Journal of Technology in Human Services
ISSN: 1522-8835 (Print) 1522-8991 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/wths20
Preparing Social Work Students to Practice in Diverse Communities through Difficult Digital Dialogues Shane R. Brady, Jason M. Sawyer & Samara Crawford Herrera To cite this article: Shane R. Brady, Jason M. Sawyer & Samara Crawford Herrera (2016) Preparing Social Work Students to Practice in Diverse Communities through Difficult Digital Dialogues, Journal of Technology in Human Services, 34:4, 376-393, DOI: 10.1080/15228835.2016.1250244 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15228835.2016.1250244
Published online: 01 Dec 2016.
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Date: 07 December 2016, At: 17:05
JOURNAL OF TECHNOLOGY IN HUMAN SERVICES 2016, VOL. 34, NO. 4, 376–393 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15228835.2016.1250244
Preparing Social Work Students to Practice in Diverse Communities through Difficult Digital Dialogues Shane R. Bradya, Jason M. Sawyerb, and Samara Crawford Herreraa a
University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma; bNorfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia ABSTRACT
This study discusses the qualitative lessons learned from a joint social work difficult dialogue education project undertaken by students from a historically Black college and university (HBCU) and those from a predominantly White institution (PWI). The assignment utilized critical pedagogy as a guiding theory to facilitate difficult dialogues about diversity, privilege, and difference through social media and technology. Qualitative data analyzed from the project points to the usefulness and challenges of using social media and technology in facilitating difficult dialogues as well as the need to train students more purposely in the effective use of social media and technology during their education in order to prepare them for practice.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 17 July 2016 Accepted 16 October 2016 KEYWORDS
Action learning; intergroup dialogue; social media; social work education
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE), the accrediting body for social work education, requires that students be able to engage diversity and difference in practice (CSWE, 2015, Competency 2). Likewise, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW), the primary professional organization of social work professionals, requires social workers to practice with cultural competence through respecting diversity, difference, and inequality (NASW, 2008, 1.05). As a result of these mandates, many social work programs incorporate courses into their curriculum that are designed to teach topics such as privilege, diversity, oppression, difference, and social justice. Despite the best of intentions, many programs face challenges in relation to how to promote deeper level critical, personal, and societal analysis of these concepts (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 2007; Reamer, 2011). This article discusses the results and lessons learned from a classroom project between social work students from a historically Black college and university (HBCU) and those from a predominantly White institution (PWI). Instructors from both schools facilitated intragroup and intergroup dialogues among students utilizing the social media platform, Twitter, as well as the web conferencing technology, Skype. Dialogues between students focused on the core concepts of privilege, diversity, difference, power, and justice in the context of community practice with an aim of building practice skills for working with CONTACT Shane R. Brady
[email protected] Oklahoma, 700 Elm Ave., Norman, OK 73019. © 2016 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
Anne & Henry Zarrow School of Social Work, University of
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difference in community practice, and for how to effectively utilize social media and technology in professional practice. Critical pedagogy and dialogue Critical pedagogy provided the major theoretical perspective for considering how to challenge the thinking of students in a way that would promote critical thinking, consciousness, and action (Adams & Horton, 1975; Freire, 1998). Critical pedagogy takes root in the work of Brazlian educator Paulo Freire who sought to make aware, among those experiencing oppression and injustice, the root causes and sources of oppression (Freire, 1970). An emphasis on critical pedagogy as a means for individuals to understand oppression by interacting with others often leads to strategies for taking action to address injustices within social systems and structures (Dobbie & Richards-Schuster, 2008; Horton & Freire, 1990; Lange, 2004). Within educational settings, critical pedagogy has an aim of increasing awareness and understanding about privilege, diversity, and difference among students for the purpose of promoting cultural sensitivity, intellectual and cultural humility, and the development of apt professionals and leaders (Adams et al., 2007; Freire, 1998). Intergroup dialogue approaches In addition to critical pedagogy, the literature on approaches to intergroup dialogue (IGD) were consulted. In past years, IGD courses and programs have sprung up across the country seeking to engage students in meaningful interactions while learning within the context of difference. IGD is an evidence-based practice model for promoting conversations within and between diverse groups in relation to specific identities through following specific curriculum developed for identified dialogue groups (Zuniga, Nagda, Chesler, & Cytron-Walker, 2007). Most recently, the use of IGD approaches has increased in classrooms and communities as a means to address difference among diverse groups (Zullo & Pratt, 2009). A collaborative study of IGD courses across a variety of higher education institutions “emphasized that interactions with diverse peer groups encourage students to learn from each other, to understand perspectives that reflect different experiences and various social backgrounds, and to gain the cultural competence critical to effective local and global leadership” (Nagda, Gurin, Sorensen, & Zúñiga, 2009, p. 7). It is important to note that intergroup dialogue focuses on facilitating deeper level discussions among people with marked differences as a means to promote justice (Fithian, 2009). Dialogue does not seek to change an individual’s mind, but is a form of interactive communication that promotes understanding of
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social issues and inequalities (Gurin, Nagda, & Sorensen, 2011). Additionally, open communication and relationship building aspects between diverse groups may be achieved through participation in group activities, discussion, and reflections (Lange, 2004). In this project, IGD was utilized as a framework for facilitating group dialogues from within (intragroup) and between (intergroup) students residing at the HBCU and PWI. The role of social media and technology in intergroup dialogue and education Social media and technology is a growing body and focus of inquiry in the literature of many helping professions such as social work, counseling, education, and community practice (Hick & McNutt, 2002; Jenkins, 2006; Robbins & Singer, 2014). Social media and technology has been praised for providing spaces, tools, and voices to marginalized groups not always given accurate voice by traditional media platforms (Hoefer, 2012; Vaterlaus, Barnett, Roche, & Young, 2016). Through the utilization of common forms of technology such as cell phones, video cameras, and tablets, as well as social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat, and Instagram, individuals can produce and contribute to the knowledge base and consciousness of society in relation to critical issues such as police shootings, hate crimes, and structural inequality (Brady, Young, & McLeod, 2015; Vaterlaus et al., 2016). While social media and technology is undoubtedly an important aspect in grassroots advocacy and activism efforts as well as a part of everyday life for many people, it is also an important aspect of professional practice for social workers and other helping professionals (Hoefer, 2012; Reamer, 2011). Social workers across the micro–macro continuum increasingly turn to social media to engage clients, create supportive virtual communities, provide supervision, conduct counseling, engage policy makers, and mobilize communities (Brady et al., 2015; Robbins & Singer, 2014). Despite the growing proliferation of social media and technology in social work practice, very little has been written about the professional utilization of digital tools for the purpose of addressing difference in diverse communities or how to build the capacity of students and future practitioners to use these digital tools effectively in practice to promote difficult dialogues across and within communities. As a result of the increasing role of social media and technology to the duties of social workers and other helping professionals, schools of social work and similar programs face the challenge of preparing students for professional practice within a digital landscape (Jenkins, 2006; Reamer, 2012; Young, 2015). Despite the widespread use of social media and technology among college students, many students do not possess high rates of competency or literacy in the use of all forms of social media and
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technology, and often lack the knowledge about the ethical dimension of digital tools or how to effectively utilize them in a professional as opposed to a personal context (Jenkins, 2006; Young, 2015). As a result, educators must consider how to better integrate content related to social media and technology in curriculum and provide opportunities for students to practice with digital tools in classroom assignments and activities (Hitchcock & Young, 2016; Robbins & Singer, 2014). One method that educators have successfully utilized to incorporate social media into classroom learning is through involving students in facilitated dialogues through the platform of Twitter (Hitchcock & Young, 2016; Kind, Patel, Lie, & Chretien, 2013). By utilizing Twitter, students are forced to organize and consider responses more distinctly and concisely than they would typically be forced to do in Facebook posts, blogs, or even during class discussions. Twitter also allows for quieter and shyer students to participate in dialogues that they would normally be hesitant to participate in within a traditional classroom setting (Young, 2015, 2016). Finally, Twitter allows for easy archiving of conversations using free software programs such as Storify, which can be useful for reflecting on and analyzing discussions with students at future times in the semester. Study aims The overarching aim of this classroom dialogue project was to understand how social media facilitated classroom dialogues between markedly different student bodies from two different geographic locations would impact students. Given the pilot nature of this project, instructors wanted to keep an open mind about outcomes, and instead utilized a social constructivist orientation to focus more on understanding student experiences throughout the project (Rodwell, 1998). Based on the literature the following tentative hypotheses were developed that would be explored further through action research and qualitative analysis: 1. Students would be more participatory on Twitter than via Skype due to the less personal nature of Twitter. 2. Students would identify benefits from hearing perspectives related to diversity and difference that they typically would not hear within their own schools due to the lack of racial/ethnic diversity. 3. PWI students would find dialogue work easier to engage in honestly via social media and technology, whereas HBCU students would find it more challenging to engage in dialogue via social media and technology than in person. 4. Some students would identify capacity gains for using social media and technology for professional practice as a result of this project.
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5. Student levels of critical consciousness, or their ability to change patterns of thinking, feeling, and/or behaving as a result of participating in this project would be limited due to the short-term nature of the project. Methodology This difficult digital dialogue project was grounded in an action research methodology and guided by social constructivist theory and critical pedagogy. Action research was used to evaluate both the process and student experiences associated with the project (Freire, 1998; Lewin, 1946). In the fields of education, critical adult learning, and community practice, action research has long been utilized as a research methodology (Freire, 1998; Lewin, 1946). Action research assumes that the field of inquiry is tied to learning about the outcomes of practice within a given context (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Fook, 2002). Given that this project was a new undertaking for both instructors, and the scarcity of research available specific to the use of social media and technology in intergroup dialogue work, a social constructivist orientation to the data collection and analysis was deemed appropriate as instructors wanted to understand how the process impacted students as well as what students perceived as learning outcomes. Sample
The overall sample for this project had a combined sample size of N = 65. All students were enrolled in social work courses with a focus on community practice. HBCU students represented N = 25, all undergraduate students. The sample from the PWI included N = 30 undergraduate students and N = 10 graduate students. 96% (24/25) of HBCU students indicated that their race was best described as Black or African American. Among PWI students, 80% described themselves as White or Caucasian, 10% described themselves as Native American or Alaskan Native, and approximately 8% were selfdescribed as Black or African American. In terms of age, both schools were comparable with nearly 55% of students reporting their age as under 30 years of age, while 22% were between 30–35 years of age. Finally, 90% of the overall sample identified as female, which is the typical ratio in most schools of social work. Students were located in institutions that were also in different geographical regions of the country, with HBCU students being in the East Coast Southern Region of the United States and PWI students being in the South Central Region of the country. Students had no prior interactions with students from the other institution before this course. Students did know that this was a course project, but due to the research aspect of it, students could elect to participate in the project and research study, participate in the project,
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but not be included in the research study, or choose to complete an alternative assignment. It is important to note that all students from both schools choose to participate in the project and research study. Description of the dialogue activity
The two Brady, Young, and McLeods of this article who conducted this project were colleagues who knew one another prior to doing the project. One was a social work professor at an HBCU and the other a social work professor at a PWI school. Both professors were struggling with how to create intergroup learning experiences in their respective classes, given the lack of racial/ethnicity in their institutions and classrooms. Both instructors typically taught community practice courses at the undergraduate and/or graduate level. During the semester that this project was piloted, the instructor at the HBCU was teaching undergraduate community practice, while the other instructor was teaching undergraduate and graduate level community practice courses. It is also important to note that an additional motivation for conducting this project between institutions was related to both instructors feeling compelled by highly publicized events of police shootings and social action to provide space for students to begin having deeper level conversations about the role and responsibility of social workers to help address issues related to diversity and difference in communities. After initial planning, instructors oriented students in their respective classrooms about the project early in the semester, including providing students with information about the research component of the project, and provided students with information for completing an alternative assignment if they choose not to participate in the dialogue project. Students who consented to participate in the project were given readings and instruction related to intergroup dialogue and social media and technology. Students at both institutions participated in intragroup discussions (discussions within their respective classrooms) about the impact of privilege, difference, and inequality on communities around the United States. Given that students participating in this project were enrolled in social work courses with a community focus, instructors utilized well known incidents of difference in Ferguson, MO and the death of Trayvon Martin, as topics for dialogues. After students participated in intragroup dialogues and learned the basics of Twitter and Skype, students in both schools watched a film that highlighted how diversity and difference can lead to conflicts in communities as well as how professionals can play active roles in addressing difference, while respecting diversity, in community settings. Students practiced tweeting during the film in order to practice skills. The film was mainly a tool to get
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students thinking about the topic of diversity and difference as well as to give them a chance to practice using Twitter before the intergroup dialogue session. Subsequently, students participated in a semistructured 60-min Twitter dialogue with one another. Both instructors developed questions for the session with student input. The Twitter session was held in the evening time in order to accommodate students’ schedules. While some students indicated that they participated from school, most participated from home. The day after students participated in the Twitter dialogue, they engaged in a town hall style forum through Skype. While instructors facilitated the session, students came up with questions that were asked over Skype and via Twitter. Facilitators laid out a set of community dialogue values at the beginning of the session to encourage students to be critical, brave, and participatory, but also respectful to others. Instructors reminded students that the goal of dialogue is not agreement, but increased understanding. The dialogue took place over a 2-hr period of time with students from both schools gathered in a larger meeting area in their respective schools. After completing the dialogue project, students were instructed to complete semistructured reflection papers about their learning experiences. Data collection
Data for this project consisted of qualitative data collected through semistructured reflective student writing assignments, archived Twitter data from a conversation between students about diversity and difference in society, and an audio transcript and observational notes taken from the Skype town hall session. More than 400 pages of data were collected in total for the project. Twitter conversations were archived using the program Storify. During the Twitter dialogue, students were instructed to use a hashtag for all responses that allowed the conversation to be archived in its entirety. Students were also instructed to indicate Q1, Q2, and so forth, for the specific question that they were responding to, and to introduce themselves at the beginning of the chat indicating whether they were a student from the HBCU or PWI institution, so responses of students from each institution could be compared and contrasted during analysis. The Skype town hall session was 2 hr in length and audio recorded. Two graduate students also took detailed notes during the session in order to capture body language and other details that might not be captured by the recording. The audio recording was transcribed and analyzed as part of the data collected in the study. Finally, students in both schools wrote journal style reflection papers about their experience participating in the project. Both instructors used the same prompts, and students reflected on how they felt during the process, what they learned, and what the challenges were to participating in the project.
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Analysis
Data collected in this project was analyzed using thematic analysis that began with the questions posed to students and major aims of the assignment. Both instructors, along with a graduate research assistant coded data and engaged in three rounds of data analysis in order to arrive at the final themes of the project. Thematic analysis in the context of action learning has precedence critical adult learning and in education (Lange, 2004). In order to build an understanding about how students experienced the social media facilitated intergroup dialogue project for the purpose of informing future projects, instructors utilized Bazeley’s method of thematic analysis (Bazeley, 2009). Bazeley emphasizes moving data from more specific units to more abstract and explanatory schemas of understanding through the development of concepts categories, and themes. Concepts represent initial code words or phrases that are the easiest to identify in the data. Categories are frameworks created to link similar concepts together in order to understand relationships and connections. Finally, themes are the underlying deeper meanings associated with and between categories. Through identifying concepts, categories, and themes, it becomes possible to build an understanding of how the process of social media facilitated intergroup dialogue was experienced by students in both institutions, along with an understanding about how the project impacted them. Both instructors and the outside graduate assistant engaged in each round of analysis individually and came together to discuss results and reconcile differences. This dialogical approach to thematic analysis is appropriate for a social constructivist orientation, which was what was undertaken in this project (Rodwell, 1998). Researchers were able to agree with 90% of the first round analysis and identification of concepts. The 10% of concepts and analysis that researchers could not agree on was tossed out. In the second and third rounds of analysis, the formation of categories and themes, researchers came to agreement on 100% of the final results. Findings
The findings related to the overall digital dialogues project thematic analysis is provided in Table 1. Initial coding identified the concepts of social change, social justice, privilege, racism, diversity, difference, community, and history. These concepts were identified in student questions and responses posed during the Twitter session as well as the Skype town hall meeting. For example, one student responded via Twitter to a question about why difference leads to violence in communities by tweeting, “people who aren’t black aren’t going to understand being sick and tired or #blacklivesmatter.” In this response, the
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Table 1.
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Final categories and concepts of difficult dialogue project.
Concepts
Categories
Category definitions
Relevant themes
Social change Social justice Privilege Racism Diversity Difference Community History Social media in addressing difference Raising awareness Organizing Advocacy Education Dialogue Self-reflection Challenging others Understanding privilege Acknowledging systemic inequality Perspective taking Digital literacy Appreciation of commonalities Diversity learning
Core concepts of dialogue
Relates to concepts that influence individuals to participate in community organizing efforts, either as organizers or community members, and also keeps individual engaged in the organizing process over time.
The roots and branches of difference
Societal action
Encompasses stage one of the organizing process and relates to concepts that represent organizer tasks and goals related to the first stage of an organizing effort, where community members interact with one another in interrelated processes meant to represents the second stage of the organizing process and encompasses concepts related to organizer tasks and considerations associated with the second stage of community organizing.
Continuum of action for addressing difference
Strengths and challenges of building student capacity for addressing diversity and difference in the classroom
Lack of trust Lack of social media skills Time limited
Barriers to learning
Represents the third stage of the organizing process and encompasses concepts related to community member goals and processes associated with the third stage of community organizing, marked by community members taking action together to meet previously determined organizing goals related to social change. Represents the outcomes that occur after organizing efforts are complete and encompasses concepts related to successful and unsuccessful community organizing.
Self-directed actions
Learning outcomes
student, also a student of Color, is talking about the how privilege can be a barrier to understanding reactions by persons of Color in relation to injustices in the community. After the concepts were identified in the data, they were categorized and labeled as core concepts of dialogue. This category was constructed to isolate the key terms that were introduced at the beginning of the project by instructors from both institutions as well as in the questions posed by instructors to students, and students to one another. The concepts of self-reflection, dialogue, challenging others, understanding privilege, and acknowledging inequality were coded and grouped together as
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they related to actions that students could take to address difference that involved taking introspective actions with themselves or with their immediate networks of family, friends, and colleagues. The category was labeled self-directed actions because all actions represented in these concepts related back to immediate actions that dialogue participants said they could take immediately to address difference in their own lives and spaces. One PWI student at the town hall meeting responded, “being culturally competent begins with yourself, if you’re not aware of things like racism, how can you impact change anywhere in society? … Once you are self-aware, you can begin to check others you know.” In this statement and others made on Twitter and during the Skype town hall, many students discussed that challenging difference must begin with challenging yourself and those in your immediate circles. Additionally, the concepts of social media in addressing difference, raising awareness, organizing, advocacy, and education were raised during student interactions via Twitter and the Town Hall as they related to how difference might be best addressed in communities and society. Unlike in the previous category of self-directed actions, concepts here related to actions people could take beyond themselves and personal circles that focus on larger system changes. This category was labeled societal action and included strategies for change such as education, advocacy, using social media to address difference, awareness raising, and organizing, that emphasized changing systems that perpetuate inequality and oppression in ways that promote the mishandling of difference in communities and society. One HBCU student via Twitter in response to a question regarding the role of social workers in addressing difference in communities stated, “I’m tired of just having a conversation about inequality and police violence. It’s time to change policies.” Another PWI student chimed in on the same question with, “I think that as social workers, we must educate policy makers about root causes of injustice.” During the town hall session, an HBCU student stated, “we need to leave here and go out into the communities where we work and live, and bring people together before difference leads to violence.” Another category that was created was labeled learning outcomes, and related to student responses in reflexive journals about what their takeaways were from participating in this project. The concepts, which in this case indicate skills, values, or behavioral acquisition of students participating in the digital dialogues project included perspective taking, digital literacy, appreciation of commonalities, and diversity learning. It is important to note that students as a whole did not mention major outcomes or changes to themselves as a result of this project or in relation to value changes, but did develop or refine skills due to participating in the project. For example, one PWI student stated on Twitter, “I would have never learned to use Twitter
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on my own at my age or thought that it could be a tool in my practice, but plan to use it more.” Another student from the HBCU stated during the town hall: I like what so and so said about learning to be able to listen and take on someone else’s perspective, even if you don’t agree with it, because maybe you can understand why they feel the way they do, and maybe you can build some level of a working relationship with them.
Students may not have indicated major changes in personal values or standpoints as a result of participating in this brief digitally enhanced intergroup dialogue project, but they did indicate learning outcomes that can be used in the future to better refine the specific goals of this project. Finally, the last category created was labeled barriers to learning, which included concepts and student response data related to issues they experienced with participating in this short-term digitally enhanced intergroup dialogue project. The concepts or barriers to learning that students indicated in journals and during the town hall were, a lack of trust, lack of social media skills, and the time limited nature of the project. One HBCU student wrote in their journal, “I mean it was kinda weird to just start talking to people that I have never met before about things like racism and privilege … I just don’t know how you do that with anyone unless you know them first.” Another student from the PWI write in their journal I felt like I spent more time learning how to use Twitter or how to interact on Skype than I did about anything related to the course itself. … I think this is a barrier that needs to be addressed by the instructors.
During the town hall session, one HBCU student stated, “This has been a very interesting experience, I just wish we had more time to focus on some of this in more depth.” Overall, while many students indicated that they enjoyed the project and learned something from it, not all students positively embraced the use of social media and technology in dialogue work nor did they feel like it was productive to have dialogues without more time investment and emphasis on building trust among students.
Resulting themes
After conducting two distinct rounds of coding to identify initial concepts and categories, the final round of analysis focused on uncovering the underlying and crosscutting themes that would provide insights across all categories of data. The first theme identified was labeled “the roots and branches of difference.” This theme was labeled such based on how students came to the initial dialogue project with varying and different perspectives on the nature of privilege, racism, difference, social justice, history, and
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change. During discussions many students seemed to assume that all students came to the dialogue with the same understanding and definitions of concepts, but during the course of the Twitter chat and Skype session, it became clear that students had differing views. For example, a PWI student tweeted, “Racism is definitely related to difference and conflict, but what about sexism and homophobia.” Another illustration of this theme occurred during the Skype town hall students when a HBCU student stated, “White privilege is privilege.” A student from the PWI responded by stating, “privilege is not just about race, but about class, gender, sexual orientation, and many other criteria … all of us in a college space has some degree of privilege.” In this exchange between students, it became clear that students might have very different working definitions and understanding of the concept of privilege based on their own education, experiences, and social identities. Another theme that emerged from this analysis was labeled as “continuum of action for addressing difference.” This theme linked two categories related to student perspectives about how to address and work with diversity and difference with an overarching aim of alleviating injustice. Students spoke a lot about how to be more self-aware, how to challenge injustices through conversations with family members, friends, and colleagues, and how to address injustice through actions that target larger level systemic changes. The overarching variety of responses by students created a visible continuum of actions to address difference that began with more individual actions, extended to small group actions, and finally to larger structural actions such as organizing, advocacy, and social action. One illustration of this theme comes from the following HBCU student’s tweet of, “Change starts with yourself and who you know, then comes advocacy.” A student from the PWI states in their reflections on the experience I believe that the best means for finding solutions to the events happening in our society is to educate ourselves first and foremost. I also wonder how many people who claim to support equity never check their family or friends when they say racist stuff.
In these types of student comments, they are emphasizing the various ways that social workers and others can affect change at various levels. Lastly, the final theme identified was, “strengths and challenges to education building student capacity for addressing diversity and difference.” This theme related to what students stated they got out of participating in the project as well as challenges they experienced in relation to the project. This theme encompassed categories related to learning outcomes and barriers to learning. One HBCU student wrote in their reflection paper, “It was cool to hear what White students thought about racism … it was enlightening and challenging to listen to their perspectives.” A PWI student
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wrote, “I feel like my perceptions about privilege and oppression stayed the same, but what I took away from this assignment was how to use social media in my practice.” Another student from the HBCU wrote, “I really liked learning how to use Twitter for connecting to other activists and students.” One PWI student wrote, “I found it hard to learn Twitter at my age. … it also was hard to just start talking about racism with a group of students who I have never met before.” All of these student responses and many others represent what students took away from taking part in this project as well as some significant challenges to fully participating or learning from the project. Between group analysis
After the overall analysis was conducted, researchers looked more closely at similarities and differences between student responses from each institution. In terms of the analysis of students across institutions, HBCU students and PWI students both identified that their initial standpoints went largely unchanged as a result of participating in the project. An HBCU student stated in their reflection paper, “I don’t think anything really changed for me due to interacting with the other students, but I feel like I understand the topics discussed pretty well.” Another student, one from the PWI, stated in their reflection paper, “I enjoyed hearing different perspectives on race and why things were so messed up in communities around the U.S., but having already had an oppression and diversity course, I feel like I already knew most of the content already.” An additional finding of the between group analysis was that students tended to view injustice through the social identity or identities that they most identified with. For instance, while the project was never framed as a conversation solely about racism, race was the predominant form of difference discussed by all students. While most PWI students identified as White, some also identified as members of the LGBTQ community, and discussed privilege in dimensions that related to gender identity and sexual orientation, which no HBCU students discussed during the project. For example, a PWI student stated during the Skype town hall, “I feel like I am hearing a lot about one type of privilege, but not other forms of privilege that come with being male or straight.” A HBCU student did state during the town hall, “I feel like we need to spend more time on intersectionality in social work courses as this may be the most helpful frame for those with privilege to understand the impact of privilege.” One difference between groups observed and noted during the Skype session was that HBCU students seemed more prepared and willing to ask questions of PWI students, and seemed less uncomfortable with the dialogue process than PWI students. Instructors also looked at similarities and differences between undergraduate and graduate level students, but since the majority of students (55/65) were undergraduates,
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and only the PWI included graduate students, no significant results were identified. Implications While the results of this study are preliminary and focused at the level of understanding in relation to student learning, there are several potential implications that can be derived from this project. One implication is related to the ethics of intergroup dialogue. The CSWE (2015) accreditation standards states that, “social workers engage diversity and difference in practice (competency 2).” While there are undoubtedly many ways that schools of social work help prepare students to engage diversity and difference in practice, critical dialogue within social work classes has been a major tool for helping students explore constructs such as privilege, social justice, inequality, difference, and diversity through instructor facilitated and even peer facilitated conversations. The challenge to these conversations in many schools, however, is that most students are of the same race/ethnicity, gender, social class, age, sexual orientation, and gender identity. It thus becomes increasingly difficult to create intergroup experiences for students in academic settings that are primarily homogenous. While intergroup dialogue is definitely a useful tool for unpacking content, values, feelings, and thinking related to diversity and difference, the pedagogy of intergroup dialogue emphasizes the need to have equal numbers within each different group participating in the dialogue in order to help mediate the influence of power dynamics and the promotion of authentic student voice, which is often not possible in many schools and programs across the United States (Zuniga et al., 2007). One way to address the issue of homogeneity among social work students is by connecting classroom projects and learning to other classes and programs that may have students who share different social identities, history, culture, and location. The challenge with facilitating these types of intergroup learning experiences is that logistically they are a challenge to create in a more purposeful and developmental way that ensures that students are not being harmed and are able to truly learn in the environment. While social media and technology provides great tools for connecting students across schools and geographies for the purpose of dialogue work, social media and technology cannot address issues related to the short length of time students are in classrooms each semester, varying levels of digital literacy and comfort among students, how to facilitate and balance the process of building trust between students, while still ensuring that they have enough time to engage in dialogue work and reflection. Dialogue is an extremely important and useful tool in practice and education; however, if it isn’t facilitated properly, it cannot only be ineffective for emerging practitioners, but harmful to their confidence and ability if the virtual sessions are not facilitated
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properly or if students are not fully committed to the process of unpacking their own values and assumptions related to diversity and difference for the purpose of mutual learning and understanding. Another implication of this study relates to the use of social media in the classroom and at one point should digital literacy be incorporated into social work education. Currently, digital literacy, which is best understood as an individual’s overall comfort, competence, and perception of social media and technology tools, is not a competency area in social work education. While numerous educators within helping professions have written about the importance of preparing students for practice in an increasingly digital world, there is diversity in perspectives about how important it is in relation to preparing future practitioners in a variety of areas. During this project, it became very clear that while some students had used Twitter and Skype technologies before, many had never used either one of them, and most had no understanding for how to use them as a professional tool. If schools of social work are preparing students for professional practice in an increasingly digital world where practices such as client support groups, therapy, supervision, dialogue, fundraising, resource identification, and outreach are taking place in virtual spaces through social media and technology, what responsibility should schools of social work and other professional schools play in preparing students for the latest innovative technology driven practice? If we agree that schools and programs have any role in the preparation of students for digitally facilitated practices than why is digital literacy not a specific competency within the new Educational and Policy Accreditation Standards for social work education? Along with implications related to digital literacy and ethical uses of dialogue in social work education, there is also an implication resulting from this digital dialogue study related to how students view themselves as change agents in the greater society or in relation to social systems. While students definitely discussed potential actions that practitioners could take to engage with diversity and difference in practice, many of the responses students mentioned related more to personal changes that seem surface level, for example, “I can be more aware of my own privilege.” Awareness is definitely important in social work practice, but students did not make as much of a connection between the role of a social worker and larger level societal or systemic change nor did they come up with as many strategies for systemic change, despite how much systems and policy impact the work that social workers do in practice, and despite having already completed a policy course in their respective programs, social work students seemed to focus far less on advocacy or systemic forms of action during the dialogue project, which indicates a possibility of a professional drift in terms of the importance placed on building the capacity of social work students to use advocacy based skills in their practice with not only individuals or families, but also on unjust systems and structures.
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Limitations While this study makes a beginning level contribution to the literature around the utilization of social media and technology to facilitate difficult dialogues in community practice as well as preparing students for practice, there are several limitations to the study. First, this study was based on one educational experience that took place over the course of a time-limited semester. As a result more replication of the project is needed in order to fully understand the gains and challenges associated with it, while also empirically measuring outcomes. Another major limitation of the study was the timing of courses and geographic distance, which made relationship building and trust difficult to develop among students from the HBCU and PWI. It would be more ideal to do a similar project among classes that meet on the same day and time of the week, regardless of geographic location, or to bring in other social media/ technology tools such as blogs, videos, and discussion boards that would give students more time to build rapport with one another before beginning engaging in difficult dialogues. Finally, while all students participated in some way throughout the project, it is impossible to determine if all students were completely honest in their own self-assessments of the experience, given that this project was tied to a semester grade and assignment. Conclusion While we continue to struggle as a society to understand complex issues such as privilege, injustice, and difference, it is important for those individuals working in communities to understand how to effectively facilitate difficult dialogues as well as the benefits and limitations of using social media and technology to promote dialogues. Far too often I hear colleagues, students, and friends speak to the need to take action following a tragic incident such as what has taken place in Tulsa, Orlando, Baton Rouge, Ferguson, and Baltimore, yet few can clearly articulate what actions need to take place or what they can do as a community professional. While structural and policy level changes undoubtedly need to occur, effective dialogues may still be among the most important work that needs attention in many communities around the United States. Despite the limitations of difficult dialogue work in short time frames in schools that may lack diversity, this project provides some preliminary results that show that while social work students may not increase their critical consciousness in leaps and bounds or drastically alter their perspectives about privilege, diversity, or difference, they do achieve positive learning outcomes. Lastly, while the role of social media and technology in social work and other helping professions is still debated, it is hard to argue that the role of social media and technology in society won’t continue to increase in scope and complexity. It is thus an ethical
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