Antiracist Pedagogy in Social Work Doctoral Education
On September 10, 2020, three amazing doctoral candidates, Kimberly Grocher, Alicia Mendez, and Maxine Taylor, and myself hosted the first session of the student-led Anti-Racist Pedagogy in Social Work Doctoral Education series. This 2020-2021 four-part series was sponsored by the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral Education in Social Work (GADE) in partnership with Fordham University School of Social Services. The first three sessions were exclusively for doctoral students. The first a BIPOC (Black Indigenous People of Color)-only space, the second an all-white student space, and the third a combined student collective. The fourth meeting brought together students and faculty. The goals we set at the beginning of this initiative were the following:
Engage social work doctoral students across the country to co-create and re-envision developing, implementing, and sustaining Anti-Racist Pedagogy across doctoral programs.
Create meaningful anti-racist action steps for doctoral programs to enact in this movement.
Establish an ongoing student-voice presence within GADE.
Build solidarity and community across doctoral programs.
In total, 90 students attended the first session, and 24 completed our post-survey. Key takeaways from the first session and the survey include 1) a sense of urgency to implement anti-racist pedagogy now into social work doctoral programs, 2) a direct call to financially invest in anti-racist work, 3) a need for recurring BIPOC-only spaces for social work doctoral students to participate in without faculty or administration presence, and 4) a plea to listen and believe BIPOC students’ experiences.
For session two, we recruited three white doctoral students, Kess Ballentine, Kristen Brock-Petrohius, and William R. Frey, to lead an all-white student meeting on November 10th, 2020. Forty-four students in total attended this meeting. This was shocking as white students are much more prevalent within doctoral programs, as are BIPOC students. White students must show up in these efforts, period. Much of the discussion from this session was naming actions that white students were willing to take/support. Themes from these actions included 1) Personal Reflection & Education; 2) Getting Involved Personally; 3) Engaging Other Students; 4) Engaging White Colleagues; 5) Engaging Faculty & Administrators; 6) Organizing Strategies; 7) Specific Feedback/Recommendations; 8) Supporting BIPOC Student Advocacy Efforts; 9) Supporting BIPOC via Social Capital Sharing; and 10) Advocacy.
Session 3 was a meeting for all students that took place on January 28th, 2021. During this meeting, we shared the recommendations that we planned to share in our final student/faculty session. This was also an opportunity for students to add any other themes we may have missed.
The final session took place on April 14th, 2021. This student-faculty meeting was the opportunity for my colleagues and I to share the recommendations that resulted from a month of conversations with doctoral students across the country on how to move towards anti-racist pedagogy within social work doctoral education. We began the meeting by highlighting the three major themes that arose from our collective student meetings. These themes were the following:
Believe, listen, and validate BIPOC voices: “Students expressed a desire to end ‘sharing trauma’ as a means of justifying our requests for an anti-racist education. These stories, the need for anti-racist pedagogy, is not new, so believe, listen, and validate.”
Have a sense of urgency: “Students expressed a sense of urgency in engaging and implementing an anti-racist social work doctoral education. Students of color noted that they have tried tirelessly to get their programs to take notice of these issues that are unique to Black [students] Indigenous [students], and [other] Students of Color. These are not new issues.”
Financially invest in Anti-Racist Work: “This work requires a financial investment. BIPOC students are tired of being ‘voluntold’ for the newest affinity group with no compensation. For BIPOC students (and faculty), this work is personal. It takes a toll on the mind, body, spirit, and collective. Normalize paying BIPOC folx for our work.”
Next, we shared our recommendations for taking actions which we believed would be a step in the right direction in moving towards an Anti-Racist doctoral program. Recommendations included:
Establishing a formal space for BIPOC students supported by GADE: “We recommended the creation of a doctoral student led affinity group for BIPOC doctoral students that meets virtually at least quarterly and is fiscally supported & sponsored by GADE and other social work organizations willing to partner with GADE.”
Instilling a permanent student voice with GADE: “We recommended that GADE create an ongoing doctoral student advisory board (~4-6 students) to continue representing student voices in all things related to our education, networking, and funding opportunities.”
Formalizing Doctoral Program accountability:“Modeled after the Council for Social Work Education’s Educational Policy Accreditation Standards and in collaboration with other leading SW entities (NADD, CSWE, SSWR…), we recommend that a permanent anti-racist pedagogy and education task force is created.”
Implementing restorative justice through the lens of eliminating structural racism and discrimination within Social Work programs: “We recommended that GADE, NASW, CSWE, NADD, SSWR, schools of social work, and particularly social work doctoral programs who have conveyed horrific acts of racial discrimination towards their BIPOC students and faculty make a public apology similar to that of the American Psychological Association on behalf of the discipline, and their respective institutions/organizations to BIPOC students, faculty, and the public for their overt and covert support of structural and institutional racism and include action steps to eradicate this phenomenon and egregious practices.”
“We recommended that schools of social work write ‘diversity statements’ that they provide to their new applicants detailing the ways they are addressing racism and structural inequality in their institutions. These statements should also include explicit areas of improvement such as retention, representation in administration, etc.”
Racial & Cultural Sensitivity/Humility Training: “Annual ‘Mandatory’ requirement for faculty.”
Establishing a group within all schools to internally do this work: “We recommended all Social Work programs allow and support doctoral students to establish a student led organization which will develop their own action plan to address anti-racism within their individual school. And schools compensate students for doing this work including either a stipend and/or giving students a student organizational budget.”
Lastly, which was not a recommendation but more of a notice, we informed participants that BIPOC students will be creating a “Green Book” about Social Work doctoral programs. Details for the Green Book are still being finalized but some things that will be included in the Green Book are schools:
Implementation of Anti-Racist pedagogy into the doctoral program’s required curriculum
Attentiveness and responsiveness to BIPOC students’ concerns around Anti-Racism in the program at-large
Recruitment and retainment of BIPOC faculty
My co-organizers and I also shared a brief reflection on how we felt engaging with this initiative. I would like to share my personal reflection:
When I was first asked to embark on this journey, I was excited, to say the least. Having the opportunity to join a group of passionate, energetic, and brilliant doctoral students and together attempt to develop recommendations for what an anti-racist doctoral education could look like within the field of social work seemed like a step in the right direction for our field. From my perspective, we all understood the need for this kind of initiative, and we understood it could not just center around our four voices. As we sought feedback from our fellow colleagues, many of the stories were disheartening to hear but not surprising. The commonalities amongst the needs of BIPOC students across universities further solidified the need for universal reforms across all schools of social work. Many of the testimonies were extremely disheartening to hear, especially those we were not allowed to share. Though the work has been draining and difficult to hear, we knew it was necessary to continue to push forward with our plans and make sure that BIPOC student voices, recommendations, and concerns were heard. I am thrilled with the list of suggestions we presented at the final meeting, and to note that our recommendations are far from an exhaustive list. There is much work to be done outside of what is in our final report.
I will say that I cannot really say what expectations I had at the final meeting, but I left feeling empty. I was proud to be associated with my colleagues, proud of our work, and proud of those who shared their experiences with us. However, not hearing many faculty make commitments to at least try to push for any of our recommendations out loud in front of their colleagues in an open forum was again not surprising but left me thinking. When do we move past the email statements and liked and retweeted posts and actually start taking these steps? I will continue to push for a better doctoral education for all BIPOC students and push our profession to be better and make sure our work this year was not in vain.
Disclaimer: For more detailed information around this effort, please look out for the final brief we will be publishing within the next couple of weeks.