Abstract
As it stands today, social work education falls short in providing critical theories and frameworks that reflect the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC). Such insufficiencies maintain racism and other forms of oppression that plague both social work pedagogy and praxis. To challenge and dismantle hegemonic curricula, social work education needs to do more to provide the knowledge and tools necessary for anti-racist social work. The purpose of this article is to present five critical theories and frameworks written by Indigenous and People of Color scholars that social work educators, researchers, and practitioners can integrate into their teaching and practice to raise the critical consciousness of social work students. These five postulations are Compa Love, Racial Triangulation Theory, Breath of Life Theory, kapwa, and cultural wealth. The article will also discuss implications for social work education and practice. Centering the voices of under-represented scholars whose epistemologies are rooted in the lived experiences and communities that the field of social work traverses provides a pathway for social work education and practice to be tailored towards self-determination for all.
Highlights
As it stands today, social work education falls short in providing critical theories and frameworks that reflect the experiences of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC)
While known theories and tools can be helpful in social work education and practice, there have been contentions among social work scholars concerning the use of informed postulations
According to 2018 data from the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), Asian Americans constituted 3% of the total population of students enrolled for a Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) in the United States (US) and 5% among all Master in Social Work (MSW) graduates in the country, and this classification includes Pacific Islanders (Salsberg et al, 2019)
Summary
This section will outline the basic tenets of the five theories advanced by Indigenous and POC scholars and examine how they have been operationalized in other settings to envisage their application to social work education and research with the goal of influencing and elevating anti-racist practice in the discipline.
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