Diversity and Difference in the Online Environment

ABSTRACT

The online environment challenges social work educators in their approach to developing students’ cultural awareness and culturally competent skills. To develop student competencies, it is important for accredited social work programs to consider both their explicit and implicit curricula. Although research has focused on the influence of multicultural classrooms and engaging diverse students, scant literature has been focused on teaching about diversity and difference in the online environment. This article hopes to fill this gap in knowledge by providing recommendations for social work programs to consider as they look to teach diversity and difference in the online environment.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity
• online education
• implicit curriculum
• curriculum design
• cultural awareness and competency

Acknowledgments

Special acknowledgment goes to Dr. Kathy Goodridge-Purnell who co-created a best practices guide for facilitating difficult discussions for our MSW program, from which sections of this article developed. While not a coauthor on this project, she deserves to be recognized for the significant contribution of her ideas and work.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.