Social workers: agents of change or agents of oppression?

Abstract

This article presents our experiences teaching an undergraduate-level ‘introduction to social work’ course, and an undergraduate senior-level ‘macro practice’ course. Together, we hold a combination of over 20 years of experience teaching in social work, and speak candidly about our experiences at the medium-size US Mid Western University, where we are both employed. Firstly, we offer our personal accounts of how each of us has experienced student resistance to attempts to address issues of race/racism. We intentionally use a feminist approach in our work, which posits that researchers must acknowledge and position themselves first, before examining social problems. We next provide a brief overview of our institutional demographics and the main objective of each course. We then discuss the theoretical approaches that we draw from in our classroom work. Lastly, to understand how institutional racism impacts social work education and practice, we discuss ways in which race, class, and gender are implicated in students’ receptivity to social justice concepts. This work adds to the literature on developing culturally competent social work practitioners who can truly become agents of change.