Identifying Biases in the Practice of Social Work Supervisees: Findings from a Grounded Theory Exploratory Study

Social work's ethical mandate to engage in social justice, coupled with its fraught history of complicity in oppressive policies, makes critical the disruption of bias and racism within social work practice. As influencers and guides in clinical learning, social work supervisors have the potential to disrupt racism. There is an emerging body of literature on how to effectively engage in culturally-conscious social work supervision. However, research on anti-racism supervisory strategies in social work is limited and predominantly conceptual. This exploratory qualitative study's aim was to identify strategies used by social work supervisors who self-identify as "anti-racist" to disrupt racism in the practice of their supervisees. The major findings of this study include a foundational element in this process: the identification of biases. Based on these findings, this article outlines strategies that social workers can use to detect bias in their staff, as well as other implications for social work practice and research.