Editorial

Social work students' responses to research tend to reflect their anxiety about the acquisition of competency in statistics and research methods. Their desires to attain social work education and subsequently become practitioners are viewed by them as at odds with research as taught. Yet, within the current quantocentric culture—which the authors define as one in which quantitative research methods are privileged over other lines of inquiry—social work education is increasingly emphasizing research as a central component of practice. Using a ‘culture as disability’ framework to understand quantocentric culture and its impact on the educational environment, we suggest an educational approach designed to interest students in a broad view of research allowing for the wholehearted inclusion of non‐quantitative and practice‐related facets of research. The approach encourages students to: (a) fully articulate their perceptions of research, both positive and negative; (b) link these views and experiences to the anti‐oppressive social work literature and to examine research methods from the perspective of quantocentrism; and (c) develop an inclusive typology of research that integrates qualitative approaches encompassing historical, philosophical, narrative and other avenues that are relevant to their future social work practice careers.     

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.     

The Use of Social Theory in Reflecting on Anti-Oppressive Practice with Final Year BSc Social Work Students

This article explores the relevance of social theory for social work teaching and learning about anti-oppressive practice. Use of theory in social work practice is discussed. It is argued that social theory is a toolbox from which social workers can draw eclectically in order to enhance their ability to practise anti-oppressively. A course/module which focuses on theory to understand and support anti-oppressive practice is described. The main aspects of social theory addressed in this module are outlined. These areas are firstly, human rights; secondly, traditional, modern and postmodern discourses or ‘ways of knowing’; thirdly, essentialism vis-à-vis the social construction of identity; and fourthly, an analysis of power in personal/professional relationships. The use of case studies or scenarios is discussed in relation to facilitating students' application of theory to practice. Extracts from a student essay demonstrate how one student applied social theory to a comparison of two case studies leading to strategies to empower the individuals in each scenario. The value of using social theory to reflect on and enhance anti-oppressive practice is discussed.     

Reviews

This article seeks to stimulate debate around the relationship between Post‐Qualifying Social Work education and social work practice. Whilst initially welcomed as a positive development for the continuous professional development of qualified social workers, the author questions if in a work climate increasingly dominated by concerns about meeting global market forces PQSW education has the potential to support discriminatory and oppressive practice and undermine social work values?Higher education in England has been given the task by the General Social Care Council to develop Post‐Qualifying Social Work (PQSW) education that delivers both academic and vocational learning as national occupational standards, workforce planning and concerns around globalisation drive professional development. Indeed, a positive selling point for the PQSW framework is its apparent ability to bring together practitioners' career choices with professional development, employers' workforce planning strategies and the government's modernisation agenda for public service provision. However, could a system of education designed to meet such a variety of agendas undermine social work practice and reduce higher education to primarily providing programmes designed to meet regulatory requirements rather than professional social work that promotes an anti‐discriminatory and anti‐oppressive approach to practice? The article concludes that whilst evidence suggests PQSW education does make a positive difference to practitioners and their organisations, debate is still required to ensure it supports agreed social work values and a commitment to anti‐oppressive and anti‐discriminatory practice.     

Towards an Insurrectionary Power/Knowledge: Movement-Relevance,Anti-Oppression,Prefiguration

Despite ongoing efforts to articulate radical methods and theoretical frameworks for social movement research, the field remains embedded in exploitative, oppressive, and hierarchical modes of knowledge production. Following Foucault, I argue that this is because societies like ours, founded through racial and patriarchal violence, are invested in a regime of truth supportive of that violence. In light of this, I argue that social movements scholars need to adopt a radically different form of knowledge practice. Building on anarchist, anti-racist feminist, and anti-colonial scholarship, this paper begins by analysing how liberalism constrains social justice organizing and how academic norms foreclose accountable social movements scholarship. I then introduce three unique ethics emerging in resistance to this situation: movement-relevant, anti-oppressive, and prefigurative. The first confronts the extractive imperatives of enlightenment truth-making; the second resists its neutral and disinterested tendencies; and the third models a rejection of its hierarchical and exclusive mode of authority. I argue that together they provide scholars with a strategy for re-/orienting their research towards what Foucault theorizes as an insurrection of knowledges. These three ethical frameworks combine to facilitate an insurrectionary power/knowledge that fosters collective struggle as it progressively dismantles the regime of truth underlying social movements research.     

Integrating Critical Consciousness into Direct Social Work Practice: A Pedagogical View

An unnecessary and unfortunate divide has existed historically within social work both in the United States and also in the United Kingdom between social reform or anti-oppressive practice, and direct social work practice or social care. In this article, the limitations of such a dichotomy will be explored, and ways that social work educators may more effectively integrate critical reflection approaches into their pedagogical practices will be identified. Building upon Denzin's methodological elaboration of C. Wright Mills' concept of private troubles–public issues, this article will discuss the usefulness of applying methods from critical, interpretive qualitative research to help social workers achieve critical consciousness in social work education and practice. This article will also address ways to help social work students overcome impediments to achieving critical consciousness, including the anxiety attendant upon changing one's belief systems. Finally, this article will describe the development of a concentration-year MSW elective, Transformative Social Work Practice, which sought to assist social work students in becoming more critically reflexive in their clinical work.     

Social Work Students' Research-Related Anxiety and Self-Efficacy: Research Instructors' Perceptions and Teaching Innovations

The purpose of this mixed methods study was to examine social work research instructors' perceptions of research-related anxiety and research confidence among social work students, and teaching strategies to identify and manage anxiety. A national web-based survey of 186 BSW and MSW social work research instructors was conducted. Many BSW (70%) and MSW (61%) research instructors reported that they used specific activities or approaches to assess or impact upon student anxiety. Qualitative analysis results suggested a teaching model for social work research instructors designed to reduce students' research-related anxiety, including by enhancing their research confidence. Strategies that instructors can use include creating a supportive class climate, providing activities that are emotion-, cognitive-, and action-focused as well as the use of strategic timing. These findings can be used to guide social work research instructors' facilitation of students' attainment of research competencies and help further students' research–practice integration.     

Acknowledgement of client diversity and oppression in social work student supervision

An enduring theme of social work literature and education has been the need for workers to recognise and challenge oppressive structures and develop competence in working with diverse client groups. This paper reports the findings of a qualitative research project where student and field educator supervision sessions were recorded, with the view to examining how oppression and diversity were addressed in these sessions. The authors have used the term 'difference' to describe the breach between the student and client experiences. Examples of anti-discriminatory practice were identified in the recordings, however on occasions supervisors had difficulty in assisting students to acknowledge diversity and oppression in supervision. Four factors that related to addressing diversity emerged from the supervision material. These were: the struggle to unmask subtle themes of oppression; the use of questioning to raise student awareness and development of self-knowledge; using student biography to facilitate learning on 'difference'; and field educator use of self-disclosure during discussions on diversity. Successful approaches to anti-oppressive practice and responding to diversity are outlined.     

Innovations in teaching social work research

This article reviews the innovations in teaching research in social work education, including conceptual material and specific examples. There is attention to the ideological differences inherent in research and its instruction, methodology/technology innovations, and integrative and group approaches, among other developments. Examination of three major models of research instruction and their assumptions about the purpose of research in social work is presented. Discussion about ethical codes and curricular guidelines for social work programs in the United States and the United Kingdom provides a framework to understand the importance of teaching and learning research for the social work profession.     

Teaching Critical Perspectives: Analyses of Professional Practice in the Film Ladybird,Ladybird

This article presents three critical analyses of social work practice as depicted in Ken Loach's 1994 film Ladybird, Ladybird. The analyses are intended to serve as a teaching tool in a course on critical perspectives in social work. The tool applies the radical, feminist and postmodern critiques of social work practice to the depiction of the practice in the film. It seeks to contribute to a better understanding of those critical approaches that have developed within the social work profession and, in particular, to emphasize the relevance of these approaches to actual practice. The article explicitly endeavors to arouse debate and reflection on practice among social worker students and to encourage self‐criticism in order to further the development of anti‐oppressive social work practice.     

Developing Anti‐oppressive Ethics in the New Curriculum

This paper describes the development of an anti‐oppressive ethics and values module appropriate for the new social work degree. It is contended that there has been insufficient attention paid to ethics teaching in social work education generally in the UK, and in particular there has been:

• ?failure to develop discrete modules on ethics and values in social work;

• ?minimal critique of conventional ethics with social work values that take oppression and diversity seriously;

• ?insufficient use of recent feminist ethical contributions relevant to social work;

• ?limited development of interprofessional ethics teaching that take service user and social work values seriously; and

• ?neglect of ethical decision‐making guides that can encompass legal, ethical and social work values.

The paper proposes a rationale for an anti‐oppressive ethics module that will enable traditional ethical theories to be placed within an anti‐oppressive social work values context, and aim to provide students with a more adequate guide for decision‐making. The module will be developed in consultation with service users and interprofessional colleagues. It will take into account the British legal and policy framework, the General Social Care Council code of practice, as well as the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education requirements, but placing them within an anti‐oppressive framework drawn from the authors' current and previous work in this area, and will have special reference to recent feminist moral philosophy. The authors have recently been re‐located into a Faculty of Health and Applied Social Studies and will be developing the new module on ethics in consultation with health lecturer colleagues specialising in ethics with the aim of developing interprofessional co‐operation and sharing of perspectives between staff and students. They write with long experience of both practising and teaching social work, and with diverse experiences of ‘race’, gender, class, and also being both service users and providers.     

Heterosexism and social work education: The invisible challenge

This paper is concerned with the new discourse in social work education with its emphasis on anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice. This directive is examined critically in relation to sexual orientation, suggesting that the contemporary climate is confusing and far from straightforward. The ideological, theoretical and legislative contexts in which social work as a profession has developed are reviewed, and their heterosexist bias exposed. In contrast to developments in relation to racism and sexism, little attention has been given to heterosexism - yet the heterosexual hegemony needs challenging with urgency if we are to truly work in an anti-oppressive way with lesbians and gay men.     

Beyond resilience: Resistance in the lives of LGBTQ youth

Resilience has come to define a wide breadth of impactful research on marginalized groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth. This resilience framework shifted the deficit “at-risk” model of research on marginalized populations to a more nuanced strengths-based perspective. In this critical review article, we examine this research trend to understand how the shift to resilience has shaped patterns of LGBTQ youth research. In doing so, this piece calls for a more sophisticated engagement with operationalizing resilience–which is vaguely defined and often upholds dominant relations in society, such as capitalistic, heteronormative values of success and happiness. We show how a shift to understanding resistance, joy, and pleasure in LGBTQ youth's lives promotes a more dynamic and complicated look at how marginalized groups navigate their social worlds and exert power in shaping these worlds. Acknowledging and uplifting LGBTQ youth's resistance and power are necessary in pushing scholarly dialogue and the possible interventions informed by research towards a more fully transformative framework in changing and dismantling oppressive societal structures.     

Reflective Teaching in Social Work Education: Findings from a Participatory Action Research Study

This article describes a feminist-informed reflective teaching project enacted by a group of social work faculty at Texas State University–San Marcos. Utilizing Schon's notion of reflection-in-action, faculty formed a participatory action research group to implement reflective techniques to further their professional development as new teachers and better prepare social work students for practice in the social work profession. This project guided the participants in establishing academic identity through the creation of a supportive academic setting and peer collegiality. The group met monthly to share reflective teaching journals (RTJs), participate in intergroup dialogue, and engage in contemplative practices, such as meditation and visualization. Methods of data collection and analysis included content analysis of the intergroup dialogue sessions. Findings from the project reinforced Kolb's experiential learning cycle, in which new insights gained from reflection were integrated back into the classroom. This article presents these important insights and suggests replication of this project to promote reflective teaching in social work education and to help prepare new social work faculty for success in academia.     

Political Social Work

This article contributes to discourse on signature pedagogy by reconceptualizing how our pedagogies are understood and defined for social work education. We critique the view that field education is social work's signature pedagogy and consider what pedagogies are distinct about the teaching and learning of social work. Using Shulman's work on professional education, we offer a conceptualization that rests on the belief about the necessary outcome of our pedagogy—it must enable students to think and perform like social workers through the development of the professional self. We present a framework that focuses on three integrating features: thinking and performing like a social worker, development of the professional self, and characteristic forms of teaching and learning.     

Social Work Doctoral Education in Australia: The Case for Further Development

ABSTRACT

Social work education in Australia has been based in universities since the 1940s. There are now 32 higher education providers offering social work programs across Australia. The significant growth in master’s level qualifying programs in Australia, along with recent higher education policy changes, has increased the need for social work academic faculty members with doctoral qualifications. This paper presents the findings of a scoping review of literature on social work doctoral education. Despite a growing literature on social work doctoral education in international contexts, the review found that there is a lack of Australian research and evidence on social work doctoral pedagogy, the number and diversity of doctoral students, the doctoral student experience, and doctoral graduate employment intentions and outcomes. Addressing the lack of Australian research in this area would be an important step to enabling Australian social work to address future research training and capacity needs and directions.

IMPLICATIONS

• There is a lack of research on Australian social work doctoral education and this is a neglected aspect of social work scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) research.

• Research into social work doctoral education would provide baseline information on the number and diversity of students, doctoral student experiences, graduate outcomes, and employment intentions.

• Development of social work SOTL about doctoral education would support future research capacity and enable the advancement of social work research knowledge and skills.

     

Sexuality,child care and social work education

Whilst it is important to acknowledge the holistic nature of sexuality and its relevance in all areas of social welfare and service provision, this paper is specifically concerned with lesbian, gay and bisexuality and child care. The issues discussed will be common to all service user groups but the insidious nature of the 'contamination or corruption' theories of homosexuality are particularly inflammatory for those working in the child care field and the young people with whom they work. This paper argues that the needs of lesbians and gay men, particularly young people, will continue to go unmet unless lesbian and gay issues are addressed explicitly in social work education and in a way which does not oversimplify what is an extremely complex task. Anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive practice are central features of the academic and practice curriculum; however, it is not simply a matter of adding lesbian and gay issues to the ever-increasing list of oppressions. The ideology of heterosexism and a legal framework which endorses the discrimination of lesbians and gay men create additional challenges to working with this group of people. As social work education becomes increasingly government and agency led, with a competency model of assessment ruling the day, the realities of what social workers can achieve need to be acknowledged if we are not to be accused of perpetuating meaningless rhetoric; playing into the hands of those who refer to political correctness.     

A Teaching Framework for Transformative Multicultural Social Work Education

Abstract

A major challenge in multicultural social work education is fostering meaningful learning experiences for students by matching educational methods and content to students' individual learning needs and characteristics. Building upon transformative learning theory developed by Jack Mezirow, this paper proposes a teaching framework for transformative multicultural social work education that addresses students' individual learning needs and characteristics. This framework uses the dimensions of cultural knowledge and cultural sensitivity to represent four potential stances of cross-cultural learning in students. The paper provides a detail discussion regarding the learning needs and learning foci of students at each stance, and useful teaching strategies and activities that enhance students' transformative learning process so that they develop integrative knowledge about self and others in a dynamic multicultural society from multiple perspectives.     

Looking for ‘social work’ in school social work

School social workers can be seen as a professional group operating on the margin of an educational logic that dominates schools as institutions. This conditions what tasks they are assigned and what aspects of social work knowledge they will find relevant. On the other hand, the role as a sole professional and relative outsider in the organization provides a potential for school social workers to transcend established theories of social work practice. This article aims to investigate how social work theory is applied in school social work. Twelve semi-structured interviews with school social workers were analysed in terms of how they relate to four knowledge approaches derived from the literature: task-centred, systems theory, strengths and anti-oppressive. Contrary to claims within the sociology of professions that social work practice is formed largely by organizational context rather than a discipline-specific knowledge base, the interviewees seemed to lean on a robust professional foundation within social work theory. Interviewees strongly emphasised their role as working for the individual pupil and positioned themselves as somewhat in opposition to a somewhat oppressive school environment.