Abolitionist Perspectives in School Social Work: Moving Toward Liberation Through the Abolition of Oppressive Frameworks

Exclusionary, pathologizing, and dehumanizing policies, practices, and procedures continue to shape an educational ecosystem that reproduces injustice. In this paper, a paradigm shift is proposed for school social work practice – toward the abolition of oppressive frameworks. This article journeys through the origins of the profession shaped by the visiting teacher movement to the foundational links of behaviorism, deficit-based ideology, and white normative saviorism. The historical components of school social work are linked to contemporary roles that sustain the status quo and reinforce inequities. The dimensions of inequity are situated amid neoliberalism, exclusion, lingering pandemic challenges, education censorship, attacks on youth rights, and the disparate effects on minoritized youth. School social work educational preparation and training are examined, to document how state certification standards may exacerbate the allegiance to punitive, pathologizing and criminalizing frameworks such as exclusionary discipline. In conclusion, social work implications are provided to re-align practice toward policy-driven, macro-focused, youth-centered, preventative, and justice-oriented practice to build ecological, holistic, and healing-based initiatives toward the abolition of oppressive frameworks.