An Introduction to the Special Issue: Anti-Oppressive Group Work

The field of counselor education has long had a history of being a vanguard in commitments to multiculturalism and social justice, with scholars having named multiculturalism and social justice as the fourth and fifth forces in counseling. These movements have also found their way into group work, with scholars and leaders in the field recognizing the importance of both in the application of group work. These commitments have continually been institutionalized in professional practice statements made by organizations including the Association for Specialists in Group Work (ASGW; McCarthy et al., 2022; Singh et al., 2012). Through the COVID-19 pandemic, racial reckoning that resurfaced with the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, among countless others (see Wu et al., 2023), and the increasing number of legislations targeting the Queer, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color communities, scholars began to increasingly question whether multiculturalism and social justice are sufficient. Accordingly, there has been an increased uptake in scholarly and clinical actions to address the longstanding and evolving oppressive forces, structures, and systems that influence the processes and practices of counseling, including group work.

An such, the impetus for the current special issue emerged from the recent development of the ten Principles of Anti-Oppression, wherein Peters and Luke (2022) engaged in a post-structural, qualitative Critical Analytic Syntheses research to empirically identify and define principles of anti-oppression, which they define as a “framework and practice to guide the current and future critical and liberatory movement within counseling” (p. 4). Peters and Luke (2022) have contended that these Principles of Anti-Oppression were relevant to the field of counselor education with applications for teaching, supervision, and research. As they noted, these principles offer “viable points of entry to the processes and practices available to address the complex, intersectional, and multifaceted nature and forces, structures, and systems of oppression and discrimination (e.g., racism, genderism, ableism, heterosexism, classism, nationalism)” (Peters & Luke, 2023, p. 3).

In discussions with these authors, we noted how logical and relevant it would be to apply the 10 principles to group work, recognizing that groups are a microcosm of society (Guth et al., 2019; Ward, 2011) and subject to similar patterns of intra-, inter, and systemic oppression experienced elsewhere. Relatedly, we recognized that group work can intentionally, or unintentionally, reproduce and reify larger societal, cultural, and social system dynamics and functioning (McCarthy et al., 2021; Peters & Luke, 2022). This, alongside the longstanding commitment of the ASGW, and by extension, its journal, The Journal for Specialists in Group Work (JSGW)’s commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, the inclusion of a special issue centered around anti-oppression felt like a very strong fit that could fill an important gap in the literature. As such, we began work with scholars in the field to introduce these principles in the context of group work and present ways in which the principles can be applied across the types and contexts within group work.

As ASGW recognizes four types of group work (task, counseling, psychoeducational, and psychotherapy; McCarthy et al., 2022), as editors of the special issue, we decided it would be helpful to have scholars in this special issue explore the implementation of these principles across three types of group work (task, counseling and psychoeducational). We arrived at this decision, given the editor of this journal (Goodrich, 2018) noted that certain types of group work (counseling and psychotherapy) have been privileged in published scholarship, whereas other types of group work (task and psychoeducational) have received far less attention in extant literature despite their wide usage in practice. Our intention is to facilitate future practitioners and scholars to more completely center issues of anti-oppression across the spectrum of group work versus relying on only what is traditionally discussed in empirical literature. Additionally, as editors of the special issue, we recognized that the application of group work occurs across specialties (e.g., clinical mental health and school counseling) and diverse contexts (e.g., clinical supervision, research, and teaching). Answering Peters and Luke’s call (2022), we aim to bring special attention to anti-oppressive group work across different specialties and contexts as an essential extension to the group work scholarship and practice to ensure that the gestalt of the group is attended to without continuing to reinforce systems of oppression within group work or the counseling field.

We hope that you, our JSGW readers, find the erudite contributions from the authors of this special issue useful and relevant to your respective work. We see this special issue as a first step to introduce the concept of anti-oppression and the application of these principles within the field of group work and counseling, although we recognize the conversation and subsequent work does not end here. It is our hope that this special issue serves as a call to action for the field to answer, and that further discussions, applications, nuances and understandings might follow to ensure that our field is able to make good on its goals, commitments, and actions to serving the diverse needs across our various different stakeholders within ethical, clinically and culturally competent, and efficacious group work.

Disclosure Statement

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