Preparing students for the profession: examining power within social work

Abstract

ABSTRACT Social work educators are tasked with students to incorporate into practice the skills of engaging diversity and difference, advancing human rights and challenging social injustice. Students are asked to engage with concepts and practices that confront the status quo of institutionalized oppression. Yet, students may not be exposed to examination of the ways in which social work practitioners may unintentionally recreate and reinforce hierarchies of inequity through common social work policies and practices. Educators can prepare students by implementing strategies in the classroom that illuminate the privilege inherent in the profession of social work, and the power and control over clients’ lives that come with the degree. Educators also need to provide context for academic material, acknowledging the economic, social, and political framework within which that knowledge is put to use. Finally, educators need to prepare students to be reflexive in their practice, in order to proactively address power imbalances. This can be done by providing examples of educators’ own practice and the ways in which they may have inadvertently reinforced ideas and values that have historically resulted in marginalization of clients.