putting field education in context

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Putting Field Education inContextSylvia Sims Gray MSW, PhD a & Lynn M. Nybell MSW,PhD aa Eastern Michigan University , 317 Marshall,Ypsilanti, MI, 48197, USAPublished online: 07 Sep 2008.

To cite this article: Sylvia Sims Gray MSW, PhD & Lynn M. Nybell MSW, PhD (2007)Putting Field Education in Context, Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 27:1-2,213-232, DOI: 10.1300/J067v27n01_14

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Putting Field Education in Context:Preparing Students for Practice

in an Urban Center

Sylvia Sims GrayLynn M. Nybell

ABSTRACT. Social workers in urban areas attempt to carry out the pro-fession’s commitment to social change and social justice amid growinginequality, racial polarization, and a physical environment that reflectsfears and antipathy toward poor people who reside there. The authors ar-gue that changing urban conditions have prompted a need for innovativemodels of field practice that specifically aim to prepare students for socialwork practice in the city. The paper describes a “mobile seminar” designedto enhance the field education of students preparing for practice with chil-dren and families in Detroit’s inner city. doi:10.1300/ J067v27n01_14 [Ar-ticle copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service:1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: <[email protected]> Website:<http://www.HaworthPress.com> © 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rightsreserved.]

KEYWORDS. Field education, urban, city, race, space, inequality

Sylvia Sims Gray, MSW, PhD (E-mail: [email protected]) and Lynn M. Nybell,MSW, PhD (E-mail: [email protected]) are Professors of Social Work, both atthe Eastern Michigan University, 317 Marshall, Ypsilanti, MI 48197.

Sylvia Sims Gray acknowledges the support of the Skillman Foundation for theJames P. Comer Project in the Detroit Public Schools. Lynn Nybell acknowledgesthe support of the American Association of University Women American Fellowshipprogram for a Summer Publication award.

Journal of Teaching in Social Work, Vol. 27(1/2) 2007Available online at http://jtsw.haworthpress.com

© 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.doi:10.1300/J067v27n01_14 213

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At the close of the profession’s first century, social workers wereprompted to take stock of collective accomplishments, lost opportunities,and future challenges. Several observers underscored the extent to whichsocial work is being reshaped dramatically in the context of economic,political, and social restructuring referred to as “globalization” (Hopps &Morris, 2000; Iatridis, 2000; Reisch, 1999, 2000). As members of a pro-fession rooted in the urban centers of the industrial era and steeped in amodern faith in the constructive potential of government intervention toameliorate the economic and social problems found there, social work-ers now confront a new order variously characterized as post-industrial(Bluestone & Harrison, 1982), post-welfare (Cloward, 1996; Kingfisher,2001), and post-metropolitan (Soja, 2000). Social workers in urban areasnow attempt to carry out the profession’s commitment to social change andsocial justice in the context of new forms of urbanization and dramaticallyreconfigured social policy (Jarman-Rohde, McFall, Kolar, & Strom, 1997;Reisch & Jarman-Rohde, 2000; Reisch & Rivera, 1999).

The aim of this paper is to examine the need for innovative models offield education in urban centers and to describe one effort to address thisneed. The first section of this paper briefly outlines three discourses thatattempt to characterize the nature of change in the contemporary urbancondition, and suggests some of the implications of these changes forsocial work field education. The paper then describes a program de-signed and carried out by one of the authors [Gray] to prepare studentsfor social work field practice in Detroit’s inner city. In conclusion, thepaper notes strengths and limitations of this effort for improving fieldeducation for social work practice in urban settings.

CHANGING URBAN CONDITIONS

A literature in urban studies has burgeoned as geographers, urbanplanners, architects, sociologists, and anthropologists have attempted tocritically examine the new and unexpected city and regional structuresand forms that have emerged over the last 30 years (Soja, 2000). Someurban scholars have attempted to understand and analyze the forcesgenerating new processes of urbanization (e.g., Bluestone & Harrison,1982; Harrison, 1988; Harvey, 1990; Massey, 1984; Sassen, 1994) whileothers have attempted to describe the new patterns of urban form andsocial order that are emerging in the wake of globalization and economicrestructuring (e.g., Jackson, 1985; Kling, Olin, & Poster, 1991; Sudjic,

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1992; Wilson, 1996). Other more interpretive works have examined theeffects of emerging geographical and social urban structures on the ev-eryday lives of individuals and communities in urban space (e.g., Davis,1990, 1998; Blakely & Snyder, 1997; Low, 1999). From the point of viewof social work, this burgeoning body of scholarship stimulates new waysto conceptualize the challenges and possibilities of practice in urban set-tings. While critical literature on contemporary transformations in citiesand metropolitan areas is much too extensive to adequately summarizehere, three important discourses are notable.

First, urban scholars have noted pronounced changes in the spatialorganization of cities over the last 30 years–changes that have modifiedthe urban condition and the ways we interpret it (Soja, 2000). Strugglesto represent these changes have spawned a new vocabulary as observersseek to encapsulate what is different about cities today. For example,Castells (1996) points to the emergence of “megacities,” using this termto underscore both the enormous size and the increasingly polycentricstructure of the world’s largest urban forms. In the United States, thereare now at least 40 metropolitan areas with more than 1 million inhab-itants (Soja, p. 236). As of the 1990 census, for the first time these mil-lion-or-more megacities are home to majority of the nation’s population(Soja, p. 237).

With few exceptions, the most rapidly growing areas in megacitieswere in suburban rings surrounding the central city, a dynamic whichobservers have sought to capture with terms like “the outer city”(Muller, 1981) or “post-suburbia” (Kling, Olin, & Poster, 1991). Thesenotions point to the urbanization of the suburbs and the decline ofthe significance of the “downtown” or “central business district” in theolder urban core. Although decentralization of industrial productionand employment occurred throughout earlier decades of the twentiethcentury, it was only in the last third of the century that the regionalbalance of industrialization in many urban areas was reversed, as themajority of jobs and production became located in the outer ringsrather than in the inner urban core. It is this realization of the “cityturned inside out” that fuels perceptions that a new urban form isemerging (Sudjic, 1992).

A second discourse centers on the concurrent and interdependentreshaping of the urban social order that has accompanied its geograph-ical transformation. One of the most profound findings in the study ofcontemporary urban transformations is that “inherent in the new ur-banization processes has been an intensification of socio-economic in-equalities” (Soja, 2000, p. 265). There is a great deal of evidence that

Sylvia Sims Gray and Lynn M. Nybell 215

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supports the conclusion that inequality and racial polarization have in-creased in the last 30 years. For example, a report issued by the MiltonEisenhower Foundation 30 years after the 1968 Kerner Commission de-livered its judgment that the United States was moving toward “two so-cieties, one black, one white–separate and unequal” argued that this gaphas not only persisted but has become wider and increasingly urban inits expression (Soja, p. 266). The Foundation’s panel experts argue thatinner cities have become America’s poorhouses (Harris & Curtis, 1998).The forces that have turned the geography of the city “inside out” havealso turned it “outside in” as residents of the city’s inner core are in-creasingly trapped in the urban core and treated as peripheral to thebroader society (Harris & Curtis, 1998; Soja, 2000; Wilson, 1996).

This high degree of urban racial segregation has been accompaniedby a powerful dominant racial ideology that transposes negative racialstereotypes onto the residential space of people of color but not whites.Haymes (1995) argues that “In the context of American cities the cate-gory of ‘race’ is used metaphorically as a way to juxtapose the different‘social spaces’ that make up the urban landscape, describing some as‘normal’ and ‘ordered’ and others as not” (p. 4). The social constructionof racial segregation portrays urban deprivation as a moral problem de-flecting attention away from the power structure, creating and sustain-ing the inequalities dividing black and white Americans (Haymes, p. 9).Transposing negative stereotypes onto the residential space of blacksbut not whites incorrectly suggests that the urban problems are spatiallybounded in poor urban centers, rather than stemming from an unequaldistribution of resources and burdens across the metropolitan area.

The third discourse describes the transformation of lived experiencesin the urban areas that have accompanied the geographical and social re-structuring of urban areas. The most influential writer in this vein, MikeDavis, has emphasized the intensification of social and spatial controlbrought about by privatization, surveillance, repression of movement,and security-obsessed design in the built environment of urban areas(1990). Davis presents this “fortressing” of city space as an integralpart of the latest phase of urban development, in the context of eco-nomic and social restructuring. In his work on “Fortress L.A.,” Davis(1990) documents the proliferation of gates and security systems inmiddle-class and wealthy communities, the segregation of the down-town “urban renaissance” from the poor neighborhoods that surround it,the destruction of public space and amenities, and the celebration ofpoliced super-malls and mega-structures. The decline of public spacehas been accompanied by an erosion of the liberal vision of public space


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as a desirable location for the mixing of classes, races, and ethnicities.As a result, Davis notes the radical shrinking of public amenities, dere-liction of parks, segregation of beaches, and abandonment of librariesand playgrounds in Los Angeles (Davis, 1990, p. 227). He suggests thatthese public amenities are being replaced by “upscale, pseudo-publicspaces” that are “full of invisible signs warning off the underclass‘Other’ ” (p. 226).

Davis’ compelling depictions of transformation of urban space havespawned both admiration and debate, with some critics suggestingthat his insightful vision is too ominous or politically disabling (Soja,2000). However, his work raises important questions for social workabout how a security-obsessed and increasing socially and spatially in-sulating urban context transforms the possibilities and problems of theprofession. Davis illuminates the ways that restricted interracial and in-terclass contact in American social life has increased inter-group ten-sion and fear and created obstacles to alliances that cross race andclass lines–dynamics of enormous significance for social work practice(Reisch & Jarman-Rohde, 2000).

This spatial reconfiguration of urban life has been accompaniedby the growing significance of the media (Daskalakis, Waldheim, &Young, 2001). For example, observers of Detroit note that “media cov-erage of urban events has come to supplant the lived experience of thoseevents themselves” as suburban residents are “afforded knowledge oftheir own (former) city streets not through lived experience, but ratherthrough coverage: the displacement of reality itself in favor of its televi-sual representation” (Daskalakis et al., 2001, p. 133). Observers notethat many of these media images fuel an “ecology of fear” that per-meates metropolitan space (Davis, 1998) while others generate a nostal-gic (but powerless) lament for the city as it used to be (Daskalakiset al., 2001).

The physical and social walling off of urban areas and the substitu-tion of media representations of the city for direct engagement with itmeans that most suburban residents have few opportunities to directlyexperience the material dislocation of inner city neighborhoods, tograsp the ordinariness of life there, or to witness ways in which urbanresidents resist the oppressive meanings and forms of the inner city byconstructing other images and representations of place. Neighborhoodcenters, day care programs, clinics, employment programs, and socialagencies constructed by inner city residents are “homeplaces” as bellhooks (1990) describes them, offering alternative visions of the urbanpolitical and social order. These inner city associations, churches, and


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grassroots organizations struggle to re-envision post-industrial urbanspaces and remake urban neighborhoods (Boggs, 2003), mostly outsideof the focus of the media or the view of suburban residents.

THE NEED FOR NEW MODELSOF FIELD EDUCATION

IN THE URBAN CENTER

The argument of this paper is that geographical, social, and culturalrestructuring of urban areas has important and insufficiently examinedimplications for social work practice and education. Trends documen-ted by urban scholars suggest a profound reshaping of the context inwhich social workers and clients meet, a transformation of the journeystaken to these meetings, and a likely escalation of the levels of fear andmistrust which often pervade these interactions (Nybell & Gray, 2003).Scholarship describing urban conditions prompts questions about thedegree to which material and cultural transformation of public space haseroded the “common ground” upon which social workers and their in-ner city clients meet and or impacted the engagement of universities inurban centers. It reminds us that social workers and social work facultywho reside outside the inner city are likely to be increasingly estrangedand fearful about the experiences of city dwellers, and that city residentshave reason to feel increasingly mistrustful of outsiders. These readingsalso imply that in order for social workers to engage in advocacy withurban communities, they must be educated about emerging politicalrealities and possibilities in urban regions (Reisch & Jarman-Rohde,2000; Reisch & Rivera, 1999).

Since social work in the United States emerged among urban popula-tions with urban issues at the center of the profession’s focus, it issurprising to find few discussions of the impact of conditions of con-temporary urban life on social work field education in the professionalliterature (Reisch & Jarman-Rohde, 2000). The most extended discus-sions of contemporary urban contexts in the last two decades occurredin discussions of the community development movement (Coulton,2000). However, Reisch and Jarman-Rohde suggest that discussions ofurban community practice too often “romanticize” this work and giveshort shrift to its tensions, conflicts, and injustices. In an exceptionaldiscussion of the racial and ethical conflicts in their own urban commu-nity-based research efforts in San Francisco, Reisch and Rivera (1999)argue that the profession has failed to come to grips with the increasing


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stratification in our cities, with the depth of anti-urban sentiment, andwith the realities of an urban climate of fear, tension, and mistrust thatinevitably affect faculty and students.

To address this omission, Reisch and Jarman-Rohde (2000) call forinnovative models of field practice to prepare students to practice in urbancommunities. They favor models that engage faculty and students tojoin community agencies to devise approaches to field education that pro-vide students with a realistic base of knowledge and skill to work to-ward social justice in the urban center. It is, after all, in field practicewhere students apply the knowledge, skills, and values acquired in theclassroom to changing practice realties (Jarman-Rohde, McFall, Kolar, &Strom, 1997). It is in field education that the artificial and increasinglyconstraining educational dichotomies between theory and practice, actionand reflection, and individual and community-based practice, might besurmounted or set aside. And it is field education where students havethe opportunity to engage directly with individuals, families, and com-munities of the inner city.

This paper is our attempt to affirm the importance of such an under-taking and to contribute to it. The following sections of this paper de-scribe efforts of one of the authors to enhance the field education ofstudents preparing to practice in the inner city by designing and con-ducting a “mobile seminar” for students engaged in field placement inDetroit.

DEVISING A “MOBILE SEMINAR” IN DETROIT:CONTEXT, AIMS, AND STRATEGIES

One of the authors, Gray, took a lead role in devising an educationalprogram to prepare students at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) forpractice in the inner city of Detroit. EMU is a state university of about20,000 students located in Southeastern Michigan on the edge of thelarger Detroit metropolitan area. EMU is located in Ypsilanti, a citywhose economic fortunes have declined as the auto industry closed andrelocated many plants and factories in the southeast Michigan region.EMU developed a BSW program in 1973 and a MSW program in 1993.Social work students who attend EMU are mainly residents of the south-eastern Michigan area, with some students coming from the region’ssmall towns and others from Detroit’s central city or its suburban ring.The social work program has developed a network of field placements


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that span the region, including urban, suburban, and small town place-ment sites in the larger metropolitan context.

The Detroit metropolitan area is one of 10 megacities in the UnitedStates with a population of more than 3 million. The metropolitan re-gion sprawls across the national border and into Canada. The shiftinggeography of the metropolitan area exemplifies the dramatic transfor-mation of urban regions that has taken place across the twentiethcentury. From 1900 to 1950, the population of the city of Detroit grewfrom under 285,700 to 1.8 million. And then, from 1950 to 2000, thepopulation of Detroit decreased from over 1.8 million to 951,270 whileits suburban ring expanded (Daskalakis et al., 2001, p. 14). Patterns ofdeindustrialization left the city of Detroit rife with unemployment, poverty,abandoned factories, empty office buildings, and declining populations(Darden, Hill, Thomas, & Thomas, 1987). Though deindustrializationis sometimes portrayed as unmitigated decline, in fact, disinvestmentsin Detroit’s urban core have been accompanied by the growth and ur-banization of its suburbs. While in 1990 Detroit ranked first among thenation’s large cities in poverty, with one-third of its residents below thepoverty line, residents of Detroit’s suburban ring were, on average, amongthe nation’s most prosperous (Farley, Danzinger, & Holzer, 2000). In1998, the average income in the city was less than half the average incomeof the surrounding suburbs (Daskalakis et al., 2001, p. 14).

Observations about growing social and racial inequality in Americanlife are convincing perspective from the standpoint of the Detroit re-gion, which is more residentially segregated than any other metropolisin the United States (Farley et al., 2000, p. 161). Despite the recentgrowth of black suburban populations, African Americans constituted79% of central city residents in 1998. Meanwhile, 78% of the popula-tion in the surrounding suburbs was white (Daskalakis et al., 2001,p. 14). The standard “index of dissimilarity” used to measure residentialsegregation for residential Detroit is 89–not far from the 100 that wouldresult from complete apartheid (Farley et al., 2000, p. 161).

The reconfiguration of space in Detroit is striking. Detroit still hashundreds of churches, a pleasant riverfront, and some beautiful neighbor-hoods. However, one of its most striking features is the dismantlementand removal of the city’s abandoned factories, houses, and neighbor-hoods. As Hoffman (2001) notes, “un-building” has surpassed buildingas the city’s major architectural activity (p. 101). Between 1978 and1998, only 9,000 building permits were issued for new homes in Detroit,while over 108,000 demolition permits were offered (Daskalakis et al.,2001, p. 13). In 1990 alone, the city spent $25 million on the removal of


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abandoned houses and other structures, and in the 1990s, the city lostabout 1% of housing stock each year to arson (Daskalakis et al., 2001,p. 14).

Resurgent efforts to save or recover Detroit continue. New sports sta-diums and casinos are celebrated as downtown destinations for the subur-ban population. The impact of these revitalization efforts is debated, seenby promoters as an important key to solving the city’s problems of de-cline and by critics as “superficial surfaces of urban refinement” that are“only a block deep and intended for easy access of the suburban highwaysystems” (Daskalakis et al., 2001, p. 13). Alongside these projects tore-invent Detroit as a destination for conventioneers and suburban visitorsare grassroots efforts to re-imagine the city “from the bottom up.” For de-spite its abandonment by so much industry and commerce, Detroit is stillhome to hundreds of community and church-based associations andthousands of committed activists (Mast, 1994; Boggs, 2003). The major-ity of Detroiters are African Americans who had learned from their par-ents and grandparents that “harshness of racial oppression could be partlywithstood by strong family, church, and neighborhood bonds” (Mast,1994, p. 69). These community- and church-based associations are possiblepoints of political pressure and have the potential to form the democraticbase of widespread citizen involvement, a fact that is not missed by com-munity organizers in Detroit (Mast, 1994).

In facing contemporary urban challenges, Detroit activists are acute-ly aware of the city’s historic place as an example of the possibilities ofindustrial civilization, and therefore as a place to re-invent what a citymeans in the post-industrial order. For example, Grace Lee and JamesBoggs describe the significance of the efforts of a coalition of Detroitactivists and community groups who are seeking to revitalize the citiesby building up from the grassroots. They argue that in so doing, “We’reresponding to the historical questions that are on everybody’s mind.What is the purpose of cities? What is the purpose of people when in-dustry no longer needs them?” (Boggs & Boggs, 1994, p. 15). Despitethe depth of the difficulties that confronct this effort, many Detroit com-munity leaders and organizers express resourcefulness and hope. Forexample, Bill Harris explains, “The spirit of Detroit is still here. Peoplelove Detroit. They love it for what it was and because it was all that itwas they know what its possibilities are” (Harris, quoted in Mast, 1994,p. 73).


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RETHINKING FIELD EDUCATIONFOR STUDENTS IN INNER CITY DETROIT:

AIMS AND STRATEGIES

Over the course of two academic years, 23 EMU social work studentscarried out field internships in the inner city while attending a Detroit-based seminar for two hours each week. Participation in the seminarwas considered part of the student’s field placement obligation. The aimof the seminar was to enable students to think critically about the waysthat increased stratification of cities, the depth of anti-urban sentiment,and the realities of racialized fear, tension, and mistrust (Reisch &Jarman-Rohde, 2000) had affected their ability to practice effectivelyin the urban environment of Detroit, and to encourage students in thedevelopment of social justice-oriented practice in the urban center. Inorder to achieve this broader aim, the seminar was designed with thefollowing objectives: (1) To enable students to analyze how the metro-politan geographies, experiences, and opportunities of Detroit havebeen transformed in recent decades with widely differential effects ondifferent neighborhoods and populations; (2) to enable students and fac-ulty to assess the ways in which their own life experiences and world-views have been shaped by their experiences in the Detroit metropolitanarea; (3) to enable students and faculty to develop first-hand knowledgeof the history of local development, the powerful forces that had shapedand enforced urban segregation and inequality, and the grassroots ef-forts to forge a more inclusive future for the city; and (4) to enable stu-dents to envision themselves as agents invested in contributing to amore inequitable and socially just urban environment in the Detroitmetropolitan region.

The students’ field internships, based in inner city schools, providedstudents a chance to work closely with families and children who weregrappling with poverty, poor housing and homelessness, limited trans-portation and poor city services, as well as with those in need of familyintervention or academic support. The Detroit public schools in whichstudents carried out their internships varied significantly from eachother. For example, one school on the city’s southwest side has a raciallymixed student population of 700 students, including African Americans,Arab Americans, and whites, with the majority of students identifyingas Hispanic. The school identified a serious problem with gang vio-lence; school personnel believed that gangs were targeting students whoattended this school and many students were afraid to walk the neigh-borhood unaccompanied. School doors were locked and school security


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was at a heightened level. Another school, located on the city’s eastside,has over 800 students, the large majority African American. The schoolbuilding was old and deteriorated and the nearby neighborhood wasimpoverished, with many dilapidated and abandoned buildings withinit. Teachers explained that 70% of the children in the school have beendiagnosed with lead poisoning, a condition that affected the children’sabilities and behaviors. Another school is located on the west side in anAfrican American community where housing values ranged from $20,000to $400,000 in “gentrified” areas. Staff in this school made special effortsto offer an enriched curriculum in science and humanities while strug-gling with the widely disparate economic and social circumstances ofenrolled children.

Three central assumptions guided the development of the seminar.First, it was assumed that students could not be prepared for urban fieldpractice by means of texts alone but must be engaged with the materialrealities of the city itself as well as with the oral accounts of the city thatthey regularly encountered. Students considering an urban field place-ment typically have little opportunity to openly discuss how they havebeen shaped by their experiences (or lack of experience) in the urbancenter, or to assess the opinions of the city offered by families andfriends or publicized in the media. Since fear of inner cities is a widelyaccepted form of racial discourse (Goldberg, 1993), there is little doubtthat students planning an urban field placement encounter stories of fearand warning of danger as they prepare for their internship. An educationstrategy was devised to explicitly surface and address these stories inthe course of the field project.

Second, it was assumed that faculty as well as students would locatethemselves within the city itself in order to teach from and about it. Itwas assumed not only that students needed more exposure to contentabout changing urban conditions but that the location in which thesediscussions take place is significant. If social work faculty and studentsare not engaged with city residents while talking about them, there is arisk of reproducing messages of distance and estrangement while tryingto overcome them. Furthermore, students required means by which toengage with inner city residents who were continuing to sustain familiesand create community in the urban center.

Finally, it was assumed that students engaged in practice must thinkcritically about the economic, social, cultural forces at work in innercities. While instruction on these “macro factors” often takes place inde-pendently of instruction on social work direct practice methods, in fact,students required an understanding of how these forces shape and


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constrain the possibilities of daily practice (Reisch & Jarman-Rohde,2000).

THE SEMINAR

Recruitment efforts aimed at EMU social work students’ placementwere undertaken with the aim of attracting a diverse group of students tofield placements at schools in the Detroit. Of the 23 student interns whoultimately enlisted in this effort, two-thirds were white and the rest wereAfrican American; 22 were women and 1 was a man; 18 were under-graduate students and 4 were graduate students. Some of the AfricanAmerican students were past or present residents of Detroit; these stu-dents were generally graduates of Detroit public schools themselves.Most of the white students grew up in suburban areas of the metropol-itan area, or smaller, more rural areas outside of it. All of the studentshad an interest in school social work, and participated in the initiative inorder to gain experience in schools. Less than half had initially had astrong initial interest in work in an urban environment.

The initial session of the seminar occurred on the campus, before stu-dents began their internships in the city. During this initial session, theinstructor established the assumption that all residents of the region areexposed to mainstream media, rumors, and in many instances, familystories which conveyed fear and prejudice about Detroit and its resi-dents, and that the class was an opportunity to rethink our experiencesand relationship to the city and its people. She underscored the relation-ship of values, beliefs, and attitudes about the city, and about its pre-dominantly poor African American residents to each student’s potentialfor social work practice. The instructor also acknowledged that stu-dents’ race and life experiences positioned them somewhat differentlyin the region, and encouraged students to have honest and respectful di-alogue about their own differences. Students were encouraged to de-velop a sense of themselves as a group, taking time each week to sharetheir experiences, ideas, and resources with each other.

After the initial seminar meeting, the seminar was convened in thecity of Detroit. The seminar frequently assembled in a meeting room inthe public schools’ administrative facilities in the central city, but onother occasions, students met in local schools or at various agencies, lo-cal businesses, and grassroots organizations in the city. Social workstudents navigated their own vehicles to work and to meeting sites.Acquiring the skills and confidence to move confidently around the


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metropolitan area was seen as fundamental to the success of a socialwork internship in the city. Seminar students patronized neighborhoodbusinesses and met at inner city restaurants to eat–often eating soul foodor ethnic food, as well as mainstream fare. Students, of course, had vari-ous degrees of experience and sophistication in the urban area. AfricanAmerican students from Detroit often volunteered to drive their col-leagues into the city the first couple of times, or patiently routed themfrom one point to another. Though these skills in negotiating urban spacehave frequently been “taken for granted” in social work education, butgiven the degree to which students’ life experiences had been raciallystructured and limited, these competencies could not be assumed.

Reflective Questions

Each week in the seminar, students were assigned a “reflective ques-tion” to which they responded. The answers to these questions weresubmitted to the instructor regularly. The initial questions used wereadapted from the work of Pinderhughes (1989). They were adapted tosurface issues specific to the Detroit metropolitan area. Examples ofthese questions included:

In what sort of community did you grow up?

What ethnic or racial groups were represented in that community?

How did your family see itself as like or different from families ofother groups?

What is your earliest image of color as a racial or ethnic factor?

What have you heard about Detroit?

What do you expect to see when you visit neighborhoods in Detroit?

Several of your field placements are located in communities wherehousing conditions are poor. To what do you attribute these poorconditions?

If you were to describe the students in your school to someoneelse, what would you say?

What do you think can be done to change things in the city of Detroit?


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Answers to some of the earliest questions revealed that, as the de-mography of the region would predict, the majority of white studentswere from homogenous suburban or rural communities. Among the an-swers to these questions were these fairly typical responses:

I grew up in a very small community. My town has probably 3000people. For high school we consolidated with a neighboring townof about 10,000 people. The major industry is farming. There isonly one African American family between two towns and severalHispanic families. The majority of people are white, and their reli-gious background in Catholic. The nearest shopping center is onehalf hour away.

Some students had themselves been part of the exodus from Detroitcity to its suburbs, for example:

I have been a member of several kinds of communities. I started inan urban setting then moved to the suburbs.

African American students in the region described growing up in thecity or in the working-class suburbs of Detroit. For example,

I grew up in African American communities where the majority ofparents went to work every morning and didn’t return until late inthe evenings. Children got to know each other primarily throughgoing to school together and then by who they lived close to, orwere related to. Everyone basically stayed to themselves. Therewasn’t really a sense of community bonding.

Many of the white students had never or rarely visited Detroit, againan index the degree of isolation and segregation in the region shaped thelife experience of future social workers. On the opening day of fieldplacement, students were asked to respond to the question, “What haveyou heard about Detroit?” Some examples of their replies included thefollowing:

I have heard Detroit is bad, dangerous–a dump. I have been warnedabout my safety. Most everything is negative. The only positive Ihave heard is in reference to the past.


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I have heard Detroit is a very big and dangerous city. Crime ratesbeing the highest in America. The last couple times coming intoDetroit, people have kept saying whatever you do if you’re a whitewoman don’t stop and ask for directions. That it is very dangerousfor a white woman.

I have heard that Detroit is one of it not the worst city in the Uni-ted States–that it is the murder capital of the world. I’ve also heardthat the main activities that exist in Detroit are gangs, drugs, andcriminals.

I have heard mostly negative things about Detroit. I have hearda white woman is the most hated thing in Detroit.

Student’s openness about these stories and images allowed them tobe raised for discussion. The instructor prompted students to examinehow these stories impacted their ability to see children and families inDetroit as neighbors, as the next generation of professionals and leadersof their community. Contributing to the future of Detroit, school chil-dren required coming to terms not only with inequitable facilities andresources, but also with these dominant racist stories that reflect andpromote the abandonment of hope about the potential contributions ofthese children.

Knowledge Building

The seminar moved back and forth between these reflective oppor-tunities and a scholarly study of the economic, political, and social de-velopment of Detroit. The impact of macro forces like globalization,deindustrialization, and racial and economic polarization were consid-ered as a context for what students were experiencing and witnessing inlocal school communities. Materials in urban studies, sociology, andeconomics, which are often marginalized in social work practice educa-tion, were centered here. Topics for seminar discussions included:

The history of uneven regional development;

Detroit then and now: The impact of the exodus from the city;

Inequality and cultural vulnerability: The example of education inthe post-industrial order;


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The centrality of race in the history of Detroit;

Strengths and struggles of African American families in Detroit;

The media and the African American community in Detroit; and

Providing school social work services in Detroit.

When students returned to their school communities following thesereadings and discussions, they entered with a new lens that allowedthem to articulate how the very nature of children’s lives (and, in differ-ent ways, their own) had been affected by the city’s economic andpolitical plight.

Tours and Visits

The seminar incorporated tours of the city and visits to grassrootsorganizations, mainstream institutions, and city landmarks. Throughthese experiences, students were encouraged to see beyond the limitedmedia portrayals of the city typically available to them in local media.Students were able to observe for themselves the variation within thecity–from neighborhoods that were abandoned and gutted by fire, tomanicured gentrifying areas, to streets of two family flats and row flats, tonew housing developments. Students saw commercial projects, business-es, downtown revitalization efforts, and historical structures. They alsosaw the ruins of once important factories, train stations, and businesses.

Visits were an especially important aspect of the seminar. Studentsvisited mainstream institutions that provide important resources toschool social workers, including the Department of Social Services andthe Department of Health. They also visited grassroots agencies, oper-ated by and for community members. These agencies were particularlyimportant, because workers in these sites conveyed alternative views ofthe city, its history and its future. The sites visited ranged from COTS,Detroit’s largest homeless shelter, to Operation Get-Down, a multi-servicecommunity-based agency that provides services to children and youth,adult education, homeless services, a neighborhood resource corps anda “cultural marketplace” to culturally significant sites like Motown,which tells the story of what this music giant meant to Detroit.

The discussions that students held with community residents, clients,and administrators challenged student stereotypes and perceptions. Several


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students commented that these visits gave them renewed hope and vi-sion. When asked about their response to the community tours, studentscommented:

The tours helped me realize the depths of people’s struggles andhow much people need helpful, efficient and quality services thatpreserve their self-respect and self-worth.

And:

It was very helpful to get a first-hand view of some community-based agencies. It helped me to get a feeling for some of the strengthsthat are in place and working for people that just aren’t really obvious.

It was evident that students observed alternative views of the city andits residents built into the assumptions of programs like these that theydescribed.

By the end of the effort, students saw the city quite differently thanthey did at the beginning of their studies. When asked, “What do youthink can be done to change things?” students responded:

Revitalization of the area is very possible. Recently, there havebeen some community groups and neighborhood clubs started.These people are ready to take back their neighborhood.

Create more decent-paying jobs and rebuild the city! And removethe false stereotypes, comments, and phrases.

The people need to feel that they can go somewhere in life. If youcan start fixing up some of the houses it could have a domino ef-fect. Economic opportunities have to be offered, and the stigmaand attitudes [toward] these communities must become positive.

In these comments, students reveal an awareness of the oppressiveeconomic, political, and cultural realities that impinge on city residents.They also have moved away from the idea that inner city residentsare “the problem” and locate the problem within a broader context–in-cluding the powerful dominant views of city residents. As a result oftheir intimate exposure to the city, students became critical of popular


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culture and media representations that “blamed the victims” of economicdislocation. Students became advocates for the urban community.

IMPLICATIONS

In this paper, we have attempted to draw out implications of the bur-geoning literature on critical urban studies for field placement, and toillustrate a strategy for infusing this content into the field education ofstudents carrying out internships in the inner city of Detroit. This effortwas limited by a focus on a single metropolitan area, by the involvementof a relatively small number of students in this effort, by a focus only onfield education, and by the limited ongoing engagement of the institu-tion of EMU in Detroit’s urban center.

Nevertheless, this paper sketches out a literature and an approach oneducational strategy that may be of use to other faculty who aim to pre-pare students for fieldwork in the urban center. Changes observed instudent perceptions and behavior suggest that there is value of ap-proaches that engage students and faculty in urban centers, enable themto become directly involved in the material dilemmas of client lives, andbegin to see themselves as change agents in that context. Clearly, the re-sponse of the university in general, and social work departments inparticular, to conditions of urban apartheid must be about more thancurricular reform. To meet the challenge of the changing urban condi-tion, as social work faculty we must devise new ways to help studentsformulate and institutionalize an alternative political vision of a just andequitable society. We must blend realism and hope in efforts to preparestudents for urban practice. This paper outlines a strategy of fieldeducation that represents one small possible step toward such a vision.

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putting field education in context

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