Infusing MSW Programs With Disability Studies and Disability Justice: How to Create Explicit Curriculum

ABSTRACT

Master of social work (MSW) students will work with a significant number of people with disabilities and thus need to learn about disability as both a descriptive and a political identity. While new curriculum resources and competencies developed by the Council on Social Work Education for teaching about disability are a critical step, little has been written about successful approaches to infusing disability content into social work curricula. We help address that need by describing our MSW curricula infusion process and lessons learned as a team of partnering faculty and disability justice activists. We describe the intersectional disability justice movement framework, arguing that this framework is needed to equip students to address urgent issues of social injustice.

Acknowledgments

We thank all of those who have brought wisdom to our school as disability justice panelists these first 3 years: Jess Chrivoli, aj granda, Tash Hansen-Day, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Nomi Lamm, Peta Pottinger, E. T. Russian, Zack Sideek, Amber Vora. Mary Edwards’ and Robin Tatsuda’s advocacy were foundational for our work. We thank Tessa Evans-Campbell, Maureen Marcenko, and Aliyah Vinikoor, and the MSW foundation course leads. We thank Ariana Cantu, Zynovia Hetherington, and Norma Timbang for additional help and support in hosting the live panels and Joanne Woiak and Heather Evans for lending their expertise and introductions to DJ activists. Finally, gita mehrotra provided feedback on an earlier draft.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ One example of a recent rights-based approach to disability advocacy is that Disability Rights Washington—the state’s Protection and Advocacy System—along with two other organizations, filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights about their concerns about triage plans that they argue discriminate against people with disabilities in violation of federal disability rights laws.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a University of Washington Harlan Hahn Endowment Fund Research Award in Disability Studies.

Notes on contributors

Clara Berridge

Clara Berridge is an associate professor at the University of Washington. Anjulie Ganti is an associate teaching professor at the University of Washington. Dorian Taylor is a Disability Equity Specialist at King County. Billie Rain is a licensed master social worker in Austin. Seema Bahl is a Senior Policy Analyst at the Washington State Board of Education and Adjunct Faculty at Bellevue College.