Use of an ADEI Assessment Tool to Examine Social Work Curricula
On October 25, 2024, during the Annual Program Meeting for the Council on Social Work Education in Kansas City, MO, my UAB colleagues (Colleen Fisher, Mary Jacque Carroll and Ron Pitner) and I presented an assessment tool developed by Melissa Freedman, MSW, to review syllabi and courses as an effort to ensure the integration of antiracism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) within our program curricula at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Department of Social Work. We used this tool to assess course content in our Bachelor’s, Master’s and Field Education courses. In this blog post, we provide access to the tool and slides from the presentation.
First, here are details of our conference proposal:
The Council on Social Work Education (2022) requires social work programs to integrate anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) into their curricula. Programs are expected to engage in continuous and specific efforts in both the explicit and implicit curriculum – efforts that address power and bias, dimensions of diversity and intersectionality, teaching practices, planning, accessibility, and representation. To achieve continuous and specific efforts, programs must design and sustain multidimensional explicit and implicit curricula that model a commitment to ADEI grounded in the profession’s values and ethics. In order for programs to engage in continuous and specific efforts, they should assess the extent to which ADEI explicit and implicit curricular content already exists. To address this need, this workshop presents a new tool to evaluate the presence of antiracist, diverse, equitable, and inclusive content in undergraduate- and graduate-level social work courses.
This interactive workshop will present an assessment tool as a continuous and specific ADEI effort, one that was collaboratively designed by undergraduate and graduate social work programs within a small department of social work in a state university. The presenters will describe the rationale, goals, and design of the tool, including how the initial assessment was tailored for its BSSW and MSW programs. Next, presenters will discuss how the tool was implemented, including examination of both explicit and implicit information in syllabi, to evaluate the presence of antiracist, diverse, equitable, and inclusive content in the core program courses that represent the required learning of all students. Presenters will describe how syllabi were reviewed for various elements, including but not limited to communication with students, use of gender-neutral language, student services support, inclusion of diverse authors, and presence of the specific ADEI components in the learning activities.
In this interactive session, the participants will be asked to engage in conversations and activities concerning the assessment tool and social work education. The session will also serve as an opportunity for participants to explore and identify their power and privilege in integrating ADEI content into curricula and will draw on participants’ experiences and challenges throughout the session. Through breakout groups, participants will explore their readiness for change and commitment to ADEI in their respective curricula, possible utility of the assessment tool for their respective programs, and broader implications for social work education. Copies of the assessment tool will be provided as handouts for workshop participants. By providing a practical and accessible tool, this workshop will help programs to successfully assess existing ADEI content and identify weak points to be strengthened to align with the 2022 EPAS and advance social work education.
Next, here is access to the slides and the ADEI tool:
- Workshop Slides
- BSSW Version of the Tool
- MSW Version of the Tool – To be added
All versions of this ADEI tool are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, which means you can use, share and adapt the tool for free, but please give us proper credit and do not use it for commercial purposes. If you use our ADEI tool, please let us know how and what your outcomes are by leaving a comment below.
References:
Council on Social Work Education (2022). Educational policy and accreditation standards for baccalaureate and master’s social work programs. Retrieved from https://www.cswe.org/getmedia/94471c42-13b8-493b-9041-b30f48533d64/2022-EPAS.pdf.
Gabel, S. & Mapp, S. (2020). Teaching human rights and social justice in social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 56:3, 428-441, DOI:10.1080/10437797.2019.1656581
National Association of Social Workers (2021). Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. https://www.socialworkers.org/About/Ethics/Code-of-Ethics/Code-of-Ethics-English
National Association of Social Workers (2022). Undoing Racism Through Social Work (Vol. 2): A Collaborative Vision for an AntiRacist Future. Retrieved from https://www.socialworkers.org/LinkClick.aspx?fileticket=QsNmikJGKj0%3d&portalid=0
How to cite:
Freedman, M., Fisher, C.M., Hitchcock, L.I., Carroll, M.J. & Pitner, R. (2024, November 20). Use of an ADEI Assessment Tool to Examine Social Work Curricula. Teaching & Learning in Social Work. https://laureliversonhitchcock.org/2024/11/20/use-of-an-adei-assessment-tool-to-examine-social-work-curricula/
