Theory of Diversity Avoidance in social work education: a theoretical framework for willful ADEI avoidance and organizational readiness for ADEI implementation

Anti-racism, diversity, equity, and inclusion (ADEI) values are explicit ethical commitments in social work, reinforced by policies such as the National Association of Social Workers’ Code of Ethics and the Council on Social Work Education’s Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS). However, implementation is inconsistent across social work practicum education despite these clear commitments. There are many theories that help to explain different parts of the story (Relational-Cultural Theory, the Theory of Racialized Organizations, and White Fragility, to name a few), but we do not yet have a theory that helps us understand why organizations that explicitly commit to ADEI values struggle to uphold those commitments with any consistency in everyday educational practice. This paper proposes the Theory of Diversity Avoidance (TDA), a middle-range organizational implementation theory that explains inconsistencies in ADEI implementation in practicum settings. We developed it inductively through interpretive phenomenological analysis of interviews with field directors, faculty field liaisons, and field instructors tasked with implementing ADEI in social work practicum education. Avoidance emerged as a theme that connected participants’ experiences across roles within institutions. Institutions did not necessarily push back against equity-oriented values; instead, they normalized silence, delay, ambivalence, deflection, and performative compliance, which together, in the absence of strong value commitment, diluted implementation Grounded in qualitative descriptions of professionals’ experiences, the Theory of Diversity Avoidance identifies implementation gaps as the problem to be explained and Diversity Avoidance as the process through which gaps in values-consistent behavior are created and maintained at the organizational level. The Theory of Diversity Avoidance identifies six interlocking constructs, proposes testable hypotheses, and offers a lens for examining how organizations act on ethical values in professionalized practice. Ideas for supervision, leadership, accreditation, and implications for implementation science are discussed.