ABSTRACT

In this article, we argue that those in social work education should refocus how they conceptualize and teach intersectionality to produce more effective social work practitioners. We emphasize that social work should shift from educating students to evaluate diverse clients as the accumulation of individual identities operating in isolation (e.g., race or ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation) to recognizing how these identities intersect to influence health and well-being based on these identities’ shared roots in oppression and privilege. This emphasis is grounded in the belief that training social work students to identify the multiple forms of inequities resulting from oppression related to gender, race, and class that influence clients’ social, economic, and health (physical and mental) outcomes will better prepare them to deliver culturally responsive and structurally competent practice that aligns with and advances the mission and ethics of the social work profession. We further discuss how intersectionality should be conceptualized, defined, and taught in social work education through explicit naming and discussion of oppression and privilege, and we close by presenting some common barriers to teaching intersectionality as well as possible strategies to overcome them.

摘要

在本文中，我们认为那些从事社会工作教育的人应该重新关注他们如何概念化和教授交叉性，以培养更有效的社会工作从业者。我们强调，社会工作应该从教育学生将不同的客户评估为孤立地运作的个人身份（例如种族或民族、性别、性取向）的积累转变为认识到这些身份如何相互交叉以影响健康和福祉这些身份的共同根源在于压迫和特权。这种强调是基于这样的信念，即培训社会工作学生识别与性别、种族和阶级相关的压迫所导致的多种形式的不平等，这些压迫会影响客户的社会、经济、和健康（身体和精神）成果将使他们更好地准备好提供具有文化响应性和结构能力的实践，以符合并推进社会工作专业的使命和道德。我们通过对压迫和特权的明确命名和讨论，进一步讨论了如何在社会工作教育中对交叉性进行概念化、定义和教授，最后我们提出了一些教授交叉性的常见障碍以及克服这些障碍的可能策略。