Honoring liminality: teaching critical and race-gendered approaches in doctoral social work education

ABSTRACT

This theoretical paper adds to the scholarship of teaching and learning, by explicating the shared experiences of one doctoral student and two full-time faculty members related to liminality as a guiding pedagogy for doctoral social work education. It uses liminality to explore the unique space that first and second year doctoral students occupy as a justification for critical and race-gendered approaches that inform teaching doctoral level contemporary theory and social work practice. Recognizing, acknowledging and supporting beginning doctoral students’ liminal identity with critical and race-gendered teaching approaches is in keeping with social work ethics. This pedagogy may ultimately lead to increased doctoral student retention, as well as fostering more liberating approaches to knowledge generation.

KEYWORDS:

• Liminality
• critical theory
• race and gender-based
• queer theory
• identity
• doctoral education

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Patricia A. Joyce

Patricia A. Joyce is an associate professor at Adelphi University School of Social Work. Her scholarly publications use qualitative methods to explore research on trauma, child sexual abuse, cultural competence, social work education, and doctoral dissertation advisement.

Laura Quiros

Laura Quiros, PhD., LMSW is an associate professor of social work at Adelphi University for the past eleven years. She teaches social work practice at the doctoral and masters level. Her research and scholarly interests focus on trauma-informed care from a social justice lens. The common thread in her consulting, teaching, and scholarship is elevating complexity and furthering the mission of social justice, including diversity and inclusion. Laura works to find spaces in and outside of the classroom to advance inclusion within organizations, which to me means taking a look at the ways that “whiteness” is maintained in organizational cultures and supporting organizations to become more racially literate. Using her lens as an educator,  researcher, author, practitioner, trauma survivor, mother, and woman of color from a multiracial and multiethnic background, Laura identified a deficiency and an interconnectedness in the fields of trauma, diversity, and inclusion, and social work education and leadership.

Bernadine Waller

Bernadine Waller is an NIMH-funded researcher, Adjunct Professor, and doctoral candidate at Adelphi University School of Social Work. Bernadine is a NYS-licensed clinician who specializes in providing trauma-informed care to survivors of intimate partner violence (IPV), which informs her program of research. Her cross-national research agenda examines the intersections of IPV, mental health, and help-seeking within the Black community. Her community-based participatory research methods, engage community, university and government partners.