A Scoping Review of Feminism in U.S. Social Work Education: Strategies and Implications for the Contemporary Classroom

ABSTRACT

Purpose: Feminism has an agenda to advance equal opportunity, inclusivity and justice for women and to reduce gender-based oppression. Though this reflects social work's grand challenges, it is unclear whether feminist teaching strategies are utilized in social work education.

Methods: We conducted a scoping review to identify and better understand feminist teaching strategies employed in social work classrooms. We reviewed articles between the years 2000 and 2016 in four databases including U.S. peer-reviewed journal articles.

Results: Our review included 27 articles. Though authors presented diverse feminist teaching methods, some common themes were apparent among the articles. Those included empowerment, power/privilege, intersectionality, reflexivity, inclusivity and activism.

Discussion: The implication for social work educators was that feminist teaching methods can include and empower women of color in classrooms. Specifically, intersectional feminism helps to set the stage for those students’ future activism in the field of social work.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work
• feminism
• education
• intersectionality

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank our faculty mentor Dr. Mary Caplan for her guidance, support, and excellent editorial suggestions during this project. We would also like to thank Dr. Gita Mehrotra for her support and encouragement, as well as well as her willingness to act as a key informant on this topic.