Columbia School of Social Work
 
T7100 Foundations of Social Work Practice

Course Description

The purpose of this class is to introduce future social workers to the core components of the profession through a lens of Power, Race, Oppression, and Privilege (PROP) that is holistically aware of how systems create and perpetuate oppression through human interactions, including our own practice. In this class, participants will learn a generalist framework and skills for social work intervention that contribute to anti-oppressive and anti-racist practice across the broad range of social work settings and populations.

This course centers anti-Black racism as an engine of systemic oppression. It also recognizes the intersectionality of other systems of discrimination and oppression related to LBGTQIA+ rights, Indigenous People/First Nations People and land rights, Latinx representation, xenophobia, Islamophobia, undocumented immigrants, Japanese internment camps, indigent White communities (Appalachia), ableism, and anti-Semitism.

The course will employ an experiential and iterative process for developing self-awareness and practice skills, examining historical, psychological, and social work theory perspectives. Course activities and assignments are designed for participants to build an understanding of concepts with the capacity to take action that challenges oppressive systems such as racism, sexism, ageism, ableism, heterosexism, and classism in the context of contemporary social work agencies and host institutions.

Facilitated exploration and critical analysis of participants' experiential journeys (e.g., extended pauses of reflection during discussions, meditation breaks, journal entries, and narratives) will be used to help process what may be challenging experiences within the coursework. Professional and personal growth, culturally/contextually competent practice skills, processing of charged issues, and use of "self" are the cornerstones of the course.

Discussions of racialized and oppressive trauma require awareness of building community through understanding radical and transformative healing and the essentiality of joy for BIPOC voices and all communities impacted by isms. To help participants begin countering the dehumanization of marginalized groups, our course utilizes a partnership of theory and action. It is developed with the intent of disrupting external and subconscious oppressive norms while recognizing the power of healing and community care along the following dimensions:

  • Societal, institutional, systemic, cultural
  • Visibility and Invisibility: overt, covert
  • Temporal influences: historical, periodic/occasional, everyday/ongoing
  • Intrapersonal/Interpersonal: me, us, them
  • Internalized racial superiority/inferiority
  • Invalidation/forms of denial
  • Collective Care

Some core concepts and theories informing the course are:

  • Person-In-Environment/Ecosystems
  • Strength-Based Approach
  • Social Identity Theory
  • Critical Race Theory
  • Black Liberation Theory
  • Radical Pedagogy
  • Contemplative Practices

This course will provide a critical awareness and analysis in order to create anti-oppressive and anti-racist social work practice through the following themes:

Anti-Black Racism: The course centers on understanding and undoing anti-Black racism, and how it manifests in social work and our practice. The course will interrogate the complex relationship between anti-Blackness and white supremacy, and how white supremacy and other forms of oppression have relied on the preservation of anti-Blackness in historically specific ways across a wide range of geographical, political, and cultural domains.
Social Justice and Ethical Practice: The NASW identifies social justice among the following core values of the profession: service, dignity and worth of the person, importance of human relationships, integrity, and competence. "Social workers challenge social injustice. Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people. […]. Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people." This course will help participants build an understanding of oppression and foundational skills to practice ethically through a social justice lens, including (but not limited to): language use, accountability, probing questioning, active listening, empathy, and cultural competency.
Self-Awareness and Self-Reflection: This course promotes understanding and challenging one's own role in oppressive systems, behavior, and practice, and how their identity (identities) might impact critical thinking, affective practices, and the exercise of judgment in demonstrating social work practice competencies.
Radical Healing, Imagination and Transformation: "Radical imagination is the audacity to live in the world as it is and dream something different coupled with the willingness to believe it is possible even if you cannot see it" (Ozy Aloziem). This course promotes understanding and applying ways of connecting that center on collective healing, radical self-care, pedagogies of healing, teaching to transgress, and sharing practice in the classroom and community practice. This framework for social work practice aligns with a broader anti-oppressive movement towards the centering of healing, rest, and liberation through radical imagination.
Coalition Building/Action: This course establishes the foundations for a lifelong process of building relationships based on trust, support, and accountability with people and communities subjected to oppression. This sentiment is reflected in the words of Lila Watson, who said, "If you have come here to help me, then you are wasting your time…But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together."

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be able to…

  1. Define the PROP framework and its use to critically understand and apply the standard generalist social work practice model and its constituent knowledge, skills, and values.
  2. Recognize how aspects of social work, by replicating anti-blackness and other dominant worldviews, are oppressive and necessitate the development of strategies to decolonize the profession.
  3. Recognize the damages of whiteness impacting communities of Color and the centrality of whiteness and white privilege in varied practice settings and interpersonal relations.
  4. Apply an intersectional lens that takes into account various -isms to understand structural oppression within systems and inform the ways we work.
  5. Examine our positionality in practice (how we show up) by exploring and building ongoing self-awareness as a part of engagement and assessment ("teaching/learning").
  6. Engage other individuals, organizations, and systems in constructive (and deconstructive) dialogues about forms of oppression, discrimination, and prejudice.
  7. Reimagine practice interventions ("actions/accompaniment") for dismantling the damages of white supremacy culture across multiple constituencies, including individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
  8. Integrate emerging practice skills of Engagement, Empathy, Assessment/Teaching and Learning, Intervention/Action and Accompaniment, and Participatory Evaluation, as they apply to defined tasks such as Mandated Reporting/Supporting and Suicide/Self-Harm Assessment.
  9. Integrate an understanding of safety, radical healing, and collective action in conversations with others, and the importance of self care from the harmful manifestations of various oppressions, such as racial trauma.
  10. Identify activist methods for connecting social policy and direct practice with individuals, communities, and organizations as instrumental to advocacy.

Council on Social Work Education Core Competencies

This course contributes toward mastery of the following core areas of social work competency identified by the Council on Social Work Education.

Social workers . . .

  • Demonstrate ethical and professional behavior.
  • Advance human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice.
  • Engage anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) in practice.
  • Engage in practice-informed research and research-informed practice.
  • Engage with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
  • Assess individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
  • Intervene with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.
  • Evaluate practice with individuals, families, groups, organizations, and communities.