The Journal of Multimodal Rhetorics

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Kenisha M. Thomas, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

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Abstract

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) were born out of oppression and documented as the earliest institutions of higher education for African Americans. Initially formed to educate students on agriculture, math, and science, HBCUs guaranteed a voice for equality while consequentially preserving the legacy of notable scholars, political activists, and advocates for social justice, especially in the field of social work. At these bastions of post-secondary educational experiences for African Americans and predominantly white institutions (PWIs), Social work classrooms are now particularly generative spaces where instructors can integrate knowledge and concepts of theories through research, writing, and the practice of rhetoric. Many outside the field have a conflated perspective on social workers' roles, responsibilities, and skills, often understanding social workers as helping professionals. However, social workers are trained to facilitate research and produce scholarly findings. Writing is recognized as critical to effective professional practice and as an essential social work skill (Faulk & Ross, 2001). The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) encourages students to become formidable researchers and writers with a developed sense of political awareness through research, writing, and understanding of social theories. By using the four pillars of Transdisciplinarity in education, this curriculum incorporates research and writing with social work core competencies to address current social issues impacting students attending one of the 100+ HBCU campuses in America. 

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Introduction

In designing and facilitating the Social Policy and Welfare course, I created a space for students to examine current social issues, including politics, gender equity, racial equality, criminal justice, health disparities, and more. Creating opportunities for students to converse openly and honestly about sensitive (and often taboo) issues plaguing oppressed populations worldwide allowed for the possibility of long-lasting change via policy reform. Social work students need to understand that advocacy is promoted through policy change, and policy change is not achieved by protest alone. In fact, policy change is often the result of continuing patience, endurance, and a commitment to effectively enacting longstanding change. Students must understand the necessity of engaging with multiple disciplines while developing diverse skill sets for this policy work. Equally, students must understand that in order to create and reform policies successfully, they must build upon and connect content from previously completed core classes in the humanities and social sciences (i.e., American Government, Public Speaking, etc.) with the knowledge and skills obtained in social work courses such as History of Social Welfare Policy, Theories of Human Behavior, and more.

Comprehensive social work education must include a deeper overview of the historical components of social work rather than glossing over some main points (Resich, 2019). Essentially, students must become lifelong learners. For social work instructors, this merging of the curriculum allows students a learning opportunity to build on concepts of reading for understanding, researching to discover answers to social issues, writing, and the use of rhetoric as a form of expression for advocacy and policy activities to expand the student's understanding of policy, programs, and change.

This approach of blending past courses with current social justice issues using research and writing is a pedagogical shift that allowed innovative instructors to introduce transdisciplinarity models to the social work curriculum. Transdisciplinarity is an effort focused on behavior and practices that target issues that cross the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines. In Social Policy and Welfare, transdisciplinarity may be considered the intersection of human behaviors in response to injustices and social work theories. By examining social justice actions present in poem stanzas, rap lyrics, protest chants, controversial stances (kneeling or raised fist), and other acts (especially those that promote policy reform), students can become engaged with policy topics, using these stanzas, lyrics, chants, and stances to unpack what they read about and what they see in popular culture. Simultaneously, effective social work instructors can utilize the students' common vernacular, or language, to excavate a reform awareness that the student may not have known exists.

J.R. Martin's genre-based approach emphasizes how things get done when language is used to accomplish them (the genres ranging from poems and narratives through lectures, seminars, recipes to service encounters, news broadcasts, etc.) (A. Padurean & C.T. Cheveresan, 2010). Language also allows social workers to understand their clients' thoughts and feelings and themselves (Bloom et al., 1991). Shifting pedagogy, students can 1) incorporate lyrics from rapper Lotto on abortion, 2) critique social injustice from Marvin Gaye's "What's Going On," and 3) incorporate chants from the Civil Rights Movement within assignments and oral presentations. Each example above magnified political issues relevant to the 2022 midterm election that impacted marginalized populations. This openness of teaching using music and social media rhetoric makes it easier for students to engage in experiential learning activities such as speaker forums, voter engagement initiatives, chapter presentations, and research.  

By implementing a transdisciplinarity model, students can move beyond traditional academic pedagogy and engage in social justice initiatives that bridge core class, rhetoric, and activism on the college campus. These students often become oral storytellers of social change among college-age students locally and nationally. In this paper, I highlight how the course design promotes social justice reform and advocacy structured on the four pillars of transdisciplinarity in education: teaching and learning to know, teaching and learning to do, teaching and learning to live together, and teaching and learning to be.

 

Course Development

Social Welfare Policies and Programs (SOW 4232) at Florida Agricultural & Mechanical University (FAMU) is taught in the Department of Social Work for students enrolled at the bachelor's level. Students enrolled in the course are encouraged to: 1) analyze critically the impact of social welfare policies on populations at risk; 2) become aware of values and ethics and the roles systems play in the development of attitudes toward social welfare programs; 3) adopt a politically oriented approach to social work practice that seeks to promote social and economic justice; and 4) develop an understanding of policies and an appreciation for human diversity. In addition to these objectives, students are encouraged to use their rhetorical registers to bring attention to underserved populations. Empowering students to use their voices further increases their ability to connect with and effectively serve marginalized communities authentically.  I would add something here that discusses how students are encouraged to use their rhetoric and voices to bring attention to particular populations. 

This course incorporates research and writing while highlighting three professional competencies under the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE): 1) advancement of human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice; 2) practice-informed research and use of findings to inform and improve social work practice(s), and 3) development of policy practice, and program development.

In teaching students who identified as the "Global Generation," the traditional textbook lecture limits the professor's ability to challenge the students' ability to capture the history of policies and advocacy. By promoting an understanding of policy context, increasing student engagement in current political events, and allowing creativity as a learning capstone, technology becomes a supplemental fixture required to complete the coursework. Students conduct research using digital databases, draft presentations with the graphic design platform and Canva, collaborate on group writing using shared Google Docs, and reflect on their shared experiences in peer-to-peer feedback assignments via the university course management system, Canvas. Class is facilitated in a writing lab, which includes round tables with computers to accommodate four students at one station and two smart boards. This nontraditional classroom allows students to sit among group members and build a peer-to-peer learning network to complete course objectives with chapter and entitlement presentations, group program policy analysis papers, and other activities and assignments.

Students often approach writing assignments with fear and anxiety while reviewing the assignment guide, the assignment rubric, and the daunting task of literature review. Although writing is important to effective social work practice, students entering a social work education program may not be prepared to write effectively (E. G. Horton and N. Diaz). More so, this approach to writing allows students to explore techniques that may identify writing anxiety, organize writing spaces, compartmentalize thoughts, and develop a writing schedule. Thus, a writing tutor from the Writing Center is assigned to the classroom to offer additional writing support. The tutor attends class sessions to learn about the framework of social policies and the assignment guides discussed during class. With the added support of a writing tutor and the implementation of student working groups, students are more likely to start assignments timely, effectively implement the study guide, and become engaged with policy activities. Because of the presence of a writing expert and the support of their peers, students often acquired the necessary skills for advocacy, including researching social policies via computer technology and library resources, analyzing social policy and social services in terms of their impact on disenfranchised populations at risk; examine the legislative process to monitor its impact on selected social policies; and write policies to address social issues and federal entitlement programs. Through policy debates, students sharpen their skills as conversations on selected topics allow them to further synthesize information garnered through reading and writing, create new connections, and inhabit various perspectives amongst and alongside their peers in real time.  Furthermore, it allows them to practice public speaking that highlights policy change and social justice campaigns essential to social work, which requires them, at times, to advocate for impacted communities verbally. In other words, students can solidify their understanding of historical contexts with contemporary social injustices that are current political issues. (How might speech and their use of rhetoric also inform their learning?)

 

Implementation of the Course

Pillar 1: Teaching and Learning to Know

By building on the four pillars of transdisciplinarity in education, the curricula outline starts with the foundation of the course, teaching, and learning to know. Teaching and learning to know concerns interpreting knowledge that involves theory and practice through reflection, thought, and action (A. Padurean & C.T. Cheveresan, 2010).   In order to achieve the concept of teaching and learning to know, classroom learning activities focus less on textbook language and reflect on the history of social work advocacy and the understanding of policy practice using documentaries and digital storytelling. Multimedia can enhance students' motivation to improve their learning and performance (Alismail, H.A. 2015). Documentaries can be used to create an awareness of political issues and task students with creating their own digital stories (using YouTube videos and other media). The visual connection of subject content with textbook content allows students to retain information that a traditional lecture could not support (Vaughan-Lee, C. 2015).

 

Documentaries

Documentaries can help break stereotypes and communicate educational and positive messages to international audiences (Bechar, 2008). With this broader acceptance of documentaries as both entertainment and a source of information, educators have available to them a relevant source for teaching (Moyano, 2011). Documentaries are used as visual guides to introduce bills and amendments with complex terminology that students may find intimidating or boring. The documentary 100 Years of Social Work can bring forth the work of Jane Adams, Settlement Houses, the Social Work educational programming at Howard University, and the works of Edward Franklin Frazier and Whitney M. Young.  Documentaries have been coined as the “artistic representation of actuality” (Aufderheide, 2008).  Documentaries aid in the presentation of historical events that can help students relate to current events, which gives these students a perspective from a time of "whence" to a place of "now." 

In the aforementioned course, for each chapter presentation, students are assigned documentaries such as Poverty in the USA and The Truth About Social Security. These films inspire classroom discussions on the relationships between ethnicity, quality education, socioeconomic status, the limitations of national infrastructures, and more. Documentaries, as learning tools, allow students to become more engaged with complex topics during class discussions as they compare the content, and students use the films to supplement what they read in their textbooks. Thus, even more robust discussions on topics like policy frameworks, federal funding, and legislative action on local, state, and federal levels can ensue.

 

Digital Storytelling

Digital storytelling has a variety of applications in the classroom, including telling personal stories, narrating past events, or being used to teach on a particular topic (Jakes, 2006) with a variety of digital multimedia, such as images, audio, and video. The textbook for the course is divided into chapters based on the following themes – poverty, healthcare, criminal justice reform, and abortion. Students are tasked with completing a chapter summary, during which they must conduct research and discuss the historical perspective of the issue, describe the populations impacted, and develop content to educate and inform classmates on policy reform. The presentations provide context for learning, and students expand their presentation skills and even share their lived experiences. Digital storytelling allows students to organize and express their thoughts and knowledge, improve their communication skills, and enhance their public speaking skills. By understanding the stories connected to policy reform and social work more broadly, students revisit events from the past with a sense of connection. Through their engagement and appreciation of stories, students learn that Social Security Survivor's Insurance started after a doctor observed two elderly women scavenging through a dumpster and, afterward, wrote her congressman. They also learned about the development of their educational institutions. The second Morrill Act of 1890, which the United States Department of Agriculture enacted, broadened land grant programs to include funding for black-land grant institutions, known today as Historical Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). More importantly, digital storytelling allows students the freedom to pair their creativity with technology to transform social issues into conversations promoting policy reform.

 

Pillar 2: Teaching and Learning to Do

Pillar two, Teaching and Learning to Do, "concerns dialogue on equal terms-excluding ideas of position, personality and power-collective participation, cooperation and coordination between the institutions of some given society, empowerment of others, moving from a personal onto a collective one" (A. Padurean & C.T. Cheveresan, 2010). In other words, pillar two emphasizes the importance of decentering the teacher as the classroom authority. This is an example of student-centered learning, which empowers students to create knowledge using the written word. Olson and Nelson state, "writing as a Learning Tool is referred to the role of the disciplines and professions in shaping personal literacy and learning, which suggests a domain-specific aspect” (2001). Writing was used to connect students with learning expectations under the CSWE, encouraging students to develop political awareness through research and writing. Students are tasked to see beyond protest and social movements and to evaluate how policies influence change using historical facts, current data, and reviews of evidence-based theories to address social issues. The learning objective of "doing" centers on teaching students how social workers influence policy decision-making, which uses a Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) approach.

 

Reading, Writing, and Rhetorical Activities (And Rhetoric/Speaking?)

The Council on Social Work Education's Curriculum policy statement for baccalaureate degree programs in social work (1994) states simply that "oral and written professional communications" should be "consistent with the language of the practicum setting and of the profession" (Standard B6.16c). One implemented writing assignment allows students to use critical thinking and problem-solving skills to see how past social issues were resolved through policy reforms. In order to effectively support students in developing the skills needed to succeed as a social worker, where writing is used to "impart the knowledge, values, and skills of the profession" (Faulk 2001), we focus on two writing approaches. Students are tasked with (1) understanding the perspective of others and (2) reaching and persuading diverse audiences. Writing to understand the perspective of others encourages students to see the world from different viewpoints (Falk, D. & Ross. P. 2001). Reaching and persuading diverse audiences challenges students to apply problem-solving skills to address diverse audiences in decision-making roles (policy advocates, members of funding organizations, or elected government officials) on persuasive topics connected with social issues (health disparity, abortion rights, systemic racism, educational inequality, etc.). Students practice the aforementioned writing approaches in their semester assignments – an entitlement program review. As a required task, the students examine programs such as Food Stamps, Pell Grant, Medicaid, etc., and write a policy analysis paper, where they trace the trajectory of a bill into policy to develop a plan for its adoption into law. Students must read current policies in the United States Congress, policy briefs, journal articles, and policy framework theories from more traditional textbooks to explore the historical context of select social issues and propose strategies for reform. 

Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) as a pedagogy incorporates techniques that encourage writing as a thinking tool, further developing students as critical thinkers, engaged readers, and lifelong learners. Using WAC as a foundation, "students learn the conventions of writing in their particular field of study" (McCleod, 2000). In addition to preparing students for future success in their professions, WAC reduces the anxiety around writing for a grade by implementing scaffolded activities to promote writing as thinking. Students are tasked with completing the following exercises:

Writing Activities: mind mapping, research, drafting, editing, and peer review.

• Mind mapping – taking information from several sources and then displaying information as keywords in a bright, colorful manner (Edwards & Cooper 2010).
• Research – exploring diverse sources using multidisciplinary approaches that demonstrate proficiency in engaging community leaders.
• Drafting – writing the first version of organized thoughts and ideas to create a product that reflects the assignment guide topics and learning objectives.
• Editing – reading to review the organization of thoughts and ideas, ensuring content has relevance and evidence to support arguments and style reflects the assigned writing approach.
• Peer Review – reviewing an example assignment that demonstrates elements of learning objectives and standards for grading. 

In summary, the second pillar – Teaching and Learning to Do – connects students with learning expectations under the CSWE, which encourages students to develop a sense of political awareness through research and writing. This student-centered learning methodology empowers students to create knowledge using the written word. Students are tasked with understanding the perspective of others, reaching diverse audiences, and persuading their audiences using the Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) pedagogy to reduce their anxiety around writing for a grade.

Teaching and Learning to Do directs students to be critical thinkers by using writing-to-learn versus dependent on the instructor as the oral delivery of textbook content. When using a WAC model in the curriculum, the rhetorical approach in writing highlights writing standards for social work policy reform using summative assessments with low-stake assessments that emphasize the process of writing. Using the low-stakes assessment activities of pre-writing and research, students gain confidence about social issues by thinking on paper, challenging their intellect to answer a social problem, and independently communicating with peers.  

 

Pillar 3: Teaching and Learning to Live Together

The third pillar, Teaching and Learning to Live Together, allows social work students to practice social work core values and ethics. "Teaching and learning to live together offers a sense of solidarity, collective values, and ethics leading to collective action and reflection and reinforcement of this ethic in individual practices is to be built with the aid of a critical consciousness" (A. Padurean & C.T. Cheveresan, 2010). Teaching students the process of policy creation to support a society of solidarity requires students to become advocates for social change. Specifically, classroom spaces at HBCUs are often considered safe places for lectures and dialogue on political consciousness. HBCUs are often regarded as the space for conversations that represent "social, political, economic, personal, and educational development of the black communities" (Gasman et al., 2015, p. 350). Given the political climate, especially the discussion of "woke" content being censored, classroom discussions are intentionally based on historical facts and are connected to policy practice. Particularly for social work students, "the goal of policy practice in social work is to ensure social and economic justice in the social environment so that all people, regardless of their socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, have opportunities to achieve success for themselves and their families" (Byers, V., Cummings, K., Pedrick, L. 201). Infusing political topics that highlight and value diversity and inclusion while reinforcing social work ethics with civic activities on campus transforms the classroom into a social justice café where students reflect on solutions to promote policy reform.

 

Civic Engagement

Civic engagement is “a process in which people take collective action to address issues of public concern” (Checkoway & Aldana, A. 2013). It was important for students to see social workers as political influencers versus traditional professional roles in child welfare or government social service agencies. Social work students are transformed by seeing themselves in places traditionally reserved for political sciences students, speaking on topics with journalism majors, or attending events led by the Student Government Association (SGA), using the college campus as the central focus for community engagement.  

The Teaching and Learning to Live Together modality challenges students to become engaged with policy reform using one of four student-led initiatives:

• Election Readiness Speaker Forum – guest speakers (a local representative of the NAACP, a FAMU History Professor, and a lobbyist) informed and educated students on voter rights, ballot issues, the historical contexts of voter suppression, and issues impacting communities of color.
• Voter Registration – Students complete voter registration training to register students on campus for the relevant elections via Dorm Dash and Athletic Voter Registration Drives.
• Campus Vote “Ready Campaign” – Students reserved the last day to vote early during the last semester, on Friday, November 4. Students used appropriate themes to promote midterm or general elections. During the previous semester, students organized "Pizza on the Plaza" to bring awareness to the #CampusVoteProject and to expand their social media presence;
• Social Work Department Homecoming Alumni Engagement showcased three alum students from the MSW and BSW 2020 graduating class who are currently employed as policy research social workers (Prosperity NOW, Community Liaison for Congresswoman Makina Williams, and Fall 2022 Congressional Intern for House Majority Whip James Clyburn).

 

Pillar 4: Teaching and Learning to Be

Teaching and learning "to be" concerns mastering knowledge and one's sense of self (Davies et al., 2003). This definition establishes a sense of completion and confidence in one's ability to execute a skillset. As students exit the classroom, they must enter the professional world with exceptional skills in advocacy work and policy reform. Social Welfare Policies and Programs (SOW 4232) introduces students to the foundations of advocacy work through policy reform to aid vulnerable populations guided by social work core ethical values and executing policy practice skills to advance human rights and using transdisciplinarity in the working definition of "between, across, and beyond disciplines" (Padurean & Cheveresan  2010).   Lectures from the classroom provide a visual professional framework to encourage students to use their knowledge of policy reform to advance their professional care in areas not traditionally reserved for social workers.  By highlighting policy practice skills, students become aware of generalist social work perspectives and skills to make changes in laws, rules, budgets, policies, and in governing bodies that create those policies, whether at the local, state, or federal agencies or other decision-making bodies in the pursuit of the social work mission of social and economic justice.  Specifically, students are taught how to advance in professional careers in government, the private or public sectors, and/or civil society.

 

Identifying Social Workers' Values and Professionals

Students complete the course with the understanding of four policy practice skills (engaging assessments, communication, problem-solving and negotiating, and network and collaboration skills) and how to apply such skills in professional settings. This foundation introduces students to professional careers and skillsets requiring social work policy advocacy skills during class lectures, chapter presentations, and civic engagement initiatives. Often, classroom lecturers challenge students to see social workers as political change agents using the HBCU legacies of Whitney M. Young and E. Franklin Frazier.   This course highlights: 1) the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) 2015 competencies; 2) advances human rights and social, racial, economic, and environmental justice; 3) engages in practice-informed research using research findings to inform and improve practice, policy, and programs; and 4) engages in policy practice reinforcing the connection for students that social work is a profession of unlimited opportunities in various professional settings. Social workers' political involvement is based on the profession's fundamental values such as commitment to social justice, equal rights, and fair division of resources and power (Rush & Keenan, 2014). To be a change agent, students must see themselves as change agents. For social workers, the political climate since the summer of 2020 has propelled social worker roles in politics and social change using social work values and ethics. 

 

Lessons Learned

In the development of the Writing to Advance Advocacy Course, key lessons learned are outlined below:

• Create a space for students to examine current social issues (politics, gender equity, racial equality, criminal justice, health disparities, etc.) using the four pillars of transdisciplinarity in education.
• Create opportunities for students to converse openly and honestly about sensitive (and often taboo) issues plaguing oppressed populations worldwide, assessing policy reform that contributes to long-lasting change.
• Reinforce to social work students that advocacy is promoted through policy change as the result of continuing patience, endurance, and a commitment to effectively enacting longstanding policy change, not achieved by protest alone.  
• Create opportunities for students to engage with multiple disciplines while developing diverse skill sets.
• Allow students to connect content and skills from previously completed core humanities and social sciences classes with the knowledge and skills obtained in social work courses.

To effectuate this learning, the innovative course must be student-centered, empowering students to create knowledge using the written word. Likewise, the course must allow students to see social workers as political influencers versus traditional professional roles in child welfare or government social service agencies. To the student, the perception of the social worker professional must include policy creation so the student becomes an advocate for social change. Moreover, finally, any innovative course helps students establish a sense of confidence in their ability to execute their acquired skill sets. 

Given the spaces HBCUs have provided for social justice movements, this space is ever more valuable for social work students. The social movements of 2022 concentrated on social issues dealing with racial inclusion, gender equity, wealth gap, systemic injustices, educational inequality, healthcare disparities, as well as voting rights for communities of color and marginalized populations.  Students must be equipped as social change agents to address such complex problems.  For social work faculty, a shift in pedagogy that blends courses across departmental disciplines with a focus on behavior and practices to increase a student's abilities to be an effective policy maker. This pedagogical shift must consider social justice as a primary context for the "response to wider social and political needs” (Bernstein, 1995, p. 64). Conversations among colleagues can explore how classroom spaces for lectured discussion can transform into debates on current political issues. Other pedagogical changes must incorporate technology to facilitate presentations using documentaries or virtual community town hall meetings. Assessment modifications that focus less on traditional tests and quizzes but place more concentration on assessments that target cognitive and rhetorical concepts of WAC allow students to infuse language from multiple genres (music, poetry, art, etc.) familiar to, popularized by, and utilized by their peers to highlight solutions to social problems.  

Curriculum changes must incorporate writing assignments and peer-to-peer assignments that familiarize students with the process of writing while establishing the foundation for researching to write policy reform. WAC models to increase students' writing in the social work discipline prepare students for advocacy work in nontraditional careers that were once not reserved for social workers, such as government (elected officials), research think tanks, and the corporate sector.

Teaching students the profession of social work requires a balance of empathy and advocacy. Kam (2014) describes social workers as having a heart for people in need and a heart for showing genuine concern for the larger society. While developing this curriculum, I found myself developing course content to remind students of the importance of the "social" in the social work profession. Transdisciplinarity in Social Policy and Welfare creates a space for students to intersect human behaviors in response to injustices and social work practice. Students use concepts from past core classes in the humanities and social sciences (i.e., American Government, Public Speaking, etc.) to examine social issues impacting marginalized populations in underrepresented communities, using experiential learning as key learning opportunities. Social work requires practitioners to be socially aware to “work on the community environments, social structures, social policies, and the political systems” (Kam, 2014).  Transdisciplinarity as a framework for social work education sets a foundation that emphasizes and relies upon the inextricable and nonhierarchical relationship between reading, writing, and speaking to enacting long-term change. Students complete the course and enter into field practicum with a transformed understanding of social work that extends beyond the parameters of protest and the unrealistic expectation for instant change. By understanding and mobilizing the significance of their vocality about social issues and policies, students turned social workers commit to the long haul needed to enact substantial and sustainable change. Whether it is as a political intern for a local congressman, a community advocate for a homeless shelter, or a care coordinator for Veterans, the development and mobilization of students' voices serve to empower them as change agents and policy practitioners, confidently equipped to help end poverty, oppression, discrimination, and social injustices. (Also, to incorporate students using their voices through rhetoric as a form of informed empowerment.)

 

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