Editorial Elite Knowledge or the Reproduction of the Knowledge of Privilege: Social Work Doctoral Education

Epistemology is fundamental to feminism. This editorial grapples with the cultural norming process that influences the way knowledge emerges, is developed, and shaped. It makes a case that social work scholarship continues to be shaped by a dominant paradigm that controls knowledge produc-tion through the reproduction of white racial privilege, the acculturation of alternative perspectives, and the pressures of educational institutions that are tied to a market economy. Doctoral students in social work develop as new scholars in an environment driven by these forces. Because of this, feminist epistemology and methods often are relegated to marginal spaces in the education and mentoring of new scholars. This marginalization begins early as the pool of students from which to draw doctoral students begins to be shaped as early as middle and high school. Consequently, an editorial on doctoral education must begin with considering the available pool from which doctoral program can draw its students. In this way, we must tangle with who has access and under what conditions students are successful in high school and institutions of higher edu-cation. Pew Research Center in a recent report again affirmed high schools are failing Hispanic students at a greater rate than any other racial group (this excludes American Indians as they were not a part of the Pew calculation; Lopez & Fry, 2013). In the same report, Pew Research Cente