Ann Marie Garran

Cultural Competence Revisited.

In 2001, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) adopted 10 discrete standards of culturally competent practice which undergird our commitment to diversity and social justice. The concept of intersectionality is newly emerging in social work, though, causing us to reflect on our current conceptualizations of cultural competence. According to this construct, in order to understand one aspect of the self, such as race, we have to understand how gender, ethnicity, sexuality, social class, and other markers influence one another. The authors present the concepts of cultural competence, social identity, and intersectionality in order to deepen our anti-oppression, social justice approach.

Pedagogy and Diversity: Enrichment and Support for Social Work Instructors Engaged in Social Justice Education.

The primary purpose of faculty development is to create and sustain a culture of teaching excellence. For social work faculty, an important part of teaching excellence involves incorporating core social work values such as social justice and diversity across the curriculum and developing pedagogical skills and strategies to teach these issues effectively. In this article, we present a model of a faculty development seminar that offers a facilitated space for instructors to discuss how issues of diversity, social identity, and oppression influence their teaching, the classroom environment, student interactions, and the overall campus climate.

Towards a Human Rights Culture in Social Work Education

A human rights perspective must be embedded in the institutions, organisations or agencies where social work students find themselves. This paper will focus on one particular strategy that could be helpful to the process of solidifying a commitment to human rights for our students. Using a pedagogical tool from a school of social work in the USA originally developed to combat the social injustice of racism, the example transcends the academic institution and offers a solid link in connecting human rights, social justice and social work. Using the construct of critical realism, we argue that, for social work programmes to take steps towards an explicit commitment to human rights, not only must human rights be infused throughout the curriculum, but educators must provide opportunities for making more overt the links between human rights principles, social justice and social work. By addressing behaviours, tendencies and attitudes, students then acquire not only the skills and deeper understanding, but they internalise the motivation and commitment to broaden their human rights frame. In the process of developing a more firm commitment to human rights, we must not be limited to the walls of the academy, but rather extend beyond to our field agencies, organisations and communities.

Lessons Learned: Racial Enactments in the Treatment Process

By means of an extended clinical vignette, this paper chronicles a series of complicated exchanges that materialized as underlying themes of racism emerged in a therapy session. The paper highlights how the practitioner juggled the unfolding dynamics to further the work rather than personalize them and risk derailing the session. Clinical material is provided to highlight these ideas. Reflections on the clients pejorative use of race and the practitioners interventions that resulted in the reduction of the clients anxiety are discussed, and implications for clinical social work are offered.

Safety in the Classroom: Reconsidered

This article challenges the normative and prescriptive constructs of classroom “safety.” It urges social work educators to reexamine its meaning and the potential differential experience of safety for students from marginalized groups and less privileged social locations. Shifting our conceptual awareness in this sense provides instructors with a more realistic framework to respond proactively, and at times, in the moment, to classroom dynamics.

Team-Teaching Anti-Oppression with Diverse Faculty: Challenges and Opportunities

Team-teaching, especially with colleagues who are diverse along a number of domains of social identity (e.g., social class, gender, race, tenure rank, academic status, age), represents a rich opportunity to model a social justice, anti-oppressive approach to teaching and learning. In this article, we present pedagogical strategies to consider when team-teaching foundation social work courses with a social justice focus. Constructs related to power dynamics, privilege, social class, microaggressions and social identity are explored. Development of teaching plans, managing challenging team dynamics, and teaching methods are examined. Implications of team-teaching anti-oppression content for social work education are discussed.

Microaggressions in social work classrooms: strategies for pedagogical intervention

ABSTRACT We present an in-depth example from a faculty development and peer consultation seminar to illustrate pedagogical strategies for intervening when microaggressions occur in social work classrooms. We provide a framework for social work educators to conceptualize such microaggressions within the context of larger historical and structural oppression and societal dynamics based on differential power and privilege to foster student learning and professional development. We demonstrate how using a mutual-aid model encourages heightened awareness, reflection, and teaching skill development. It also serves to illuminate how instructors might elucidate, interrupt without alienating, and transform microaggressions in the classroom into a learning opportunity.

A Case of Mistaken Identity: What Happens When Race is a Factor

In an era where black males increasingly lay victim to death at the hands of police officers in the United States, efforts must be made not only to address biases of individuals in power but also to intervene on institutional and structural levels. This paper aims to explore how dynamics of race, power, and a lack of critical consciousness play an instrumental role in a social work intern’s learning process, clinical efficacy, and adherence to professional ethical standards. Using a case vignette situated within the context of an agency setting, this paper follows a white intern’s process working with a black adolescent and his family to highlight decisions made by upper-level management in an agency that were discriminatory, reinforced power differentials, and resulted in interruption of services, lack of client self-determination, and missed educational opportunities for the intern. It addresses implications for clinicians at all stages of training with regard to the role of supervision and the importance of addressing racism, other forms of discrimination, and power differentials in practice.