When Privilege and Oppression Become “Real” in the Life of Emerging Social Workers

ABSTRACT

In today’s society, it is of utmost importance to deliver services with compassion, understanding, and cultural competence. Students’ awareness of personal cultural backgrounds, issues, and biases is essential to enhance their ability to serve others, particularly marginalized populations. This study demonstrates how students understood the impact of discrimination and oppression on their personal development and preparation for delivery of social work services to diverse clientele. The goal of this research was to learn more about students’ readiness for practice with heterogeneous client populations by assessing their changes in thought and behavior necessary for culturally competent and responsive social work practice in a pluralistic society. While this research informs the role of social work education in preparing culturally competent practitioners, there remains a significant gap in the literature regarding how best to teach students about privilege and oppression. This study used existing pre and post data from the “Oppression & Diversity/ Social Justice Scale” to assess students’ understanding of power, privilege and oppression both at the beginning and at the end of a semester. Results may be used to plan and develop future cultural competence curricula.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural competence
• cultural humility
• education
• human service practitioners
• oppression

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).