Recentering the 'cultural Eye' in Social Work Research and Education: An Academic-Community Organizational Change Approach for Curriculum Reform

Background and Purpose

Social work is grounded in a mandate for competent and culturally relevant practice, but meaningfully developing and assessing these competencies in social work curricula remains a challenge. Specifically, there is an increasing educational demand for culturally and community grounded approaches to support practice competence with a diverse range of clients. However, there is lack of guidance on organizational research processes for guiding such social work curricular reform, resulting in siloed reform practices that may diminish their impacts. Guided by an overarching ‘top-down, bottom-up’ change management methodology, combining community consultation on needs with transparent and participatory change stewardship (Pietarinen et al., 2016), we studied practice demands for core competencies in mental health and health (MHH), co-generated a competency framework and analyzed student assessment of competency acquistion through the MSW MHH specialization curriculum.

Methods

A sequential mixed-methods exploratory design (Munce et al., 2021) was used, strategically integrating qualitative then quanitative methods across Kotter’s (1995) eight steps of effective change management: (1) establishing a sense of urgency; (2) forming coalitions within and outside the organization; (3) creating a shared vision of the future; (4) communicating the vision; (5) empowering stakeholders to be change agents; (6) planning for and creating short-term wins; (7) consolidating improvements; and (8) institutionalizing new approaches. Focus groups, interviews and visual mapping exercises with 67 diverse practicing community social workers (including alumni) and 21 social work faculty were employed in stages 1-4 to build a joint case for curriculum change. Following development of a competence framework and implementation training in steps 5 and 6, a pre and post survey for graduating specialization students (N = 109) with a range of identities (e.g., female: 84%; LGBTQ+: 12%; Asian: 21%) was employed in steps 7 and 8 to assess the success of the change effort and inform future modifications.

Results

Overall, practicing social workers indicated that practice needs in the community are evolving quicker than curricula are adapting to those needs, evidencing the importance of community consultation in curriculum development and reform. Areas for improvement in current competent MHH practice (e.g., integrating cultural knowledges, intervention and treatment skills, crisis care) were integrated into the MHH curriculum throughout existing and new course offerings and supplementary student training (e.g., lunch and learns with community experts, allyship programs). Following implementation of the new MHH competency framework, findings from the student survey showed significant increases in skills such as understanding and integrating sociocultural factors in MHH (86%) and identified their increased ability to deliver interventions targeting the social determinants of health (91%).

Conclusion and Implications

Given that MHH specialization competencies are not static and evolve in response to changing sociopolitical contexts, community needs, and governing discourses, social work curricula may benefit from a systematic study. Practicing social workers are especially attuned to this shifting landscape and our findings indicate that collaborating with them on organizational change efforts can support effective competence training. We will detail our organizational change process and share the community- engaged competence framework that is guiding our MHH curriculum.