Editor’s Notice: Dr. Amy Werman, DSW, LCSW, is a Lecturer in Self-discipline on the Columbia School of Social Work, with over 20 years of educating expertise in social work training. On this weblog submit, she shares two sensible solutions for social work analysis programs, specializing in methods to decolonize conventional content material and combine an anti-racist/anti-oppressive method to educating about analysis methodology.
For the previous 20 years, I’ve been educating MSW college students. The primary course I ever taught was Analysis Strategies, an “fascinating” initiation into the sector of educating contemplating that the majority college students would by no means select to take this first-year course have been it not required. How do I do know this? It’s a query on a survey that I give my analysis college students originally of each semester. And, constantly, 50% of scholars say that, given a alternative, they’d not take the course.
It’s comprehensible. If we’re being fully trustworthy, social employees are within the enterprise of “doing,” whether or not that’s offering concrete companies, administering packages, writing coverage, or ameliorating a number of micro-level to macro-level issues on the native and international degree. College students battle to grasp how learning analysis pertains to their endgame of “doing.” Furthermore, many college students report having a worry of analysis, viewing it as one thing to get by. Incoming college students supply phrases like “boring,” “overwhelming,” “statistics,” and “intimidating” after I ask them to free-associate to the time period “analysis.”
Analysis course syllabi usually come up from and align intently with conventional textbooks that are likely to focus closely on quantitative analysis strategies with a smattering of qualitative strategies. In consequence, college students drudge by consecutive chapters – every corresponding to at least one part of the scientific methodology – and by the top of the semester, they’ve been uncovered to a plethora of complicated ideas (Did you ever rely what number of sorts of “validity” there are?).
Another excuse that social work college students don’t like analysis is that the 2 dominant strategies that they study are sometimes at odds with essential social work values. For instance, most quantitative analysis research are completed on or to contributors, versus with contributors, and are primarily based on the researcher’s pursuits and priorities. Those that elect to take part in a examine advance the analysis agenda of the investigator. Furthermore, they don’t have any say in how the examine will likely be carried out. Thus, college students spend quite a lot of effort and time studying a few course of that’s inherently oppressive and barely resonates with the core social work values of self-determination, social justice, and the significance of human relationships.
So how will we design a analysis strategies course that engenders social work values? Put one other manner, how can a standard analysis course be reworked right into a non-traditional, anti-oppressive, and fascinating course? And can college students like the brand new model? I give you two confirmed outside-the-box lesson plans which have had my college students buzzing with pleasure about their analysis class. Each of those lesson plans align with the next social work competencies from the Council on Social Work Education:
- From 2015 EPAS – Competency 4 – Interact In Observe-informed Analysis and Analysis-informed Observe
- From 2022 EPAS – Competency 3 – Interact Anti-racism, Range, Fairness, and Inclusion in Practicea.
Are ivory towers all that?
Studying Goal: Show anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work follow on the analysis degree.
The primary suggestion is to incorporate materials explaining the method whereby the manufacturing of data was colonized by White Europeans and the way “the academy” created a monopoly on data technology. I start with the next two dialogue questions, having noticed that social work college students readily settle for the content material of assigned readings as dogma, not often questioning the deserves of the data we’re feeding them.
- Who decides what qualifies as “data”?
- Who’s accountable for data manufacturing?
Then, I expose college students to the essential work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a Maori scholar and researcher, which opens up their eyes to the hijacking and subjugation of Indigenous data by these colonizing New Zealand. For the previous two years, I’ve launched college students to Smith’s concepts, they usually have been fascinated – and angered – by her account of how colonization went deeper than the seizing of land to, at finest, marginalizing, and at worst, canceling Indigenous data of the colonized. After understanding how universities turned ivory towers of data creation, college students are well-situated to discover different methods of understanding.
Various Methods of Figuring out
Studying Goal: Determine moral, culturally knowledgeable, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive methods that handle inherent biases to be used in quantitative and qualitative analysis strategies to advance the needs of social work.
A second suggestion for thrilling analysis college students is by exposing them to some natural strategies that non-European, non-White, communities make use of to make sense and that means of their world. I introduce this matter by posing the next questions:
- What are different methods of capturing information exterior of measurement devices and interviews?
- Can the identical individual be the researcher and the analysis participant?
Non-traditional strategies of producing data stand in stark distinction to the scientific methodology. For instance, some cultures, such because the Native American Shoshone, depend on oral custom – storytelling and narrative inquiry – as the fundamental means of transmitting culture, tradition, and wisdom. In an oral custom, tales are the supply of data. Brown and Strega (2015) talk about storytelling as an anti-oppressive analysis methodology of their ebook, Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Narrative inquiry resonates deeply with and is a pure match for social work college students who’re taught the important ability of actively listening to their shoppers’ tales of their internships.
One other manner of understanding that college students eagerly embrace is a visible analysis methodology referred to as Photovoice. Photovoice makes use of pictures because the “information.” Cameras are put within the arms of marginalized, usually unvoiced communities who seize some essential difficulty of their lives in photographs. The purpose is for members of the group to have the ability to doc and share their tales in an effort to advertise constructive change. I ask my college students to do a Photovoice project, figuring out a social justice difficulty that they’re keen about and capturing it in photographs. With cell phones as a staple lately, all college students have entry to a digicam so that everybody generally is a photographer. The task culminates in college students presenting their photographs and explaining their findings. An exquisite useful resource for studying this non-traditional analysis methodology is the quick paperback, Photovoice Handbook for Social Workers: Method, Practicalities and Possibilities for Social Change.
You could query the good thing about introducing college students to the anti-oppressive analysis strategies I’ve proposed. A few of my colleagues have insisted that social work college students should concentrate on the normal quantitative and qualitative methodologies; that different methods of understanding are simply too loosey-goosey and whose findings should not publishable. To their assertion, I might argue that studying the traditional strategies is important however not enough. Exposing social work college students to non-traditional strategies positions them to method the normal, mainstream strategies with a crucial, social justice, and anti-oppressive lens. And that’s what their social work training is about; leaning into their social work values by amplifying the voices of those that have been left behind and empowering them to navigate their destinies.
How are you decolonizing your social work analysis course? Or making it extra fascinating to your social work college students? Please share your ideas within the remark part under. I want to hear from you.
References:
Jarldorn, M. (2019). Photovoice handbook for social employees: Technique, practicalities and prospects for social change. Springer.
Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Analysis and Indigenous peoples (third ed). Bloomsbury.
Strega, S. & Brown, L. (2015). Analysis as resistance: Revisiting crucial, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (2nd ed.) Canadian Students.
How one can cite: Werman, A. (2022, March 17). Two Methods to Decolonize a Social Work Analysis Course. Instructing and Studying in Social Work. https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2022/03/17/two-ways-to-decolonize-a-social-work-research-course/
