Nurturing “Critical Hope” in Teaching Feminist Social Work Research

Abstract

Despite the congruence between critical feminist values and the cardinal values of the social work profession, feminist research in social work has lagged behind its fetninist cousins in the social sciences, particularly in terms of critical uses of theory, reflexivity, and the troubling of binaries. This article presents as praxis our reflections as researchers, teachers, and feminists inside social work. We draw from a review of feminist social work research and offer suggestions for teaching ctitical feminist approaches in social work research. Incorporating critical feminist values and research practices into social work research courses creates the potential for greater integration of research, practice, and the principal values of our profession.As feminist social work academics, we argue that praxis is the critical contribution that social work as a discipline can bring to scholarly conversations around feminist research (Wahab, Anderson-Nathe, & Cringeri, 2012). Here we extend our previous work, offering as praxis our reflections on what we have learned about and from feminist social work research and its meaning for our work as educators, researchers, and feminists. Our interpretations throughout this project have doubtless been informed and influenced by our positionalities. We are two women and one man; two of us identify as queer and one as straight; two are White and one is mixedrace. We all identify as able-bodied and middle-class. These and other identities have led us to diverse experiences in conducting and teaching feminist research within university courses and to various-sometimes complicated-relationships with feminisms and social work. Our projects started because of our shared sense that social work as a whole is not critical enough in its praxis and that social work research and social work feminist research frequently reproduce practices and narratives associated with Whiteness, middle class, and benevolent work.In this article, we examine the strengths in feminist social work research, describe strategies researchers may consider to deepen their engagement with the processes of feminist research, and offer suggestions for the teaching of critical feminist approaches in social work education. We argue that the incorporation of feminist approaches in research courses at the doctoral level can provide social work scholars with effective tools to develop knowledge for the purposes

Contextualizing Barriers to Help-Seeking After Sexual Violence: A Critical Feminist Study With Latinx College Women

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From the Editor—The Red Pill or the Blue Pill? Transcending Binary Thinking

“…Us-them, Black-White, gay-straight, male-female, oppressed-oppressor, mentally ill-normal, and able-bodied-disabled provide some concrete examples of binary opposites that have permeated our thinking and research as we attempt to classify individuals and groups of people. This, of course, has not been lost on scholars in social work and other fields who have written about the problematic use of binaries in relation to gender, sex, critical feminisms, feminist research, identity, First Nations people, leadership, and advocacy, and scholarship, among other topics (Ben Anderson-Nathe, Gringeri, & Wahab, 2013;Calliou, 1998;Gonzalez, 2010;Gringeri & Roche, 2010;Kannen, 2008;Linstead & Brewis, 2004;Markman, 2011).…”

Creative Writing and Decolonizing Intersectional Feminist Critical Reflexivity: Challenging Neoliberal, Gendered, White, Colonial Practice Norms in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Yet, Connolly (2018) argues that reflective practices may be uplifted in “feminised professions,” including social work, but this does not necessarily translate into an intersectional feminist practice. Similarly, Anderson-Nathe et al (2013) argue, “social work research and social work feminist research frequently reproduces practices and narratives associated with whiteness, middle class, and benevolent work” (p. 277). Despite the importance of their contributions, too often feminist scholarship has centered on white, cis, straight, and middle-class women by focusing on the impact of patriarchy without interrogating the ways in which ideologies and systems of whiteness, colonization, classism, sexuality, etc.…”