Two Ways to Decolonize a Social Work Research Course
Editor’s Note: Dr. Amy Werman, DSW, LCSW, is a Lecturer in Discipline at the Columbia School of Social Work, with over 20 years of teaching experience in social work education. In this blog post, she shares two practical suggestions for social work research courses, focusing on ways to decolonize traditional content and integrate an anti-racist/anti-oppressive approach to teaching about research methodology.
For the past 20 years, I have been educating MSW students. The first course I ever taught was Research Methods, an “interesting” initiation into the field of teaching considering that most students would never choose to take this first-year course were it not required. How do I know this? It is a question on a survey that I give my research students at the beginning of every semester. And, consistently, 50% of students say that, given a choice, they would not take the course.
It’s understandable. If we’re being completely honest, social workers are in the business of “doing,” whether that’s providing concrete services, administering programs, writing policy, or ameliorating a host of micro-level to macro-level problems on the local and global level. Students struggle to comprehend how studying research relates to their endgame of “doing.” Moreover, many students report having a fear of research, viewing it as something to get through. Incoming students offer words like “boring,” “overwhelming,” “statistics,” and “intimidating” when I ask them to free-associate to the term “research.”
Research course syllabi often arise from and align closely with traditional textbooks that tend to focus heavily on quantitative research methods with a smattering of qualitative methods. As a result, students drudge through consecutive chapters – each corresponding to one component of the scientific method – and by the end of the semester, they have been exposed to a plethora of confusing concepts (Did you ever count how many types of “validity” there are?).
Another reason that social work students don’t like research is that the two dominant methods that they learn are often at odds with important social work values. For example, most quantitative research studies are done on or to participants, as opposed to with participants, and are based on the researcher’s interests and priorities. Those who elect to participate in a study advance the research agenda of the investigator. Moreover, they have no say in how the study will be conducted. Thus, students spend a lot of time and effort learning about a process that is inherently oppressive and rarely resonates with the core social work values of self-determination, social justice, and the importance of human relationships.
So how do we design a research methods course that engenders social work values? Put another way, how can a traditional research course be transformed into a non-traditional, anti-oppressive, and interesting course? And will students like the new version? I offer you two proven outside-the-box lesson plans that have had my students buzzing with excitement about their research class. Both of these lesson plans align with the following social work competencies from the Council on Social Work Education:
- From 2015 EPAS – Competency 4 – Engage In Practice-informed Research and Research-informed Practice
- From 2022 EPAS – Competency 3 – Engage Anti-racism, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Practicea.
Are ivory towers all that?
Learning Objective: Demonstrate anti-racist and anti-oppressive social work practice at the research level.
The first suggestion is to include material explaining the process whereby the production of knowledge was colonized by White Europeans and how “the academy” created a monopoly on knowledge generation. I begin with the following two discussion questions, having observed that social work students readily accept the content of assigned readings as dogma, rarely questioning the merits of the knowledge we are feeding them.
- Who decides what qualifies as “knowledge”?
- Who is in charge of knowledge production?
Then, I expose students to the important work of Linda Tuhiwai Smith, a Maori scholar and researcher, which opens up their eyes to the hijacking and subjugation of Indigenous knowledge by those colonizing New Zealand. For the past two years, I’ve introduced students to Smith’s ideas, and they have been fascinated – and angered – by her account of how colonization went deeper than the seizing of land to, at best, marginalizing, and at worst, canceling Indigenous knowledge of the colonized. After understanding how universities became ivory towers of knowledge creation, students are well-situated to explore other ways of knowing.
Alternative Ways of Knowing
Learning Objective: Identify ethical, culturally informed, anti-racist, and anti-oppressive strategies that address inherent biases for use in quantitative and qualitative research methods to advance the purposes of social work.
A second suggestion for exciting research students is by exposing them to some organic methods that non-European, non-White, communities employ to make sense and meaning of their world. I introduce this topic by posing the following questions:
- What are other ways of capturing data outside of measurement instruments and interviews?
- Can the same person be the researcher and the research participant?
Non-traditional methods of generating knowledge stand in stark contrast to the scientific method. For example, some cultures, such as the Native American Shoshone, rely on oral tradition – storytelling and narrative inquiry – as the fundamental means of transmitting culture, tradition, and wisdom. In an oral tradition, stories are the source of knowledge. Brown and Strega (2015) discuss storytelling as an anti-oppressive research methodology in their book, Research as Resistance: Critical, Indigenous, and Anti-Oppressive Approaches. Narrative inquiry resonates deeply with and is a natural fit for social work students who are taught the essential skill of actively listening to their clients’ stories in their internships.
Another way of knowing that students eagerly embrace is a visual research method known as Photovoice. Photovoice uses photographs as the “data.” Cameras are put in the hands of marginalized, often voiceless communities who capture some important issue of their lives in photos. The goal is for members of the community to be able to document and share their stories in an effort to promote positive change. I ask my students to do a Photovoice project, identifying a social justice issue that they are passionate about and capturing it in photos. With mobile phones as a staple these days, all students have access to a camera so that everyone can be a photographer. The assignment culminates in students presenting their photos and explaining their findings. A wonderful resource for learning this non-traditional research method is the short paperback, Photovoice Handbook for Social Workers: Method, Practicalities and Possibilities for Social Change.
You may question the benefit of introducing students to the anti-oppressive research methods I have proposed. Some of my colleagues have insisted that social work students must focus on the traditional quantitative and qualitative methodologies; that other ways of knowing are just too loosey-goosey and whose findings are not publishable. To their assertion, I would argue that learning the classic methods is necessary but not sufficient. Exposing social work students to non-traditional methods positions them to approach the traditional, mainstream methods with a critical, social justice, and anti-oppressive lens. And that is what their social work education is about; leaning into their social work values by amplifying the voices of those who have been left behind and empowering them to navigate their destinies.
How are you decolonizing your social work research course? Or making it more interesting for your social work students? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below. I would like to hear from you.
References:
Jarldorn, M. (2019). Photovoice handbook for social workers: Method, practicalities and possibilities for social change. Springer.
Smith, L. T. (2021). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (3rd ed). Bloomsbury.
Strega, S. & Brown, L. (2015). Research as resistance: Revisiting critical, Indigenous, and anti-oppressive approaches (2nd ed.) Canadian Scholars.
How to cite: Werman, A. (2022, March 17). Two Ways to Decolonize a Social Work Research Course. Teaching and Learning in Social Work. https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2022/03/17/two-ways-to-decolonize-a-social-work-research-course/
March 18, 2022
Please send me comments.