Deconstructing Hierarchy Through Learning Communities: Justice, Equity, and Storytelling in the Social Work Classroom

Despite the focus on social justice, social work education is still heavily rooted in hierarchy and harmful educational practices. This conceptual and practice-informed article aims to highlight the deconstruction of educational hierarchy within the classroom through a justice lens, with equitable intention, and storytelling as meaningful discourse in social work education. These authors intend to deconstruct power dynamics, dismantle harmful assumptions, and encourage the unlearning of systemic and oppressive methods with the integration of clinical social work experience, useful decolonized classroom practices, and narrative pedagogy. The practice of storytelling can be healing, aid in building community, and also offer a collective learning experience that is actively working in social work education. The unlearning of harmful grading practices, classroom power structures, and models that reinforce individualism are essential for propelling social work education toward a more collective, justice-oriented approach. This article draws on transformational pedagogy and clinical social work practice to explore the ways in which change can occur with intention, attunement, and humility on behalf of instructors and lends to the ongoing conversation around decolonizing social work education. The authors posit that transformative education lies in the space between social work education and clinical practice. The methodology for this article is a culmination of a narrative literature review and the authors’ collective clinical social work practice and pedagogical experience, and this article brings what already occurs in that space into the scholarly literature.