Praxis of cross-cultural social work practice (CCSWP): A critical discourse analysis of graduate student and faculty perspectives on cultural competence and relevant constructs

Abstract

To examine how social work students and faculty perceive and embody cultural competence, we conducted five focus groups with graduate students (N = 16) and faculty members (N = 10) from Canadian schools of social work. We interrogated how different theoretical frameworks related to cross-cultural social work practice (CCSWP) have been circulated and reified in social work education, and how certain dominant frameworks have been translated to embodied cross-cultural interactions in social work practice. To examine the praxis of CCSWP, which is often subtle and embedded in the semantics of languages and discourses, we were informed by critical theories of power, language, and discourses to analyze the data. The interview transcripts of both student and faculty focus groups showed similar dominant discursive patterns: (1) critiquing the conceptual use of cultural competence, (2) having a preference for terms such as cultural humility, cultural safety, or other constructs, and (3) describing the embodied practice of these constructs mainly as a general practice and omitting cross-cultural work. Participants differed in their expressed opposition to cultural competence and the exact terms they preferred as an alternative. Overall, participants discursively changed from a critical debate on semantic and conceptual differences between these constructs to negating them altogether as meaningless, effacing the very notion of cross-cultural social work and its embodied practice. In the end, cultural competence was discounted as both oppressive and anti-oppressive, a position which is reflected in the contested scholarship on cultural competence.

The concept of cultural competence has been widely debated across helping professions, including social work (SW), since its emergence in the late 1970s and 1980s (Solomon, 1976; Green, 1982; Cross et al., 1989). Early scholars in this area defined cultural competence as a “set of congruent behaviors, attitudes, and policies that come together in a system, agency, or among professionals and enable that system, agency, or those professionals to work effectively in cross-cultural situations” (Cross et al., 1989:3). Professional associations developed standards of practice for cultural competence to promote respect for cultural diversity and differences and to increase accountability and effective practice in SW and other health professions (American Psychological Association, 2002; NASW Standards, 2015). Social work scholars note that cultural competence is a central tenet of SW theory, practice, education, and research (Danso, 2018; Lum, 2003; Williams, 2006).

Despite its pervasive uptake in the SW profession, cultural competence has been fiercely criticized. For example, Dean (2001) argued that cultural competence is a myth because it is impossible to be competent in another culture. Pon (2009) described cultural competence as the new racism since it ignored racial and structural inequity. Indigenous scholars have also emphasized that cultural competence lacks a critical analysis of colonial history and its ongoing impacts on Indigenous populations, and they proposed cultural safety to meaningfully engage members of their communities (Fernando and Bennett, 2019; Duthie, 2019). Other scholars proposed abandoning the use of cultural competence as a cross-cultural SW framework as it implies assumptions of knowledge reinforcing positions of power (Gutiérrez and Ortega, 2016). Alternative concepts have been introduced including critical consciousness (Sakamoto, 2007), cultural consciousness (Azzopardi and McNeill, 2016), cultural sensitivity (Hardy, 2016), cultural humility (Abe, 2020; Gottlieb, 2021), and structural competence (Metzl and Hansen, 2014). Danso (2018) argued that the critiques of cultural competence lack analytical rigor and identified many of the shortcomings as related to the fragmentation of the conceptual arguments and the expectation of this as an omnicompetent construct. Other scholars further propose merging cultural competence with alternative constructs including cultural humility (Greene-Moton and Minkler, 2020), critical cultural competence (Danso, 2015), as well as socially just and culturally competent practice (Lee et al., 2021).

Amid the semantic, conceptual, epistemological, and sociopolitical debates, we wonder how different frameworks related to cross-cultural social work practice (CCSWP) have been perceived by SW students and faculty members, and how these are translated to embodied cross-cultural interactions in SW practice. In their editorial, Embodiment: A key to social workers’ wellbeing and attainment of social justice, Mensinga and Pyles (2021:131) define embodiment as “the ways in which biological, political, historical, economic, and social factors impact on, and become ‘embedded in’ individuals’ and society’s experience and identity.” Considering that SW is a practice-based profession, we believe that a theory becomes meaningful when it is translated and embodied into social workers’ everyday practice.

According to Freire (1970:126), praxis is defined as “reflection and action directed at the structures to be transformed” to liberate ourselves from the entrapments of our own thinking. In praxis, our reflection “creates projects that are constantly interrogated, revised and extended in the light of experience” and our “goal is realized” in our “own enactment” (Ablett and Morley, 2020:342). Given our experiences of struggling to understand and teach cultural competence and alternative concepts that have been contested despite their intended goals to promote better cross-cultural work, its interrogation in praxis is inevitable. A philosopher, social theorist, and psychoanalyst, Castoriadis (1984:235), offers insights on the importance of examining praxis—“praxis reveals and invites our reflection on questions about ‘what’ is being done in practice, education, program, or policy and ‘for what’ purpose.” For Castoriadis, praxis is a critical reflection which may “revise previous knowledge in its course and conduct” (Ablett and Morley, 2020:342) and a conscious action beyond the simple “know-how” techniques or application of existing knowledge:

It is based on knowledge, but this knowledge is always fragmentary and provisional. It is fragmentary because there can be no exhaustive theory of humanity and of history; it is provisional because praxis itself constantly gives rise to new knowledge … This is why the relations of praxis to theory … [are] more profound than those of any “strictly rational” technique or practice (Castoriadis, 1984:76; cited in Ablett and Morley 2020:342).

Ablett and Morley (2020:334) argue that Castoriadis’ work provides “a coherent and robust revisioning of revolutionary praxis that can help clarify and extend the revisioning of critical social work’s emancipatory potential without recourse to deterministic structural theories or the pitfalls of post-structural relativism.”

We think the critiques around cultural competence and the alternative constructs have fallen into the trap of endless theoretical debate on definitional and conceptual minutia with the potential pitfall of forgetting the vital endpoint of effective practice. Instead of falling into theoretical debates, it is important to examine the praxis of cultural competence and alternative concepts to promote critically reflective CCSWP in two areas: (1) how SW students and faculty members critically reflect on the fundamental ideas of cultural competence (i.e., critical reflection—what they think) and (2) what types of practice or actions this uptake leads them to (i.e., critical action—how they practice). Praxis is often subtle and embedded in the semantics of languages and discourses (Thibault, 1991) and cannot be decontextualized from epistemological and sociopolitical stances (Ablett and Morley, 2020). To examine praxis, we were informed by critical theories on power, language, and discourses that pay attention to both linguistic and social analyses of discourses (Fairclough, 2013; Gee, 1999). Our research questions are as follows: (1) how do SW students and faculty members describe cultural competence or alternative constructs? (2) how do they link each construct to embodied SW practice? and (3) what discourses are constructed during cross-cultural SW practice? For this exploration, we were mindful of our own intersectional positionality. All research team members are recent settlers in Indigenous lands of many First Nations and Indigenous communities in pursuit of family settlement, international education, and/or job opportunities from non-Western or Western countries. Three of the authors are faculty members teaching in SW schools, and two are SW doctoral students. All of our programs of research center on social justice in various fields of SW practice (i.e., mental health, social policy, immigrant families and parenting, anti-racism, and gender-based violence). We are a diverse group of authors and acknowledge our privileged and subjugated identities including but not limited to race, ethnicity, immigration, gender, and sexual orientation. Our collective and individual understanding of CCSWP is both shaped by and situated in our social, personal, and professional locations.

Methods

Data and participant recruitment

Data were collected from focus groups with graduate students and faculty members from Canadian schools of SW between April and July 2021 after obtaining ethical approval from two affiliated universities. To have a wide and diverse reach of potential participants, we compiled a list of schools of SW using the list of accredited Canadian SW programs available on the website of the Canadian Association for Social Work Education (CASWE). We then contacted the MSW program coordinators or directors of all schools to disseminate study recruitment information among students. We also contacted individual faculty members from each school to recruit participants for the faculty focus groups. Our student focus groups were facilitated by SW doctoral students, and the faculty focus groups were facilitated by two SW faculty members and one diversity and equity officer at the university. The facilitators followed a semi-structured interview guide that covered topics such as cross-cultural practices and social justice in SW education, and the experiences of learning and teaching. One set of interview questions centered on cultural competence and asked about definitions of cultural competence, as well as important principles, characteristics, and practice examples of cultural competence. We conducted all focus groups using Zoom videoconferencing and audio-recorded, transcribed, and deidentified transcripts for analysis.

Analysis framework: critical discourse analysis

Among various critical analysis methods of qualitative data, critical discourse analysis (CDA) is suitable for examining praxis because both CDA and praxis bear similar perspectives that “both are modes of critical intervention into hegemonic discourses of power and privilege” and “knowledges are not apolitical, but rather are invested in structures of power and ideology” (Lazar, 2020:6). For Castoriadis, “the reflection involved in genuine praxis can never be simply analytical-empirical but is essentially creative and critical” (Ablett and Morley, 2020:342). Therefore, using CDA allows us to critically analyze how discourses have been constructed and negotiated to embody the praxis of cultural competence and alternative constructs.

We followed the recommendations of sociolinguistic and critical scholars that texts are not coincidently but structurally organized and discursively constructed to represent contexts (Sacks and Jefferson, 1995). In this framework of understanding, any use of language should be understood as political (Gee, 1999). To unveil the use of language critically, Fairclough (2013) paid attention to the mediating link between “linguistic analysis” and “social analysis.” Several social work scholars applied this analytic rigor to examine various social work conversation and interactions in practice (for details of this analytic framework in social work, see Lee and Bhuyan, 2013, Lee, 2014, Lee et al., 2019a, 2019b, 2021, 2022; Hall et al., 2013, 2020; Hall and White, 2005; Rodger, 1991; Willey-Sthapit et al., 2022). For linguistic analysis, we paid attention to lexicons and grammar (use of verb/adjective/adverb and use of declarative sentences) including the following: (1) word choices (i.e., lexicon) used as descriptors of cultural competence and alternative concepts; (2) how verbs, adjectives, and or adverbs were deployed in declarative or tentative sentences (i.e., use of grammar); and (3) how different texts were discursively connected to construct the understanding of cultural competence and alternative concepts. For social analysis, we explored how theories and principles of cultural competence and/or alternative concepts as the framework of CCSWP have been situated and promoted within the SW profession. We went through an iterative process comparing and contrasting between cultural competence and related literature and emerging discursive themes in the transcripts, exploring the following questions: (1) How are SW students’ and faculty members’ views on cultural competence and alternative concepts represented in the literature in terms of their benefits and limitations for CCSWP; (2) which discourses are dominant or marginalized in understanding cultural competence and alternative concepts in SW; and (3) how do different understandings of cultural competence and alternative concepts lead to different praxes of CCSWP.

Data analysis process

Transcripts were managed and analyzed using Dedoose (https://www.dedoose.com/), a cloud-based qualitative data analysis tool that allows for team collaboration. Our research team consisted of three faculty members and two doctoral students, all of whom served as coders. All five team members conducted an initial open coding independently on the same transcript to identify preliminary thematic patterns. We then met as a team to discuss emerging themes (e.g., the debates of cultural competence). The first author conducted the second iteration of the coding across all transcripts of five focus groups to closely read the identified preliminary themes on cultural competence and alternative concepts such as cultural humility. This coder then located relevant segments where the words “cultural competence” or alternative terms were mentioned plus related comments on CCSWP. If one of the two conditions were missing, it was not included.

In this analysis, segment refers to one person’s entire speaking turn. If one participant shared the view of CCSWP including the term cultural competence or alternative terms, that person’s entire statements in that turn were considered as one segment. In total, the 28 segments identified were cross-checked and discussed by the research team. The tentative analysis of the first author was presented to the research team and discussion followed. This process resulted in confirming, expanding, amending, and elaborating on the initial analysis. By subjecting the analysis to this scrutiny and discussion, it was possible to reinforce the analysis and to draw in a wider linkage with existing literature, practice, and pedagogical experience. In presenting each segment, we did break it down into several stanzas when discursively distinct discourses occurred. Stanza refers to language units that are a few lines or a paragraph and has been used in CDA to note distinctively different parts of text units within one interlocutor’s speech turn (Lee et al., 2019a; Gee, 1999). In presenting the verbatim statements, we used italics and underlined transcripts to assist readers to quickly locate our descriptions of particular analysis in each segment. Brackets ([ ]) indicate our notes in the transcripts.

Findings

The sample consisted of 16 SW students from 7 schools of social work and 10 faculty members from 8 schools of social work. Table 1 shows the sociodemographic background of all participants included in the study.

Table 1.

Social-demographic background of participants.

	N	%
Student group (N = 16)
Gender
Women	14	87.5
Gender fluid	2	12.5
Ethnicity
White/Caucasian	11	68.75
South East Asian	1	6.25
Black	1	6.25
East Asian	1	6.25
Multi-racial	1	6.25
Jewish	1	6.25
Sexual orientation
Heterosexual	11	68.75
Queer	4	25
Bisexual	1	6.25
Age	M = 31.3 (SD = 5.92)
Current training
MSW—two-year program	11	68.75
MSW—advanced standing	4	25
Ph.D. in social work	1	6.25
Currently in practicum (yes)	5	31.25
Province/territory of receiving education
Ontario	10	62.5
British Columbia	4	25
New Brunswick	1	6.25
Manitoba	1	6.25
Faculty group (N = 10)
Gender
Women	6	60
Men	4	40
Sexual orientation
Heterosexual	8	80
Queer	1	10
Other	1	10
Ethnicity
White/Caucasian	6	60
South East Asian	1	10
Black	1	10
East Asian	2	20
Age	M = 52.8 (SD = 11.7)
Years of teaching in social work	M = 16.4 (SD = 10.3)
Province/territory of teaching
Ontario	6	60
Quebec	2	20
Alberta	1	10
British Columbia	1	10

The findings are organized in two sections: the student focus group and faculty focus group. Under each focus group, we report the definition of cultural competence and cultural humility or related constructs, and the embodied practice of cultural competence and cultural humility or related constructs.

Student focus group

Defining cultural competence and cultural humility

Students’ dominant discourse on cultural competence echoed the critiques of cultural competence that were articulated in the faculty member interviews. The most commonly expressed ideas were Dean’s (2001) critique of the impossibility of being competent in another culture, essentializing other cultures (Garran and Werkmeister Rozas, 2013; Sakamoto, 2007) and the power imbalance created through social workers assuming an expert position. See Segment 1.

Segment 1.

(source: Student 1).

This theme was repeated among most of the included segments. For example, another student noted cultural competence “can be counterintuitive in terms of you know you take a training course learning about some specific culture and then saying, you know, identify as being culturally competent,” “like a false sense of confidence” and “could potentially increase your biases, in terms of thinking you know something or making assumptions” (Student 6).

In Segment 1, lexical choices and use of grammar are noteworthy. Students’ perspectives (i.e., critiques) of cultural competence began sentences with “the language” of cultural competency “kind of suggests” and “the word competence implies” as if the critiques were based on semantics (Danso, 2018) rather than socio-political-historical contexts. What is omitted in their views are notions of socio-political contexts of why cultural competence or other alternative perspectives are critical for cross-cultural SW or how historically these constructs and related practice emerged and have contributed to or had limitations in serving marginalized populations (Solomon, 1976; Green, 1982; Cross et al., 1989). Rather, they discursively associated cultural competence to “taking X amount of training and then you’ll magically know everything,” becoming “experts in another person’s experience,” building “a false sense of confidence,” increasing “biases,” and “making assumptions.” None of these associations are related to the actual notion of cultural competence (Cross et al., 1989; Green, 1982; Nadan, 2017), literature on CCSWP (Azzopardi, 2020; Lee, 2010), or NASW Standards on Cultural Competence (hereafter NASW Standards, 2015). This discourse omits these scholarships and reflects the critiques of cultural competence (Dean, 2001; Garran and Werkmeister Rozas, 2013), which were also represented as the dominant discourse of cultural competence in our data.

Another theme is that “cultural competence becomes the new racism” (Pon, 2009). This claims that structural and power inequity are omitted from a cultural competence perspective. This critique was represented in Stanza 2 (e.g., perpetuating whiteness and colonialism). This socio-politically situated critique of “cultural competence as being oppressive” was not broadly noted in the data except for this student. Contrary to this critique, two other students noted: “I often say like cultural competence like an anti-oppressive practice” (Student 10) and “when I think of cultural competence and related words, I think for myself, like being anti-oppressive is sort of more like all-encompassing in terms of what the intention behind cultural competence is” (Student 12). Both discursively equated cultural competence with anti-oppressive practice.

A dominant discourse of students’ views on cultural humility was presented in contrast to cultural competence as shown in lexicons in Stanza 3—“cultural humility instead” “can’t know”: others’ experiences or “can’t become an expert in that” alluding to the critiques of cultural competence that they described claiming “to know” others’ experience and to position self as an “expert” (Dean, 2001; Garran and Werkmeister Rozas, 2013). This view of cultural humility as the contrast construct to cultural competence (i.e., binary views between cultural competence and cultural humility) was like other included segments. For example, one student noted cultural humility “as the ongoing learning and listening, but because we never will reach that final place where we’re competent” (Student 4). It is noteworthy that there were no distinctive descriptors of what cultural humility was beyond the contrast construct to cultural competence other than its explicit lexicon of “being humble” or referring to “humility.” For example, another student noted “we discussed the importance of being humble and practicing humility with our clients” (Student 13). In fact, cultural humility has been increasingly promoted as a promising framework for cross-cultural practice. This construct was introduced by Tervalon and Murray-García (1998:123) in the field of medicine who define it as “a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique, to redressing the power imbalances in the patient–physician dynamic, and to developing mutually beneficial and nonpaternalistic clinical and advocacy partnerships.” Several SW scholars highlight its usefulness in various SW practices (Abe, 2020; Fisher-Bone et al., 2015; Gottlieb, 2021; Ortega and Faller, 2011). However, the student focus group data had limited emphasis on the lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and self-critique or redressing the power imbalances in helping relationships (Abe, 2020; Tervalon and Murray-García, 1998).

Embodied practice of cultural competence and cultural humility

A critical part of SW practice is how relevant constructs are understood and embodied. The dominant discourse of cross-cultural practice from student focus group was a preference for cultural humility to cultural competence. When asked how they would describe what “cultural humility” looks like in CCSWP, students often described general SW principles as noted in Stanza 4: “You can just like be an active listener, and a faithful witness and other terms that we care in social justice work.” This theme was pervasive in other included segments. For example, another student also noted similarly as shown in Segment 2.

Segment 2.

(source: Student 16).

This segment highlights attitudes (i.e., “being humble, open, and patient,” “person-centered,” and “putting them at the center”), skills (i.e., “[not]asking direct questions” and “engaging in conversation”), and knowledge (i.e., “getting to know people for them”) as well as valuing relationships (i.e., it just comes with relationship) in general practice.

Noteworthy is how these various general practice components are discursively constructed by deploying adverb “just” right before each component: “just like be an active listener” (Student 1), “just about awareness… just knowing…”(Student 9) and see numerous mentions of this lexicon in Segment 2. According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of adverb “just” refers to “barely, by a very small margin, only, simply.” In Segment 1, the student expressed a strong attitude against cultural competence (i.e., “I kind of roll my eyes a little bit whenever I hear about cultural competency”) and a clear preference of cultural humility noted twice in Stanzas 3 (“cultural humility instead”) and 5 (“prefer the term cultural humility”). However, when asked to describe cultural humility in its embodied practice, it was discursively noted as “just [only, simply] like be an active listener.” This transformation from cross-cultural practice to general practice erasing cultural content was explicitly noted throughout Segment 2. Furthermore, this student noted “not necessarily just like asking direct questions” presumably about culturally relevant content, thus giving permission not to address them.

Then, the student criticized cultural competence because it requires insurmountable tasks within the time limits (i.e., “an endless amount to learn”) and noted the time as barriers to cross-cultural practice—that is, social workers mostly “don’t have time” so “just at the beginning” asking “where they come from.” The student legitimized the action of not addressing cultural aspects due to the time limit but next even generalized this “not addressing”: “even with the time” we are “just like engaging in conversation” and consequently the noting changes in practice was general practice (i.e., “just about awareness” and “just engaging conversation”). Even in the moment when cultural aspects were addressed (“just at the beginning”), what was conversed as addressing cultural aspects (“where they come from”) was quite limited as cross-cultural practice.

Another theme related to the embodied practice of cultural humility was brought by one student as shown in Segment 3.

Segment 3.

(source: Student 13).

Here, cultural humility was translated into having clients “teach us about their culture,” thus “putting the onus” on the clients, which is not aligned with what cultural humility scholarship proposes. SW scholars note that cultural humility requires social workers to commit to a “process of realistic, ongoing self-appraisal of biases and stereotypes to assess the ways in which their own attitudes prevent them from learning from their clients” (Ortega and Faller, 2011) and “a cultural decentering and acknowledgment of oppression and power as our gaze shifts from our own perceptions of the world to see, instead, the reality of the other,” highlighting “other-focus” and practitioners’ “willingness to learn and to be changed” (Abe, 2020). However, this other-focus and willingness-to-learn on the part of social workers were transformed into putting the onus on the clients to teach social workers, followed by general practice components such as building “relationships.”

With a dominant discourse across the student focus groups that showed a preference for cultural humility to cultural competence, there are only a couple of comments on the embodied practice of cultural competence. One student in the mental health/psychiatry field noted the embodied practice of cultural competence as follows:

Being aware of not making assumptions for like overpathologizing people. … Like, trying to understand something from their perspective, understand like what that might mean to them what rituals, or like protective factors like spirituality. … like not over-medicalizing a person. Um, and so you need to be able to be aware of like your own assumptions in order to be like a competent social worker in that respect (Student 10).

Another student noted that in practice cultural competence means “understanding someone’s social location and not putting your own worldview as better onto anyone else’s narrative. … That also, you know, is sensitive to the power dynamic” (Student 12).

Their descriptors of the embodied practice of cultural competence align with the NASW Standards (2015) such as, examining “their own cultural backgrounds and identities while seeking out the necessary knowledge, skills, and values” (8); acknowledging “forms of oppression, discrimination, and domination” and “their own position of power vis-a-vis the populations they serve” (10); and demanding “advocacy and activism” to “disrupt the societal processes that marginalize populations” and “challenge institutional and structural oppression” (10). These two participants noted cultural competence as “anti-oppressive practice” in contrast to the dominant discourse of cultural competence as the critique. In addition to the similar notions of the NASW Standards, Student 10 applied the framework of cultural competence to mental health fields against biomedical approaches and further positioned cultural aspects as “protective factors” rather than pathologizing and problematizing them (Park, 2005).

Another noteworthy point is that the lexical choices of these students’ cultural competence descriptors are like other students’ cultural humility descriptors (i.e., being aware, not making assumptions, and understanding their perspectives) and scholars’ notes on cultural humility (i.e., “being mindful of the value of everyone’s social location” and “sensitive to the power dynamic”) (Abe, 2020; Fisher-Borne et al., 2015; Gottlieb, 2021). The updated version of NASW Standards (2015:10) explicitly includes practicing “cultural humility.” Similar descriptors of both cultural competence and cultural humility may be inevitable in embodying their practice in cross-cultural SW. This speculation is somewhat supported by Stanza 5 in Segment 1 where the student noted: “you can create fancy words for things 100 times over, but if you’re not changing your mindset, you’re not changing your practice and it doesn’t really matter what you’re calling it,” highlighting the importance of the changed view and embodiment of practice rather than debating semantic names. Consistent with this theme, another student explained: “cultural competence is problematic, but if you’re just calling it cultural humility, or any other number of things and not changing the way that you think and your perspective, and then it really doesn’t matter what you’re calling it” (Student 3), indicating the importance of actual embodiment of culturally competent and humble practices.

Faculty focus group

Defining cultural competence and related constructs

Similar to the findings of the student focus groups, dominant discourses in faculty focus groups include opposition to cultural competence and a preference for other constructs. There were some distinctive differences in the faculty focus groups from the student groups including variable discourses of why faculty opposed cultural competence and their choice of alternative constructs. In describing cultural competence, several faculties explicitly noted their opposition to cultural competence by stating that “I actually really dislike the word cultural competence” (Faculty member 8).

As descriptors of cultural competence, one faculty member used lexicons such as “myth,” “a real problem,” and “lacking accountability” as shown in Segment 4.

Segment 4.

(source: Faculty member 3).

This faculty member started their negative view of cultural competence discursively linking it as a “problem” in Stanza 1, followed by the common critiques of cultural competence as unknowable in Stanza 2. The participant underlined the significance of cross-cultural SW as unlearning and challenging biases we hold as practitioners, which is in line with the historical emergence of cultural competence. Cultural competence was promoted to challenge Western-centric notions in SW practice amidst the increasing number of immigrants and diversities in SW practice (Green 1982) and thus understood as anti-oppressive practice (Sakamoto, 2007). Here, the participant deployed declarative sentences using a definite verb (i.e., “is” twice in line 1 rather than tentative verb “may be”) while “mainstreaming” cultural competence as the product of western knowledge. Quoting Sarah Ahmed’s work on institutional racism and diversity policy, critical SW scholars Bhuyan et al. (2017) discuss “mainstreaming” of social justice in SW discourse: Mainstreaming of social justice becomes performative of the profession’s image of combatting discrimination. Similarly, we argue that by the mainstreaming of cultural competence as Western knowledge and dominance and consequently focusing on privileged social workers’ need to learn more or even unlearn marginalized people’s culture, cultural competence is understood as maintaining the status quo of power. Therefore, cultural competence is perceived as being oppressive. Other faculty members also noted the critiques of cultural competence similar to the points made in the student focus groups: “it kind of makes it seem like it’s something you can, like, achieve again, like, a box tick or a certificate you get [laughs]. Uh, doing, like, a training program” (Faculty member 8) and “so even though, cultural competence incorporated, you know, the macro or systemic competence or organizational competence I just found that it seemed to really lead to a focus on the individual, right, at the expense of the systemic” (Faculty member 4). Also, the discourse here echoes the pervasive critiques of cultural competence in the literature (Dean, 2001) and the findings from the student focus groups. Ongoing work to reflect the complex nature of cross-cultural SW was discursively turned into “a myth” and then “a real problem.”

Furthermore, components of cultural competence—awareness and knowledge—are reconstructed in Stanza 4. For example, cultural competence is noted as much focusing on “the awareness of the other.” According to NASW Standards (2015:4), awareness refers to awareness of one’s own social locations, privilege, and power and the impact of these on their work with others (see Standard 2: Self-Awareness) rather than referring to “awareness of others.” Also, knowledge refers to ongoing development of knowledge and understanding of histories, values, and systems in various intersectional diversity (see Standard 3: Cross-Cultural Knowledge), not “knowing the other.” In Stanza 5, lacking accountability was noted as a critique of cultural competence. In addition to little explanation on what accountability means (e.g., outcomes, client satisfaction, or service system changes), it infers that cultural competence may focus on individual accountability as social workers but little organizational accountability for cultural competence. Again, NASW Standards (2015:14) clearly note that:

On the organizational level, there are five essential elements that contribute to a culturally competent system. The system should (1) value diversity, (2) have the capacity for cultural self-assessment, (3) be conscious of the dynamics inherent when cultures interact, (4) institutionalize cultural knowledge, and (5) develop programs and services that reflect an understanding of diversity between and within cultures. These five elements must be manifested in every level of the service delivery system. They should be reflected in attitudes, structures, policies, and services.

Danso (2018) criticized the critiques of cultural competence, and one of his arguments refers to not using rigorous sources when critiquing cultural competence, which was reflected in Stanza 5.

In describing alternative constructs, cultural humility, cultural safety, and cultural responsibility were named. Three faculty members explicitly noted a preference for using cultural humility: “I, I really like, um, just talking about humility from, uh, from all of our interactions” since “as a general entry” it does provide a “space for social, cultural positionality, identity, location to be intersectional,” “push us beyond, uh, one cultural identifier to, um, multiplicity” and “most multi-vocal experiences accounts” (Faculty member 10). Another also noted: “in cultural humility, it’s about really going deeper and reflecting on yourself and the power imbalance” (Faculty member 3). Also, the other proposed “cultural humility perspectives” yet with little clear explanation of why: “they actually get well beyond some of that difference that I was seeing in the work I was doing with that particular group. And can be very helpful to actually bring helping professionals together a little more, and working together, and probably work better with some of their clients too” (Faculty member 5; more details in Segment 5). Except for the passing notes on reflecting power imbalance and intersectionality, little of what proponents of cultural humility suggested was articulated. Rather, general descriptors were used as noted in italics, and various adverbs underlined in this paragraph were discursively deployed to highlight their preference of cultural humility.

A couple of faculty members noted cultural safety as the alternative construct to cultural competence, describing it as “using the opportunity to talk about real sort of like thicker notions of safety” and interrogating “thicker definitions of violence,” and “cultural safety allows me to get at sort of interrogating systemic symbolic violence” (Faculty member 4). Another explained that “cultural safety is something that is not a box to be ticked but a learning journey” and elaborated the experience of teaching SW courses where Indigenous students were allowed in class to speak Inuit languages which have been silenced for generations and the faculty member learned how to translate French to Inuit: “So, this cultural safety is about language. Skills for safety is about the way of learning – learning in circle. I have a lot of concepts that I now understand better in circle than in lines. So, I’m grateful for the way they’re teaching me and something that says mutual learning. It’s not– it’s not something only top down” (Faculty member 7).

Also, another noted cultural responsibility and moral courage as the alternative constructs:

I like to use the word cultural responsibility, cause I think it is a responsibility, an ethical responsibility of the social worker to engage. … I think it forces kind of a reflexibility, into like okay checking myself, checking my privileges, checking my power position … I also like the word moral courage, Cindy Blackstock uses that a lot and I like to use that in my classroom as well, where it’s like it takes courage to be an anti-oppressive social worker, to be actively anti-racist, and to disrupt colonial structure (Faculty member 8).

Both participants using cultural safety or cultural responsibility and moral courage aptly reflected the related literature in Indigenous studies (Fernando and Bennett, 2019; Duthie, 2019). Their position is in line with the critique of cultural competence where systemic violence and colonial structures were little acknowledged, thus little action to disrupt them as part of cross-cultural SW. Indeed, there is no mention of disrupting “systemic violence” and “colonial structures” in NASW Standards (2015).

Interestingly, three faculty members (Faculty members 1, 4, and 5) described a temporal relationship between cultural competence and these alternative terms—at times, constructing the discourse that cultural competence is older and outdated and alternative ones are recent, updated, and thus more advanced (e.g., see Segment 5 below). At other times, all concepts were constructed as an unrealistic task for social workers (e.g., see Faculty member 1 below).

Segment 5.

(source: Faculty member 5).

Stanza 1 explicitly noted the temporal contexts of SW education that distinguish frameworks of CCSWP from one another (“educated at different points in time, and we’re coming at the same issues in very different ways”). In fact, cultural competence and anti-oppressive practice were differentiated being placed at the opposing poles and were discursively exclusive to one another by deploying lexicons such as “very different” and “a whole framework” as if cultural competence is not a structural and anti-oppressive practice. This opposing stance is again discursively noted as complementary to one another in Stanza 2 since the one has something the other is lacking. This then becomes a general statement (“every perspective has its weaknesses, has its strength”) in Stanza 3. However, in Stanza 4, cultural humility was discursively positioned as “unique” from these two frameworks, having “actually get well beyond some of that difference,” and “helping professionals together a little more” than the split between cultural competence and anti-oppressive and even “probably work better” for some clients in CCSWP.

Another faculty member (Faculty member 1) also noted that “I sort of cringed [laughs] when I saw the term cultural competence” and shared years of experiences as an SW educator beginning as the supporter of cultural competence even writing several publications about it and then moved away from it critiquing “my own work on cultural competence” (i.e., “how do you know that you’re practicing in a culturally competent manner?”; “do SW educators have the knowledge and skills to teach whatever cultural competence is?”; and “cultural competence is quite limited in its ability to address structural and systemic issues” such as addressing the generations of racism). This participant acknowledged other alternative terms (i.e., there is, you know, cultural sensitivity, cultural safety, cultural humility and, and there’s all these terms), but raised similar questions and concluded with a critique of cultural competence:

I began to turn away from talking about cultural competence, and I even have questions about what, what is cultural safety? How does one determine what is culturally safe and for whom? I basically have concluded that, that social educators have taken on an unrealistic mandate. … I don't use the term cultural competence. I don't use the term cultural safety. I don't use any of those terms because even the word cultural, uh, can be quite problematic in SW discourse (Faculty member 1).

The faculty member noted the critiques of cultural competence, acknowledged alternative terms, and then questioned them altogether while constructing a discourse of all of them as “unrealistic” and “quite problematic.”

Similarly, another participant discursively connected cultural and social justice work as “fatigue.” After talking about the preference for using cultural safety, this participant noted that “I wonder if we will have the opportunity to talk about– something was raising in the discussion, uh, social justice warrior fatigue, uh, being aware of this possibility, culture– there’s a possibility of cultural fatigue, but also social justice warrior fatigue” (Faculty member 7). Another also noted that “if you really want to unlearn, and if you want a lifelong learning, you have to get out of your safe space and go into a brave space” (Faculty member 3). Critical SW scholars problematized the way some constructs historically and politically paired up with certain discourses and biases, for example, “culture” was deployed to mark something foreign, belonging to marginalized groups, and even deficit (Park, 2005), “feminists’ as angry women (Aadnesgaard, 2020), and “being Black” as being inferior and/or dangerous (Williams, 2001). Discursively connecting projected images, the limitations and critiques of cultural competence, alternative constructs, and even the word “cultural” became discursively portrayed as “unrealistic,” “quite problematic,” not “safe,” and causing “fatigue” in cross-cultural work and social justice work.

Embodied practice of cultural competence and related constructs

Two faculty members noted embodied practice of cross-cultural SW: one especially related to cultural humility and the other related to the application of various terms in practice. For example, one participant said practicing cultural humility means “Really listening to each story, you know, listening to whether it’s clinical practice or it is community practice, listening to the individual story rather than thinking” (Faculty member 3), yet provided little detail on “how.” Instead of promoting one term over others, the other participant elaborated how to apply each of them in working with clients as shown in Segment 6.

Segment 6.

(source: Faculty member 2).

Instead of taking a position with a particular term or framework, this participant noted the importance of “articulating” and being aware of “nuanced differences” in each term, and more importantly its “meaning” with respect to certain clients and social work practice, by highlighting the significance of contextualizing each construct where social workers interact with clients in Stanza 1. Using the direct practice course and teaching assessment in that class as the example, the participant underlined the importance of applying self-awareness (i.e., “uncomfortable asking” and “assumptions”), knowledge, and skills (i.e., how-to have a conversation about sex and sexuality), signaling the embodiment of three components of cultural competence in Stanza 2. Furthermore, in Stanza 3, this faculty member noted the crucial aspect of having students apply these ideas together and having faculty members create this environment where they are “prepared and able and willing to talk about what they don’t know,” signaling the embodiment of cultural humility.

Discussion

Using critical discourse analysis, we examined how SW students and faculty members described prominent frameworks in CCSWP—cultural competence, cultural humility, cultural safety, and other relevant terms, as well as their embodied practices. We also explored the discourses that were constructed in shaping praxis in cross-cultural practice contexts. The main discourses constructed from the student focus groups include the following sequence: the students critiqued cultural competence and expressed a preference for cultural humility. However, in their description of the embodiment of cultural humility (their praxis), they described general practice with an absence of cultural content or awareness. The debates of cultural competence and cultural humility were well captured. However, the dominant critiques of cultural competence rarely reflected the original and current literature (e.g., not making assumptions, being aware of one’s and others’ social locations and power dynamics, cultural knowledge, and skills in multiple levels) but rather appeared to be constructed by the embodied practice of how cultural competence has been taken up in practice (e.g., taking a certain training, then becoming competent, and no time for actual practicing), thus paradoxically locating cultural competence in both oppressive and anti-oppressive practices. Embodied cultural competence and cultural humility are described in vague and general practice terms with a notable absence of cultural awareness or sensitivity, which highlights the critical need to teach how to do culturally competent and humble practice.

It was intriguing to observe how paradoxically the heated debates on cultural competence and cultural humility became less meaningful as the participant moved through speaking turns across the segments. We speculate that, once culturally humble practice was understood as a general practice (i.e., humble and respectful practice such as “just being aware”), changing from cultural to non-cultural general practice (Lee and Bhuyan, 2013) and consequently differences in semantics, theories, and underlying epistemologies became less significant in the end. Underlying the changed views and (general) practice, the frameworks of CCSWP—cultural competence or cultural humility—became meaningless. This discourse from the critiques of cultural competence to the erasure of cross-cultural practice, by promoting general practice instead, was also noted in several included segments. Considering multiple intersectionalities present in cross-cultural inter/actions, any working relationships and contexts are inevitably cross-cultural (Pedersen, 1991). However, at the same time we should not use a reductionistic approach to practice (e.g., since all interactions are cross-cultural and there is no way to be competent, we just do general practice). Rather it would be critical to train students to critically think, reflect, and embody various approaches to doing cross-cultural work.

Similar to the discourses constructed from the student focus groups, the dominant discourse of the faculty focus groups was an opposition to cultural competence. Some of the critiques of cultural competence among the faculty members are similar to the ones among the students as previously mentioned. However, there were unique critiques in the faculty focus groups including mainstreaming of cultural competence as Western knowledge and dominance and focusing on the need of social workers from culturally dominant groups to learn more or even unlearn others’/marginalized people’s culture. In the student focus groups, the alternative preference was mainly cultural humility. However, in the faculty focus groups, the critiques of cultural competence were followed by the preference of various alternative constructs (i.e., cultural safety and cultural responsibilities) and elaborated embodiment of cross-cultural SW, or by dismissing all cultural work as problematic since the alternatives are replacing the now so-called obsolete notion of cultural competence.

Overall, our findings appear to represent current scholarships in CCSWP. From our study, in both student and faculty focus groups, questioning cultural competence resulted in negating cross-cultural practice all together (e.g., distancing, disqualifying its usefulness, treating it as outdated, and dismissing it as simply a check box token gesture or a myth), which reflects the critiques by several scholars (Dean, 2001; Garran and Werkmeister Rozas, 2013). Proposed alternative constructs and their embodied practices were described without any detail around “how to” do CCSWP, which reflects the identified gaps in CCSWP in the relevant literature (Lee et al., 2022; Lee et al., 2019a).

Implications of the study

The findings of the study have several implications for SW practice, education, and research. Social work educators are positioned to shape knowledge in SW practice and influence the next generation of social workers. It would be important to be mindful of the implications of taking a position for certain constructs in practice and resisting the oversimplification of CCSWP, which cannot be fully captured within one construct, theory, or framework. Our findings noted that the constructed discourses around cultural competence, cultural humility, and other constructs in both groups closely reflect the current scholarships in the field. Therefore, it is critical to expand the field of scholarship shifting beyond the discussion of construct and semantic differences to embodied and situated knowledge in practice to foster everyday cross-cultural inter/actions in multiple levels from micro to mezzo to macro practice. For future research, it would be important to conduct an ethnographic study on our pedagogical approaches in CCSWP by observing how pedagogical approaches and contents are managed and delivered in class-in-action. Given the limited description of the embodied practice of cross-cultural SW by both SW students and faculty members, it would be important to do a similar study with practitioners and clients to examine how they reflect on their experience of providing or receiving CCSWP, and how they illustrate with examples of cultural competence or cultural humility in actual practice.

Limitations of the study

This study was based on a small number of participants in five focus groups who are either current MSW students or faculty members in Canada. Thus, the findings of the study are limited in their transferability and relevance to other groups of people in other contexts. Following CDA, the collected data were analyzed based on the researchers’ various epistemological, theoretical, and social locations which have shaped their understanding of CCSWP. We are mindful that our own locations and their impact on the social phenomena under study can be neither bracketed nor encouraged to do so (Tufford and Newman, 2012). During the data analysis, we explicitly acknowledged and openly discussed these limitations.