Evolving on purpose: Results of a qualitative study to explore how public youth system reform advocates apply anti-oppressive practice frameworks in a collaborative training and action process

Abstract

The anti-oppressive practice (AOP) framework focuses on structural inequity and power relations, employing liberatory methods toward social justice goals. This article reports on a national training initiative in AOP and an associated participatory action research project to determine the transformative impact of the training on staff, services and the system itself. The setting of this study is among service providers in youth justice and treatment services, where racial disparities are pronounced. The project involved both skills development and application of AOP in ways that would promote systems reform. Participants found the experience to be valuable, relevant and energizing, and skill sets in AOP were developed. The course requirement to develop site-based projects in participants’ local settings created changes in the ways services were delivered. Participants valued the creation of ‘safe spaces’ to discuss their experiences of racism and oppression in the various youth service systems. Transformative learning theory is utilized as a backdrop to the experience of interpreting participant reactions and learning experiences. Results suggest that AOP is a useful framework for organizing renewed efforts to reduce disparities in justice and other service delivery systems. Participant projects, an overview of implications for the field, and suggested future research are discussed.

Keywords

Anti-oppressive practice disparities reduction participatory action research in youth services transformative learning

Introduction and background

Reclaiming Futures (RF) is a National Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which developed a new framework for the provision of alcohol and drug intervention services for young people in the juvenile justice system and their families, while advocating for its dissemination at the local, state, tribal and federal policy levels. Reclaiming Futures promotes a standard of care that is more redemptive than punitive through deployment of evidence-based substance abuse treatment and community-anchored positive youth development options. Initially a 21-million-dollar, five-year demonstration project with 10 sites around the US, the project has now grown to include 29 communities in 17 states and two tribes nationally. New funding partners include the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, and the Center for Substance Abuse Treatment at SAMHSA, as well as the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust. A national evaluation demonstrated that the systemic reforms introduced by Reclaiming Futures were significant (Butts & Roman, 2007). An essential focus of the Reclaiming Futures effort is the redesign and reconfiguration of institutional infrastructure to better accommodate best practices. It is a ‘systems change’-type reform effort, which is defined as ‘implementation of new policies, programs and a different infrastructure to support desired outcomes’ (Emshoff et al., 2007, p. 7). Most simply, Reclaiming Futures has advocated for more treatment (to address the shortage of treatment available to young people), better treatment (to improve the quality of treatment available to youth including efforts to make it more culturally relevant) and beyond treatment (to address the need for increases in positive youth development leadership and civic engagement opportunities (Nissen, Butts, Merrigan, & Kraft, 2006).

The topics of cultural competence to improve substance abuse and mental health services to diverse populations (Chisolm, Malatu, & Brown, 2009; Wells, Klap, Koike, & Sherbourne, 2001) and reduction of overrepresentation of youth of color in the juvenile justice system (Bell, Ridolfi, Finley, & Lacey, 2009; Wilson, Lipsey, & Soydan, 2003) have long been capacity building priorities. And yet, despite many years of articulated emphasis, racial and ethnic disparities for all child and youth-serving systems remain unacceptably high. These issues require ongoing attention (Giroux, 2003; Primm, Osher, & Gomez, 2005; Talley, Rajack-Talley, & Tewksbury, 2005), dedication, capacity building and innovation (Cabaniss, Frabutt, Kendrick, & Arbuckle, 2007; Chapin Hall Center for Children, 2008; Dunbar & Barth, 2007). As RF comprises coalitions of youth-serving systems at the national, state, tribal and local levels, this issue continues to be a source of attention and concern. At a recent national gathering of all the participating communities in RF, and based on an ongoing process of assessing membership needs and interests, a series of workshops was conducted to explore new ways of thinking about and acting to reduce disparities and increase social justice (Curry-Stevens & Nissen, 2009). This practice framework is known as anti-oppressive practice (AOP), and is defined as recognizing power imbalances and directing practices to redress the balance of power, focusing on both processes and outcomes, and working at multiple layers of behaviors, systems, ideology and institutions (Burke, Geronimo, Martin, Thomas, & Wall, 2002; Dalrymple & Burke, 1995; Dominelli, 2002). Through application of specific practice strategies, AOP seeks to resist, reconfigure, challenge, and reorient services and relationships between helpers and those seeking assistance to a liberatory framework in which equity, freedom, and justice become primary goals of such relationships (Baines, 2007; Dominelli, 2002). It has a growing literature base influencing and challenging a variety of human service related disciplines (Baines, 2000; Larson, 2008; Moore, 2001) and has been particularly influential in the ongoing evolution of social justice content in schools of social work both nationally and internationally (Campbell & Ungar, 2003; Van Wormer & Snyder, 2007).

The national program office of Reclaiming Futures, which is charged with responding to emergent training needs in the sites responded to the requests of a core group of site-based leaders (who are involved in various aspects of systems change work in a variety of agency locations) and developed a more in-depth, multisession online pilot course offering anti-oppressive practice strategies as applicable across the initiative. It was intended to be simultaneously exploratory, skills-based and empowering for those involved, primarily due to the fact that the AOP theories, language, and practice frameworks themselves are new and little evidence could be located about their explicit application to juvenile justice and/or adolescent substance abuse treatment programming. The training was designed to be a dialogue between facilitators who could transmit ideas and potential applications of ideas about the subject matter, but centrally include the reactions, adjustments, ideas and practice behaviors that comprise the lived experiences and earned expertise of all involved.

Research participants

The focus and primary target of this action research exploratory effort were the agents of the systems change itself – administrators and community volunteer leaders from the sites themselves. We do acknowledge the tensions that could be envisioned in terms of promoting training content that highlights the importance of service user involvement (which is covered extensively in the AOP curriculum) without directly involving the service users (youth themselves) in our training group, however, we designed this first training with the ideas that our key ‘service user’ of this material was initially those who were the architects of the systems we were focusing on, and their ability to see new administrative and policy levers for change that they had not previously considered. Indeed one of teams did develop and pilot an anti-oppressive practice training/advocacy effort with youth themselves successfully demonstrating how to take the material ‘to the next level’. We did not explicitly promote youth involvement as teams were forming – in fact, we were more focused on forming teams that were ethnically diverse as well as reflecting other diversity (GLBTQ, disabilities, etc.). We will discuss this issue at greater length in the limitations of the study section.

It was further designed to have a strong experiential dynamic to take the knowledge gained in the early sessions and apply them to challenges experienced by participants in real time, then sharing the results of these ‘change projects’ with their colleagues at the latter sessions for review, critique and analysis. Groups of trainees comprised volunteers from each site, and included several community members who represent a key conduit to the unique and essential perspectives of people outside of the formal service delivery system and serve as official members of local Reclaiming Futures leadership teams. This article reports on the process of conducting the training itself as well as the results of the training evaluation. These were synthesized in a collaborative manner between the participants and the researcher/trainers. We conclude with recommendations for strengthening the initiative, including building structural supports into the organization in order to improve both individual worker and system-level capacity to build equity while succeeding at other community change targets.

Purpose of study and research question

The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to deploy a newly developed pilot training curriculum to determine the relevance and usefulness of anti-oppressive practice framework and methods in a national youth service reform effort as a possible tool in increasing capacity to better (and more equitably) serve populations of focus; and 2) to explore the application of individual practitioner competencies, as well as system change targets, based on this training effort. The research questions themselves were:

What is the experience and impact on individual participants of being involved in a multi-session AOP training experience?

Are suggested competencies relevant and helpful in moving from the idea and philosophy of anti-oppressive practice to individuals feeling a stronger sense of agency, efficacy, and action-orientation? What are related shifts necessary in host agencies to accelerate progress in equity work?

Research methodology

A participatory action research (PAR) method was selected to help evaluate and understand this experience for a number of reasons. Since the tradition of the host organization, Reclaiming Futures, was one of collaborative practice, a method was needed that emphasized this aspect. Second, the researchers believed that PAR was the method most in concert with the themes and foci of the training itself. Excellence in PAR includes: ‘1) proceeds from a praxis of participation, 2) is guided by practitioners’ concerns for practicality, 3) is inclusive of stakeholders’ ways of knowing, and 4) helps to build capacity for ongoing change efforts’ (Huang, 2010, p. 99). Trustworthiness, a cornerstone of integrity in qualitative research (Leitz, Langer, & Furman, 2006), was established by commitments to reflexivity through use of research memos and accumulation of extensive notes throughout the process; audit trail (including a written analysis plan), member checks (multiple times throughout our process); and prolonged engagement (while the training occurred over a five-month period, we have met with participants numerous times over a 16-month period). Human subjects protection standards were adhered to, permissions granted by the host institution (Portland State University, Portland, Oregon), permission obtained from participants as well as commitments of confidentiality with respect to the evaluation process granted by the researchers/trainers.

Subject positions and power in the research project

We would like to say that we shared power with participants throughout this process, but a retrospective of this effort shows the ways that we fell short. There are, however, important lessons within this experience that may be of help to other researchers.

Our positionality as academic researchers is one of considerable power and influence. Our status as ‘experts’ in this field could be seen as holding both opportunities and risks. The positive feature is that it allowed us profile to launch such an initiative (and the importance of bringing anti-oppressive practice into a field of practice that has conventionally wrapped itself into non-critical streams of social work). Simultaneously, Laura’s position as Executive Director of the initiative created some leverage and supported commitments by Reclaiming Futures to help institutionalize some gains, as will be profiled later in this article; but so too our stature as experts created distance that was both epistemological and pragmatic. The epistemological dimension is one that suggests our ability to ‘know’ another is narrowed with greater social distance (Beresford, 2000; Fook, 2003; Gaventa & Cornwall, 2004). Here, while we both previously held positions as service providers, our time in the academic world has narrowed our understanding of the demands of these positions and the ability of practitioners to implement anti-oppressive practice.

To address this shortcoming, we solicited the input of what could be called ‘proxy’ participants, those who had engaged in similar learning the previous year and obtaining their input for the most useful learning about anti-oppressive practice. These ‘proxy’ participants were MSW students who spent a year learning about AOP and implementing this practice into their practicum settings. We held a focus group with 13 such students, gathering their insights on the elements of AOP that were most useful to their practice and this input helped inform the content of the training. They also amplified the importance of tending to emotional dimensions of the transformation process, as new AOP practitioners learn new ways of understanding social hierarchies at the same time as they experience the impacts of such a lens on their relationships with others.

Second, we reviewed the proposed content with our actual participants, and used their feedback to strengthen the content. We noticed, however, that this input was minimal and it may have been our positionality that kept them from voicing their needs more fully. At the time, we interpreted this as a signal of approval for the content, and placed emphasis on the very enthusiastic response that participants in earlier shorter workshops had given us about the relevance and possibilities that are reflected in AOP. In hindsight, however, we are uncertain if this is a correct interpretation. We now see that this may be the result of inadequate power sharing, and now wonder about how to include the perspectives of our participants more fully through the project.

As signaled by Arnstein (1967), the act of consultation is one of tokenism as it remained our prerogative to invite participants into the dialogue, and into a role of constructing the program. This dynamic of ‘invitation’ was not significant enough to ensure that power was truly shared in the project. In hindsight, invitations can be rescinded, and input can be ignored. For this work to truly unfold with greater power equalization, a steering committee of participants would have been desirable, with the steering committee holding authority over the initiative from start to close, with their involvement in reviewing the curriculum, providing advice to the instructors, evaluating performance, and participating in designing the research, conducting it, and building the action outcomes of the work. This would have introduced new areas of complexity and new demands (for example, sustaining meaningful youth involvement throughout the process), and meeting these challenges might have substantially changed what we learned from the project as a whole.

The second dimension of our identities and positionalities important in this project is the fact that both Laura and Ann are White. While anti-oppressive practice integrates numerous dimensions of oppression and privilege that stretch beyond race, racial identity remains the most pressing of issues within the training content covered in the course, and racial disparities within Reclaiming Futures systems (juvenile justice, mental health, and drug treatment) are at the forefront of reform efforts across the USA. So what are two White women doing leading such a training and research project? Quite honestly, the selection was based on convenience, friendship, and a record of research and action in this field. These are, however, dynamics of privilege with the existence of friendships flowing from the composition of the faculty at our university, our own internalized biases, and the access that we have historically had to both support to develop this work, this expertise and to be funded and published in doing so. It has been much more difficult for faculty of color to develop such work, as typically there are significant disincentives in attaining such profile in education (Kumashiro, 2002; Moyenda, 2008; Okun, 2010; Vargas, 2002) and in employment (Lopes & Thomas, 2006; Sue, 2010). We share this inadequacy with the field, with the academy and with other White people who resist the leadership of people of color. An outcome of this process is that we aspire to build the capacity of practitioners of color to join the training team, and this project began that process for three participants, each of whom has since built leadership capacity in this area.

Critical reflexivity and a lived commitment to equalizing power relationships was what we, in the end, depended on most fully. There was a deep and prevailing commitment on behalf of the instructors and researchers to ensure maximum usefulness of the project, and to have this usefulness measured by the participants and placing epistemic wisdom in the hands of service users. To this end, we sought and listened deeply to input sessions with the participants at the start, middle and end of the project, and also ensured that the action outcomes of the project were ‘institutionalized’, meaning that the researchers have successfully advocated for their inclusion into the fabric of how the organization (Reclaiming Futures) works with anti-oppressive practice and those practitioners who seek to advance such efforts.

When we synthesize the practices that we used to share power, we deem that we took more conventional steps that bordered on tokenism but simultaneously recognize that our process of critical reflexivity served us well in this process. While difficult to share with readers, our stance of humility, of suspicion about our contribution and our expert voice in the process, and our rigorous mutual appraisal of the training and our relationships with participants served to increase our accessibility, our responsiveness, and our willingness to support the emergence of leadership from within the participant group – the details of which will be shared later in this article. Our learning for future endeavors is that these are steps of goodwill gestures of power sharing, and remain insufficient to ensure that participant and service user voice substantively informs the process, activities and outcomes.

Development and delivery of AOP training curriculum: Part 1 – creating the curriculum

It is important to highlight that this curriculum was designed primarily for youth service professionals in the Reclaiming Futures initiative. It was intended to provide both a rigorous but protected learning environment to introduce challenging and contested concepts such as ‘white privilege’, ‘power differentials’, and ‘structural racism’. The intention was to use this space to invite professional youth service workers and their partner community members to examine how these concepts have intersected with their own experiences as workers and volunteers in youth justice and/or treatment settings, how they have impacted and/or shaped the kinds of services that have been delivered and offered, how they may have impacted disparities and/or equity work that is ongoing, and finally, how, if appropriate, they would like to construct efforts to renew, redirect, and re-energize equity work at the local level.

The process of creating the curriculum was informed by several specific activities to assure the best fit possible. These included: a) discussions with key stakeholders across the Reclaiming Futures coalition to determine areas of need and focus; b) results of earlier AOP orientation sessions in the initiative; c) extensive reviews of the literature, specific to applications clearly associated with practice change needed in the specific arenas of juvenile justice and adolescent substance abuse treatment; and d) teaching experience in this field.

Key stakeholders participated at several different junctures prior to the delivery of the multi-session training sessions themselves. Presentations were made at an all-initiative conference in 2008, and then, due to requests from participants who believed more was needed, in a series of two-hour workshops at five separate leadership meetings for judicial, juvenile justice, alcohol and drug treatment, community and project director ‘fellowship’ meetings in 2009. From those gatherings, much informal feedback was received regarding the AOP framework. Responses ranged from those who found the material challenging and engaging to those who were, while positive about the content, not clear on exactly how to bring it to life in their communities, as well as some who were not clear of the fit at all. However, enough people were sufficiently interested and enthusiastic about the approach that the trainers were moved to suggest a multi-session ‘course’ that would be open to coalition members. A strategic decision was made to allow as many sites as possible to participate but each site had to enter into the class with at least one additional partner from their own site. In other words, we believe due to the complexity of the content and the challenges of bringing it to life at the home site, it was important to encourage ally-development as part of the process of learning about and applying the information. Finally, the authors engaged in extensive reviews of the literature (see Curry Stevens & Nissen, 2011, for a complete review of findings and theoretical underpinnings of the eventual curriculum). The final curriculum integrated all four of these elements.

It is worth noting that the concept of ‘competencies’ themselves have flourished in professional education in the last decade as calls for greater accountability, proficiency, quality assurance, and adherence to evidence-based practice have dominated professional discourse (Carraccio et al., 2002; Holloway et al., 2008; Rubin et al., 2007; Wright et al., 2000). While we were attracted to the idea of facilitating progression from ideas into action of this important content, we did so in a guarded fashion due to a growing number of critics of competency-based approaches (Betts & Smith, 1998; Jones & Moore, 1993; Talbot, 2004). These researchers and scholars suggest that all too often, a focus on ‘competencies’ comes at the expense of the concepts, theories, ethics and other conceptual building blocks of reflective practice. One author distinguishes this as a dichotomy between ‘competence’ and ‘understanding’ and states ‘competence a monolayer, understanding is many layered. Competence negates dialogue, understanding embraces it’ (Talbot, 2004, p. 38). That said, as researchers, curriculum builders and trainers for this pilot, we decided to proceed hesitantly, and to include a strong balance of concepts and competencies in keeping with: a) the spirit of the content which requires significant dialogue; and b) a nod to the real world demands of practice which suggest that while reflectively ‘knowing’ the content is essential, the ability to take action with humility, develop a sense of agency, purpose and ability through the competency frame is equally important.

The curriculum itself was divided into seven modules over a period of five months. Each module met approximately once every two weeks, with the exception of the final module which took two sessions as it included team presentations. This made a total of eight gatherings over the five-month period. Our goal was to create a multi-faceted curriculum that included delivery of new knowledge, opportunity for reflection and application, and a keen focus on the identification of core skills and/or competencies.

The modules themselves ranged from orienting participants to the rationale, philosophy, issues, language, practice frameworks and practitioner readiness (Module A), to awareness of oppression/oppression and ally building skills (Module B), engaging client voice and power (Module C), utilizing AOP in clinical settings (Module D), organizational issues and AOP (Module E), action planning (which included focus on preparing, initiating and executing site projects) (Module F) and finally, project presentations (Module G). Table 1 provides an overview of these modules as well as the requisite competency development areas designed for each.

Table 1.

Reclaiming Futures anti-oppressive practice curriculum pilot – basic curriculum overview.

Curriculum module	From	To
A. Building capacity for AOP in RF – introduction	Need for language, practice community, practice frameworks, and resources to initiate concrete anti-oppressive practice activities. Need for focused action plan informed by AOP/equity literature. Need for safe supports.	Ability to assert foundation language for equity/anti-oppression work, formation of preliminary practice (learning) community on this issue, understanding of practice frameworks and availability of extensive resources on AOP, and established commitment to focused learning plan focused on action.
B. Awareness of oppression – privilege and building ally skills	Need for skills and techniques to identify, assess and interrupt oppression in a variety of RF-related settings.	Ability to describe and apply skills and techniques to identify, assess and interrupt oppression in a variety of RF-related settings.
C. Engaging client voice and power	Need for skills and techniques to engage client (and community) voice and increase client power in organizational and cross-organizational activities.	Ability to describe and apply skills and techniques to engage client (and community) voice and increase client power in organizational and cross-organizational activities.
D. AOP in clinical settings	Need for skills and techniques to identify oppression in clinical settings and to interrupt it in favor of more equity and empowerment-centered focus.	Ability to describe and apply skills and techniques to identify oppression in clinical settings and to interrupt in favor of more equity and empowerment-centered focus.
E. Organizational issues and AOP	Need for skills and techniques to engage in organizational assessment and action regarding racial/ethnic equity planning and impact work based on AOP principles.	Ability to locate, utilize and facilitate organizational assessment and action regarding racial/ethnic equity planning and impact work based on AOP principles.
F. Action planning	Need for action planning skills, ability to develop targeted plans specific to local issues, needs and challenges, ability to execute a plan and evaluate it.	Ability to develop a well-planned, targeted action agenda specific to local issues, needs and challenges and ability to both execute and evaluate it.
G. Project presentations	Need for examples of local specific programs.	Site specific examples with increased capability to plan and execute additional efforts.

Development and delivery of AOP training curriculum: Part 2 – delivering the curriculum

The process of conducting the training

After participating in an orientation session prior to committing to the training, potential participants were invited to sign an informed consent with a full understanding of both the course content as well as the requirements of the pilot effort. Pre-reading was required prior to each session. Most sessions required some pre-work, as well as homework. Sessions were organized as part-lecture and part-discussion. Technology and distance learning resources made it possible for the participants (distributed around the US) to engage with both the instructors and their fellow participants. While only the instructors were on web-cams, all were connected by telephone and could see a common, synchronous computer presentation allowing real-time viewing of materials together. They could also communicate with each other either verbally or by notes within the online learning environment. It is noteworthy that although participants were geographically dispersed, most knew each other personally due to the other RF program activities and meetings in previous years, and almost everyone had had some previous interaction with the instructor/researchers. This may have allowed the group to move more quickly into more challenging material. Sessions were conducted during the workday. A total of six community teams began the training pilot, with one community having to exit early due to competing demands at the workplace. A total of 15 participants across the resulting five communities completed the curriculum including executing a final ‘change’ project. Demographic information regarding the participants can be found in Table 2.

Table 2.

Demographic information regarding participants (total n = 15).

Age (mean)	41
Gender	Female – 12
	Male – 3
Race/ethnicity (as identified by participant)	Bi-racial – 2
	No designation – 1
	Black - 5
	White/Caucasian – 6
	Persian – 1
Level of education	Baccalaureate-level – 7
	Master’s level – 7
	No response – 1
Type of work engaged in with Reclaiming Futures	Community – 3
	Juvenile justice – 2
	Alcohol and drug treatment – 3
	RF project director – 5
	No response – 2
Years in youth-oriented work (mean)	19.7

Important philosophical orientation to teaching stance in this subject matter

The contributions of anti-oppressive practice to social work (and other human service professions) include practices that promote in-depth analysis of power and reflexivity in many pedagogical dimensions of education. These include asking us to challenge assumptions, deepen self-reflection and reflexivity, and ‘trouble’ (Ellsworth, 1997, as cited in Kumashiro, 2001) established ways of thinking and behaving (with regard to such concepts as injustice, cultural competence, privilege, and others). ‘Troubling’ refers specifically to disrupting oppressive discourse and practice and challenging a status quo that replicates inequity. Scholars in the area often suggest that the content is frequently ‘transformative’ in its impact. Transformative learning has been described as that which challenges:

… frames of reference which are structures of assumptions and expectations that frame an individual’s tacit point of view and influence their thinking, beliefs and actions. It is the revision of a frame of reference in concert with reflection and experience that is addressed by the theory of perspective transformation – a paradigmatic shift. (Taylor, 2008, p. 8)

A significant literature has developed in the last ten years focused on the unique challenges and opportunities inherent in teaching anti-oppressive theory and practice content (Adams, Bell, & Griffin, 2007; Campbell, 2002; Chand, Clare, & Dolton, 2002; Curry-Stevens, 2007; Generett & Hicks, 2004; Jefferey, 2005; Kumashiro, 2000; Mishna & Bogo, 2007; Nicotera, 2009; Ortiz & Jani, 2010; Pewewardy, 2007; Rich & Cargile, 2004; Van Gorder, 2007; Van Wormer & Snyder, 2007; Wagner, 2005). Within this literature are insights on pedagogical dimensions to transformative learning, particularly in the context when the topic is contested and challenging to the status quo, such as privilege, racism, institutional racism and oppression, and an array of inequities that connect to each learner in intimate and uneven ways, depending on one’s social location and identity.

The nature of transformative learning on issues of social justice is simultaneously complex, challenging, invaluable, full of energy and an entirely necessary evolution of what is known as ‘liberation’-oriented frameworks for community wellness and justice (Friere, 1970). Complexity exists in the multiple levels of personal, social, political, and historical realities that are included in the topic and that are rooted in the identities of the learners. Challenge is pervasive because dominant discourse (hegemony) has prevailed in conventional education and informal learning, leaving issues of social justice too frequently under-addressed or misappropriated to ‘blame-the-victim’ ideology. The result is that almost every remedy to racial inequities appears to be extending, retrenching, and reproducing disparities despite significant sectoral efforts (public health, social work, medicine, public law, etc.) (Centers for Disease Control, 2011; Hartney & Vuong, 2009). In short, the public service systems designed to provide opportunity, safety, and well-being resist intervention (Mulally, 2001) and all too often, corrupt well meaning change efforts as such institutions become complicit in the problem (Barry, 2005; Institute of Medicine, 2003). Education on the task of anti-oppressive practice and the potential it brings for eliminating racial disparities is thus counter-hegemonic, complex, challenging and replete with tensions – since participants are differently implicated in these issues (as white, or as a person of color) and participants are differently invested in traditions, conventions, and critique of the current fields of practice and reforms.

It is important to note that the teaching ‘stance’ most associated with this approach is neither that of an expert, problem solver, nor protector (with regard to creating comfort or understanding). Indeed, harkening back to the idea of the kind of transformative learning most required for this subject matter, a better image may be of a guide who can anticipate the progression of learners and assist in navigation, but be equally willing to allow learners to struggle, to challenge themselves and each other, to sit with their own ambivalence and/or complicity in situations or ideas that are uncomfortable to them as they cultivate both agency and a clearer understanding of oppression and its alternatives. At times, learners deal with their own personal development ‘crises’ as they grapple with how to ‘grow into’ being aware of deeper issues concerning inequities in the world around them, while also being actively engaged in addressing them (Curry-Stevens, 2007; Kumashiro, 2001). With regard to this process, Berger (2004) describes the role of the transformative educator as one who can do the three following things well with regard to the uncomfortable yet essential ‘learning edge’ required for transformative personal change: ‘1) helping students find and recognize their own edge, 2) being good company at the edge, and c) help to build firm ground in a new place’ (pp. 345–346).

Presentation and analysis of the projects, and the process of conducting the training

This section includes multiple dimensions given the fullness of the data and the complexity of the multiple and layered meanings revealed within them. First, we present and describe the projects that the training teams completed, along with some discussion of the strengths, challenges and key learnings that emerged from them. Next, we discuss the transformative learning impact on the participants through an analysis of their own reflections and observations about the process, its impact and what they believe is most important about moving forward with this work. Finally, critiques and challenges are shared from the perspective of the authors.

Anti-oppressive practice projects

Table 3 provides an overview of the projects that were developed by the various sites engaged in the pilot training. Communities A, B, and C focused their efforts on either adjusting or creating programming to directly benefit client groups in new, anti-oppressive ways, while Community D (along with some aspects of Community B’s efforts) focused on educating peers and colleagues about AOP principles, practices and impacts. Community E focused their efforts on upper level administrative activities – in this case, rewriting a call for proposals for contracted clinical services to include AOP-oriented skills and programs as core requirements. Foci included removing barriers to access of services, shifting dominant discourse, creating better linkages about naturally occurring resources in the community, adding AOP to existing services (in one case mentoring, in another counseling), and organizational reform. Multiple changes and impacts were sought but can be best summarized by increasing improved, more effective services for clients of color served by the host systems as a result of heightened skills and resources as well as decreases in barriers. In addition to discussion during the training sessions, extensive ongoing out-of-class time was spent by all participants conceptualizing, constructing and executing their projects which involved merging the content of the training sessions with their everyday work lives. This occurred sometimes easily and sometimes with great dissonance as participants reported seeing things ‘play out’ in new ways following engagement with the learning material. Participants especially felt varying levels of support for their efforts from their host communities. During the course of the training and project building process, participants noted an evolution (from less to more) in their own abilities to communicate the materials to others and engage them to join the effort.

Table 3.

An overview of the projects that were developed by the various sites engaged in the pilot training.

Community	Description	AOP focus	Changes sought	Impact
A.	– Translation services designed to address communications	– Remove structural barriers for access to services.	– Improved services for Spanish speaking clients/families.	– Less resistance from justice system for culturally specific treatment.
	needs of clients and families.	– Shift dominant discourse	– Hire Spanish speaking staff – Improved awareness	– Stronger awareness across system for culturally appropriate treatment supports.
			for needs of undocumented youth and families. – Increased treatment	– Shift in justice-system discourse away from punishment and towards treatment and recovery.
			participation.
B.	– Develop positive youth development program for diverse youth	– AOP group program that centers racism and white privilege	– Cross-racial understanding – Build esteem, pride &	– Tutoring for young men – Families feel embraced – More advocacy by mentors
	– Education with court personnel on racism and white privilege	– AOP education	leadership qualities – Bring understandings of disparities into	Empowerment for youth to name experiences of discrimination and disparities
	– Expanded support		court system
	for mentoring		– Increase youth leadership
C.	– Teaching mentors AOP content for first time to improve outcomes with youth of color	– Pilot effort to add AOP to existing mentoring program	– Improve outcomes for youth of color	– Empowerment practices with mentors that helped them better support youth of color
			– Increase advocacy voices for youth of color	– Mentors more satisfied and make longer commitments
			– Expand analysis and action to system-level reforms
			Recruit more mentors of color
D.	– Get leadership commitment to AOP across the system & into treatment for youth	– AOP counseling – AOP education in court system – Link AOP to anti-	– Increase awareness of AOP across juvenile justice system	– Improve awareness of disparities and inequities – Revitalize existing race relations dialogue with new
	– Created court-wide training committee to educate on AOP	poverty work in the county – Include treatment providers in effort		strategy, more involvement & capacity building
E.	– Redesign treatment RFP to include AOP skills and programs	– AOP counseling – Organizational reform	– Redesign entire treatment program to embrace community & involve indigenous support and recovery systems	– Changed RFP – Outcomes too early to assess
			– Hire a parent to support advocacy for clients and families

Evaluation of skills and competencies

Participant evaluations affirmed the breadth of the skills training curriculum, and equally affirmed the value of skills-building in the micro-, mezzo- and macro-dimensions of AOP. The majority of their comments, however, reflected on details related to perspective transformation such as ‘I gained considerable self-awareness about bias’, ‘I am more critical of what I and others say as general assumptions about people, populations and cultures’, and ‘I developed a more keen awareness of my classist, sexist, homophobic and even ageist attitudes.’ Even when this question was asked in the context of skills gained, similar comments are provided: ‘[the course] affirmed my basic operating philosophy – I grew up with a deep and direct sense of racism, but that it is important to give people the benefit of the doubt’.

Participants also affirmed the delivery innovations that were elements of the course. This includes recruiting teams of participants to take the course, the online synchronous delivery system, and project-based learning. Comments on the online delivery were positive including: ‘great! Nice opportunity to interact with folks from across the country’, and ‘it was easy to access and follow along’. In comparison with in-person training there are recognized shortcomings in terms of being able to perceive interpersonal dynamics through body language and energetic exchanges. But there were also those who preferred it: ‘in some ways, I liked it better. It was maybe more relaxed and I could focus well on the topic and discussions.’ From our perspective, this is the only way to deliver an ongoing course that needs to be spread across several months – all other avenues are cost-prohibitive and unlikely to be sustainable given the complexity of organizational issues that can arise over the course of five months, making commitments to travel in an ongoing manner tenuous.

Participants confirmed the value of their projects: ‘our project will have a tremendous impact on the quality and availability of services for community members’ and ‘I think that youth and families will be acknowledged and respected, policies that impact consumers will be implemented and our organization will be a better place to work.’ While most participants thought their projects would create lasting improvements in services, some uncertainty also exists as to the impact of the intervention: ‘I really don’t know [the longevity of improvements]. I want to think that the efforts will continue to grow and continue to result in people knowing that changes are occurring.’ Overall, they deemed these projects to be an ‘absolutely imperative’ dimension of the course.

Embedded too in participants’ comments is a sense that the course has provided them with relevant, useful, and constructive practices, but moderated this insight with the idea that they have gathered resources that will help guide their practice, leaving us with the idea that these skills have been provided as a menu hey will pull from as needs arise as opposed to more durably learned skills that exist with ready recall. Such may be the nature of community-based learning in this topic area – academic learning is simpler in this area as it has abundant time (typically 30 hours instead of 12 as existed with this course), skills requirements (to be illustrated in graded assignments) and performance expectations (as participation is typically an element of grading). While missing the prior elements, our participants were voluntary and were intrinsically motivated to learn this material for the benefits of their clients and their communities, and perhaps also their professional advancement.

Participants of color felt confirmed that their experience, intuition and tacit knowledge about racism and white privilege is legitimate, perhaps providing for us (as two white instructors) the greatest achievement possible: ‘you all have helped me to know that I am sane – the things we have been working on these last 30 years are real’. Most concretely, participants affirmed the value of the micro-aggressions framework by Sue (2010) for articulating the daily stressors and disrespect that becomes a durable part of everyday life.

At least one member of the group did experience a critical incident of feeling blamed when attempting to professionally identify an equity gap and suggest a remedy. This speaks to the need for trainers and curriculum builders to be prepared for the types of challenges and opportunities that will surface, as was previously described, when training participants begin to actively ‘trouble’ the system. There is a need to build a cadre of skills to anticipate these dynamics ahead of time, plan for adequate support and manage the possible conflict along the way through use of local supports as well as the larger training group to continue mentoring, strengthening and refining one’s skill base and survival. And too, it is impossible to make reform efforts risk-free. To retreat to complete safety will perpetually leave us tinkering around the edges of reforms.

Our reflections of what we would improve are three-fold: the first being more time and structure for dialogue about the transformations involved in such learning. But this is not an easy choice as our practitioners are time-pressed and, particularly in this neo-liberal managerialist context for practice (as profiled by Baines, 2007), heightened training opportunities can contribute to being overwhelmed. One benefit of our online synchronous delivery system is that anyone missing a class may review the session in its entirety at their leisure. The second is to provide advising on project development and implementation. The third is to create a structure for ongoing support and strategy building for implementing AOP inside participants’ organizations.

Will we narrow the field of AOP practices in order to incorporate more time for dialogue? No. It remains essential to forward concrete practices and expand the menu of possibilities for practice. It does, however, seem incumbent on us to prepare three additional elements for the course. The first is to ensure that resources are available in menu-like format, so that participants can quickly find ideas for practice as they encounter oppression and privilege in action. The second is to create more insights on strategic navigation of AOP inside non-supportive organizations. This might be achieved through expanded use of case studies, or it might be available through the structural reforms that Reclaiming Futures intends to make to support the uptake of AOP among its partners. The third contribution we can make to the strategy challenge is to build such aptitudes within the profession and to begin to develop research and teaching modules in this area.

Overall, the course has catalyzed a renewed sense of optimism for reducing racial disparities through AOP in conventional services, and also in Reclaiming Futures.

Critiques and challenges

While we are thrilled that the status of the AOP field in disparity reduction work is receiving attention and affirmation (and find that this project contributes to such affirmation), we believe we are encountering enduring challenges with the depth and breadth of the field. A litany of constraints exist: there is so much to cover, there is not enough time, the expectations and desires of our participants are difficult to meet, and we cannot increase participation requirements, even though the content and process is perceived to be very useful to practice. The earlier stated goals of making the ‘take away’ and ‘follow up’ dimensions stronger will assist us to navigate these constraints.

The more enduring difficulty and one which is just becoming clear is that we are challenged by the epistemology of the field: at one level, this work is explicitly not a roadmap about how to practice. Much of AOP encourages a stance of ‘not knowing’ how to practice, so that curiosity, humility, and openness to the leadership of communities and service users characterize practice. Integral to the work is straddling tensions inherent to the field of AOP: knowing and not knowing, acting while continuing to be implicated in relations of domination, and the vulnerability that flows from becoming willing to challenge traditional canons of human service practices.

The approach is as much about troubling oneself and one’s practice as it is about figuring out ways to move forward. It simultaneously unravels what is known and what we thought we knew, as well as working with the humility of figuring out productive avenues for practice. And still, we endeavor to build skills, competencies and ideas for effective practice. The worst outcome would have been to provide another interesting but not useful training, with which the field is replete. Navigating these twin edges is difficult – contradictory complexities that co-exist for practitioners, and for instructors.

The concrete questions for us are how to find the right balance of task and process, of knowing and not-knowing, and related dimensions of how we share our expertise, while emphasizing the participants’ local contexts that inform unique pathways forward. And simultaneously, how we navigate our whiteness and the way it infuses our relationships with participants, the leadership spaces we occupy, our epistemological stance – and the inherent devaluing that occurs when our bodies fill spaces that need to be shared. At this juncture, we aspire to develop the skills of community members who can step into these leadership roles, and have ensured that this is one result of the project.

In future iterations of the training, we would likely spend more time and energy helping participants to better structure their projects, and better assess their outcomes and impacts. We made a calculated decision to keep at arm’s length from this particular part of the process, however, in the final analysis we agree that more of our time to help support, guide and assist participants in this arena would be helpful to them in better securing at least some of the changes they sought, and as a result, likely gaining important relational and political capital they might need to take on additional change projects of a similar nature.

Ultimately, this work has become an opportunity to advance the field of anti-oppressive practice, bringing it forward into a new arena that has become disenchanted with cultural competency as the answer to racial disparities. We are building new forays into online learning – something previously seen as taboo for this content area – and we are integrating team-based and project-based applications into the curriculum, ensuring that there are durable changes at the program level for service users. Such opportunity affirms for us the importance and utility of the work and helps provide us with the space to navigate complexity and contradiction. It is a space where we delight in the learning, the transformation and the prospects for practices to reduce disparities. We are truly fortunate to be afforded these opportunities.

Actions and reforms as a result of this effort

In keeping with the spirit of action research, the purpose for the pilot training itself was not only to learn, but to apply the learned knowledge to specific activities intended to create change in a local practice context. Several notable actions and several reforms in the form of changes to key structural supports within Reclaiming Futures resulted from this pilot effort, in addition to the local team-based projects. In terms of actions, two participants of the training group did an out-of-state training on anti-oppressive practice, invited by another member of the national Reclaiming Futures community to share the basic model and their own experiences applying it. Along with one of the instructors of the curriculum, another conference session was conducted at a semi-annual Reclaiming Futures national meeting where participants of the pilot group spoke (as trainers themselves) about their experiences. Most (four out of five) of the site projects are continuing beyond the ‘required’ time allotted in the training and are believed to be promising in terms of creating additional change and opportunity within the host system. Structurally, Reclaiming Futures is making reforms to support the incorporation of AOP into the fiber of its work. This is moving ahead in four ways. At the request of the members of the training group, Reclaiming Futures will be creating a periodic call opportunity for these training alumni who wish to continue to gather and discuss their ongoing work in learning and applying the ideas from the training. Second, an additional multi-session training is planned for the coming year (in its full version), and will incorporate the strengthening as suggested in this article. Third, AOP is being installed as part of the main Reclaiming Futures curriculum (in an abbreviated version). Fourth, Reclaiming Futures is creating an ongoing structure through which AOP can inform the full work of RF, bringing together those who perceive possibilities for how AOP can strengthen the entirety of the work. The net impact of these reforms is that the institution is embedding the AOP perspective as it seeks to advance equity across its coalition partners.

Implications for the field

Disparities persist, despite generations of training for individuals, as well as organizational and system-level reforms. The marginalization of large numbers of fellow community members is both inhumane and costly at the local and national levels due to lags in resolving institutional racism and individual knowledge gaps about an applied equity action framework. New ideas and tools are needed to energize, refocus, and improve the circumstances for all members of communities. AOP is not being presented as a panacea, but rather as a specific set of ideas, which hold promise to improve individual practice in diverse contexts and organizational process and outcomes in diverse communities. In our own pilot experience, and based on the exchanges in our training group, racism, both subtle and overt, continues to surface in workplaces for youth service professionals, as well as in places ostensibly concerned with justice and healing for the young people served there. No one should be content to allow such dynamics to persist, no matter how challenging it may be to disrupt the dynamic. Anti-oppressive practice theory, philosophy, pedagogy, and suggested actions hold promise as vehicles for more openness, constructive dialogue, and restorative action towards more equity for all.

Future research

Additional study is needed to understand specifically how to create readiness in organizations to accomplish these goals. This was a particularly challenging dynamic based on the experiences of the training group members. In truth, it was among the most stark of our findings how little ‘safety’ participants routinely expressed feeling in their practice settings on these issues, and the care, time, and attention it took initially to build adequate support and capacity to proceed. Additionally, it would be of great interest and value to explore how anti-oppressive practice training might specifically fare in larger scale intentional disparity reduction efforts in either juvenile justice or adolescent substance abuse treatment settings, as an experimental replacement for the traditional ‘cultural competence’ trainings (Cabaniss et al., 2007) – especially when coupled with dynamic ‘professional learning communities’ (Stoll, Bolam, McMahon, Wallace, & Thomas, 2006) of like-minded colleagues (either who work together in a program in local context, or gathered beyond local community borders through use of the internet and other distance learning tools). With its deeper focus on individual reflection, power dynamics, dominant discourse, and structural adjustment to better promote equity, it would seem this might be a useful and important area of inquiry. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it would be important to construct additional research to determine how youth themselves experience a relative presence and/or absence of supports and challenges described in this training. While this project was more focused on the professional identities, skill sets, organizational challenges and opportunities in creating change regarding anti-oppressive practice among youth service workers, to truly and fully complete the line of inquiry, it will be important to include the young people themselves in exploratory as well as action-oriented dialogue about their experiences and perception of opportunities for change regarding inequity within youth-serving systems.

Limitations of study

This was a small pilot study in a national juvenile justice reform project and not intended to suggest that the approach is ready or intended to serve as a standard by which all such training should be modeled. It was exploratory and descriptive in nature, and this qualitative and action-oriented evaluation is offered as an opportunity to share the journey and suggest that our reflections and experiences have value to advance new topics, tools and resources for an area of practice currently in need of new ideas. Ultimately, PAR requires dynamic dialogue linked to action between and among participants and researchers. There is definite tension in the practice community, as well as this research regarding the ultimate power and presence of community voice versus professional voice in the results of the research (Minkler, Fadem, Perry, Blum, Moore, & Rogers, 2002). This preliminary study was most immediately interested in the experiences of system change leaders and community members as they explore the opportunity to impact the systems they work in as the key stakeholders. Ongoing inquiry, discipline and focus is needed to go beyond this brief pilot to delve more deeply into these concerns and generate even greater degrees of community (and youth) perspectives on lived experiences, challenges and needs related to the reforms suggested. It is a fair critique that more youth engagement would have been a good thing, however although no prohibition to youth participation was made, it was also not promoted actively, and thus, none of the training teams explicitly included young people. In future research of its kind, we would be more explicit about promoting youth involvement in the local teams, and even potentially among the trainers as well. However, because this kind of youth involvement is not yet a norm in the systems studied, extensive developmental work must be considered (involving time and resources) to cultivate youth voice more intentionally.

Conclusion

At its core, Reclaiming Futures has always been about a combination of systems reform (Nissen, Butts, Merrigan, & Kraft, 2006) through specific focus on collaborative and transformative leadership (Nissen et al., 2005). This pilot training experience furthered, deepened and diversified this legacy and agenda in several ways. It demonstrated the important and challenging possibility of joining both competencies and reflective practice (Hackett, 2001), explored new ways of establishing communicative space about race, racism, and white privilege (Hyland, 2009) and took action in important areas of practice that were in need of new knowledge and energy, as assessed by the participants.

In closing, inspired by Freire (1970), it is only through education, dialogue, and development of both consciousness and agency, that an ‘audacious hope’ (Generett & Hicks, 2004) can emerge, emboldened by skills and tools to better understand and recreate conditions of oppression and injustice. This pilot project demonstrates that meaningful learning can occur and must continue, to translate into more effective change and reform strategies for youth professionals, and for a more just 21st century.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to gratefully acknowledge the dedication, courage, and willingness of the pilot Reclaiming Futures Anti-Oppressive Course to participate in and assisting in developing this effort, to Cora Crary, for research assistance throughout the administrative and technical requirements of this pilot, and to Mimmy Patterson for editing and proofreading assistance in the final stages of manuscript preparation. Finally, the authors wish to thank the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for support of the pilot training opportunity. We thank Davydd Greenwood, for leading the review process for the author of this paper. Should there be any comments/reactions you wish to share, please bring them to the interactive portion (Reader Responses column) of the website: .

Laura Burney Nissen is an Associate Professor of Social Work at Portland State University School of Social Work, USA, where she teaches in the areas of administration and leadership, social work theory and practice, social work and spirituality, anti-oppressive practice theory, social policy, and addictions.

Ann Curry-Stevens is Assistant Professor of Social Work at Portland State University School of Social Work, USA.

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