability is present in all social work populations and contexts, it is crucial for social work programs to incorporate anti-ableist pedagogy and prepare students to be equipped with relevant competencies to effectively engage, assess, and intervene with disabled people (CSWE & Disability-Competent Care Curriculum Workgroup, 2018).

To address this gap, this presentation will introduce the interdisciplinary field of critical disability studies (CDS) and highlight several of its core theoretical and empirical insights that are vital to building an anti-ableist social work pedagogy and curriculum. CDS expands upon the foundational work of disability studies by integrating the transformative theories of decolonization, queer, critical race, and feminism into its analysis of disability (Goodley et al., 2019). Specifically, CDS positions disability as the complex interplay between medicine, society, and bodies and brings an explicit intersectional lens to the forefront (Meekosha & Shuttleworth, 2009). This focus on intersectionality and disability is vital to ensuring students become competent in both anti-ableist and anti-oppressive knowledge, skills, and self-reflection (CSWE, 2021).

To ground our overview of CDS, we will present the design of and learning lessons from a new, online, asynchronous course on the topic of critical disability for MSW students. In terms of its content, the course centers disability first-person narratives throughout and covers three key areas: (a) core perspectives and concepts of CDS, (b) historical backgrounds and theoretical frameworks of CDS, and (c) applications of CDS into social work practice (e.g., specific populations and settings, disability-centered practices). In terms of its format, the course builds accessibility using various means, such as pre-recorded, captioned lecture content, flexible discussion participation, audio descriptions for images and videos, reading materials that are accessible to screen readers, and automatic extensions for assignments. In addition, the course prioritizes community building and encourages small group discussions, by which students can engage in critical self-reflection about disability and able-bodiedness as social constructions.

In summary, this presentation will discuss the importance of integrating CDS into social work curriculum, and describe the design of and lessons-learned from a stand-alone MSW course on critical disability. Based on student feedback and instructor self-reflections, the presentation will also discuss successes, challenges, and implications for future adaptations of this course.