TY - CHAP A1 - Afeworki Abay, Robel A1 - Rodríguez Lugo, Sara A1 - Kleibl, Tanja A1 - Klages, Anna-Lisa T1 - Methodological and Pedagogical Implications of Decolonizing Social Work T2 - Decolonial Methodologies in Social Work: Foregrounding Pluriversalism in Teaching and Research N2 - The fact that the coloniality of power and knowledge (Quijano; 2000; Mignolo, 2007, 2011; Grosfoguel, 2013) has only been addressed poorly in Social Work contributes to what Paulo Freire (1970: 12) referred to as “a culture of silence”. A culture of silence exists where those who are oppressed are not heard in society, and where a lack of knowledge about their contexts creates a high risk for the perpetuation of racism, discrimination, and the violent process of ‘blaming the victim’. Research methodologies and teaching formats in Social Work have always been embedded in the colonial archives of Eurocentric knowledge (Quijano; 2000; Mbembe, 2016; Grosfoguel, 2013). As Freire (1970: 5) argues that “The social worker, as much as the educator, is not a neutral agent, either in practice or in action”. In the last decade, Social Work education and research methodologies have been continuously criticized for being complicit in downplaying and silencing the brutality of the colonial project (Harms-Smith and Rasool, 2020; Kleibl et al., 2020; Tamburro, 2013). This includes but not only limited to the ignorance of the social, political, ecological and economic implications of colonial legacies as well as post and neocolonial continuities in the 21st century. In addition, the development of Western political and welfare systems ‘from above’ do not result in significant social change and transformative justice. In consequence, many theories do not lead to concepts, approaches and praxis that sufficiently grasp the historical and contemporary situatedness of coloniality of knowledge and power in which Social Work keeps operating (Afeworki Abay, 2023; Daňková et al., 2024; Kleibl et al., 2024). In response to the continuities of colonial epistemologies and methodologies in Social Work, the chapter contributions in this co-edited volume show the relevance of Pluriversality as one of the various decolonial strategies to unsettle the coloniality of Eurocentric knowledge production (Quijano; 2000; Mignolo, 2007, 2017; Grosfoguel, 2013). One of strategies of decolonizing research methodologies and teaching formats is to universalize and normalize ways of knowing and knowledge production that Eurocentric systems of knowledge portray as ‘not valuable’ or ‘not objective enough’ (Tuck and Yang, 2012; Tlostanova and Mignolo. 2012; Afeworki Abay, 2023). Likewise, an important analytic strategy for decolonizing research methodologies is to draw upon marginalized and Indigenous knowledge systems (Smith, 1999; Tamburro, 2013; Zavala, 2016) that have been to taken-for-granted in the social, political, economic, and environmental discourses in Social Work. Y1 - 2024 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-fhws/frontdoor/index/index/docId/5521 PB - Bloomsbury Publishing ER -