LEARNING TO CONFRONT STRUCTURAL RACISM: AN INTERPRETIVE PHENOMENOLOGICAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL WORK STUDENTS’ EXPERIENCES

This dissertation study used Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA), guided by the Critical Transformative Potential Development (CTPD) framework, to explore how eight MSW students at a large Southeastern university made meaning of structural racism after participating in a course titled Social Work and Mass Incarceration: Policy, Practice, and Research. The course design incorporated problem-posing instructional strategies; critical, engaged, and abolitionist pedagogies; and the study of mass incarceration as a lens to identify the structural linkages that perpetuate oppressive systems. Data collection included individual semi-structured interviews and a review of participants’ completed course assignments. After initial data analysis and interpretation, member-checking interviews with five participants confirmed the researcher’s interpretations. Three group experiential themes emerged: (a) positionality as a starting point, (b) thriving in a brave space, and (c) critically reflecting about contradictions in social work education and practice. Findings also indicated that participants experienced significant perspective change, heightened critical consciousness, and expanded knowledge of how structural forces work to maintain privilege and oppression. Findings illuminated students’ perceptions about the contradictory dimensions of social work education, including ideological differences over social work curricula, pedagogies, classroom dynamics, administration, and the underlying mission and vision of graduate programs. The study contributes to social work education scholarship by adding insight to how MSW students make meaning of structural racism and cultivate critical consciousness. Based on the results of this study, there is a need to develop, implement, and formally evaluate course content and pedagogies that guide students to critique, challenge, and disrupt oppressive systems.