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Faculty Notes Recent news and accomplishments
Being in the mess and being in there thoughtfully and intentionally offers a path and shows it is possible. Critical conversation is a way forward. It’s very liberating to find pathways to build the capacity for change. — PEG GY O ’ N EI L L
Critical Conversations Model Gains National Recognition
Critical Conversations, a model developed by SSW professors that prompts in-depth conversations around power, race, gender and other potentially fraught topics, is drawing national attention after an article about the technique earned an award at the 65th annual meeting of the Council for Social Work Education in Denver, CO. Developed in 2015 by Assistant Professor Peggy O’Neill, M.S.W., Ph.D., LCSW, and then-SSW colleague Hye-Kyung Kang, M.S.W., Ph.D., Critical Conversations aims to illuminate power dynamics within a social context to allow for deeper examination and reflection with a goal of instigating social change at personal, systemic and institutional levels. The model was introduced to the SSW campus through faculty training and engagement starting in 2016, and by now is well integrated as faculty rely on it to guide conversations on these difficult topics within their classrooms and other group settings. Two years ago, O’Neill, Associate Professor Annemarie Gockel, M.S.W., Ph.D., and Professor Nnamdi Pole, Ph.D., from the Smith College
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department of psychology, launched an undergraduate research study bringing the critical conversations model to Smith undergraduates. At the CSWE annual meeting in October, O’Neill and Kang picked up honors for their article “Teaching Note—Constructing Critical Conversations: A model for Facilitating Classroom Dialogue for Critical Learning,” published in a 2018 issue of the Journal of Social Work Education. Meanwhile, the multi-year research project around Critical Conversations has expanded to the University of Massachusetts and Mount Holyoke campuses. While the research team is gearing up for intensive data analysis, initial reports from the field suggest the model is promising. “It seems to be having transformational impacts, shifting how people are thinking about power dynamics, shaping how they show up in conversations about critical social issues,” said O’Neill. The research study has facilitators trained in the Critical Conversations model running ten different groups for undergraduates to grapple with social justice issues.
S M I T H COL L E G E SCHO O L FO R SO CIAL WO RK
“The real substance of the model has to do with decisively and intentionally paying attention to what the power dynamics of the moment are,” said O’Neill. The conversations within the undergraduate groups are taped and transcribed for qualitative analysis. The team expects to have results of the study within about six months, but in the meantime, O’Neill has found listening to the tapes highly illuminating. What she’s heard are deep crossracial and cross-difference conversations. The goal of the model is to unearth hidden assumptions tied up in power dynamics around race, class and gender—just the kind of conversations people tend to avoid. The model seems to push through that avoidance. “I’m very encouraged,” she said. “We’re seeing that it activates a very meaningful process of critical selfreflection and thought about how to move towards change.” The article in the Journal of Social Work Education makes the case for how the model can help students and their teachers engage around issues that seem to be intractable, such as race, gender and class and the underlying power dynamics.
