Challenging Perceptions of Academic Research as Bias Free: Promoting a Social Justice Framework in Social Work Research Methods Courses

The required research courses in social work education are, perhaps, one of the more difficult content areas in which to infuse direct teaching and knowledge acquisition of multiculturalism. The study presented in this article examines the outcomes of systematically addressing social justice within a required master's level social work research methods course. The study tests the efficacy of a two-part teaching module that seeks to increase student abilities for critical consumption of academic research (n = 88) as it relates to the notion of bias neutrality. Results suggest that students decreased in their belief that academic research is necessarily bias free over the course of the class, and that students from marginalized groups showed a significantly larger decrease than did other students.