Exploring the Impact of Experiential Learning to Transform Change

Background: Social work educators are required to measure students’ competency in implementing values such as social justice and empowerment, yet individual students’ experiences and opportunities to practice macro skills vary in field practicums, creating challenges for standardized assessment. Experiential learning (EL) in the classroom is one alternative strategy to interactively promote learners’ engagement and facilitate the acquisition of requisite skills and values to promote the transformation of change.

Purpose: To date, there is limited research assessing the impact of EL on students’ comprehension about power, privilege and oppression. This study’s purpose was to systematically present an EL activity and qualitatively explore students’ experiences and understanding of inequity and its alignment with social justice policies and practice.

Methods: To assess the simulation’s impact, researchers purposively sampled 182 students in senior BSW practice courses. Students were presented the same EL activity where select groups of students earned the privilege of leadership with unlimited powers to create and change the activity’s rules for lower power groups. After the activity, participants voluntarily and anonymously answered in writing three open-ended questions: (1) “How did this activity change your understanding of structural oppression?” (2) “How did this activity affect your understanding of the importance of macro social work practice?” and 3) “What did you learn about yourself (and others)?” Three coders independently coded responses to identify common themes, following the six steps recommended for thematic analysis.

Results: Five themes emerged from question one: (1) Individuals who possess power endeavor to maintain power; (2) Forces of structural oppression are entrenched; (3) Clients may break rules if they do not benefit them; (4) People without power are excluded from key decision making processes and (5) Oppression creates both mental and physical suffering.

Four themes were identified for question two: (1) Structural change is difficult but possible; (2) Advocacy is essential to create change; (3) Social workers have a unique opportunity to promote change; and (4) Successful advocacy involves community buy-in to the change process.

What students learned were: 1) Staying complacent is easier than taking risks, 2) It’s easy to judge others 3) Self-interest motivates 4) It’s easy to speak but action is hard and 5) Apathy results from hopelessness.

Conclusions and Implications: Results indicate that EL has the potential to demonstrate and clarify the meaning and practice implications of concepts like power and structural oppression. The simulation also illustrated why lower status groups, even educated social work students who value social justice, find it difficult to mobilize, organize, and transform themselves as change agents. Responses to the second and third research questions indicated that EL could enhance participants’ understanding of the challenges, while highlighting the importance of advocacy and macro social work practice, in countering the effects of oppression and societal inequities. Future research should explore whether EL has different effects on participants who encountered structural injustice in their lives from those with greater societal privilege and whether different forms of EL, e.g., different exercises, are more effective in producing the desired outcome of transformative change.