Effective educators are culturally competent communicators

Effective formal education or schooling is not simply a matter of teaching and learning curriculum content. It is also about values, assumptions, feelings, perceptions and relationships. No education can take place without interpersonal communication. Effective teaching can thus be qualified in terms of relating effectively in the classroom. Effective education thus also presupposes effective communication skills. Communication as the means and indeed the medium of education is therefore crucial to school success in culturally diverse education. Teachers should therefore be sensitive to the potentially problematic outcomes of intercultural communication in the culturally diverse class. Communication may be a useful source of intercultural knowledge and mutual enrichment between culturally diverse students if managed proactively by the teacher. Otherwise, it could be a source of frustration, misapprehensions, intercultural conflict and ultimately school failure. Effective and successful communication is difficult to realise even in the most favourable circumstances. Intercultural factors, therefore, create the potential for numerous communication problems and intercultural conflict. Communication, both verbal as well as non-verbal, is critically important in cross-cultural competence. As language and culture are inextricably bound, cross-cultural communication is complex and potentially problematic. In this paper, it is argued that effective educators are effective communicators and thus culturally competent in cross-cultural encounters.     

Framework for culturally competent decisionmaking in child welfare

This article provides a framework to understand the cultural, social, political, and economic factors that affect decisionmaking when working with ethnically and racially diverse families in the child welfare system. The article describes external factors affecting the decisionmaking process, including community environment, agency structure, and family characteristics. It then reviews the core stages of the casework process, describing key decisions during intake, assessment, service planning, implementation, evaluation, and closure. Although the framework is based on casework process in the child welfare system, it can be adapted to other child-serving systems, including education, mental health, and juvenile justice.     

Conducting culturally competent evaluations of child welfare programs and practices

As the population of the United States has changed over the last two decades, so has the population of children who come to the attention of the child welfare system, resulting in increasing calls for cultural competence in all aspects of child welfare programming and practice. Given the changing demographics among children involved in the child weltare system and the increasing need to address the racial and ethnic disparities observed in this system, the need for culturally competent approaches to evaluate the outcomes of services for children and families is essential. This article discusses the challenges in conducting culturally competent evaluations and provides strategies to address those challenges within a child welfare context.     

Developing culturally competent marriage and family therapists: guidelines for working with Hispanic families

As the Hispanic population of the United States continues to grow, so will the need for therapists who have been trained to work with Hispanic families. This content analysis of the available treatment literature generated several specific guidelines that can be used in training and evaluating culturally competent therapists. Guidelines included: Use family therapy, act as advocate for the family, assess immigration experience, assess acculturation, respect father, interview family subsystems separately, do not force changes, provide concrete suggestions, and warmly engage the family. Empirical and conceptual support for each guideline is discussed and several conclusions are made regarding culturally competent therapy with Hispanic families.     

Developing culturally competent marriage and family therapists: treatment guidelines for non-African-American therapists working with African-American families

To serve African-American families effectively, marriage and family therapists need to develop a level of cultural competence. This content analysis of the relevant treatment literature was conducted to examine the most common expert recommendations for family therapy with African Americans. Fifteen specific guidelines were generated, including orient the family to therapy, do not assume familiarity, address issue of racism, intervene multi-systemically, do home visits, use problem-solving focus, involve religious leader, incorporate the father, and acknowledge strengths. Conceptual and empirical support for each guideline is discussed, and conclusions are made regarding culturally competent therapy with African-American families.     

Using Photovoice as a method to examine microaggressions: Conceptualizing culturally competent practice and curriculum with Asian Americans

ABSTRACT

In recent years, the racial microaggressions has increased significantly in the social work education and negative impact of racial microaggressions on individual’s family and group in their community well-being. Microaggressions can occur out of misunderstanding and lack of awareness of cultural differences and similarities. Microaggressions also are common everyday whether intentional or unintentional. The purpose of this study is to examine the evolving methodology, usage of photovoice, and conceptualizing culturally competent practice and curriculum with Asian Americans.     

Intersections of care: an analysis of culturally competent care, client centered care, and the feminist ethic of care

Many of us work within a healthcare field, but do we think about the meaning of the care that we provide? This paper examines three approaches to practices in the caring professions; culturally competent care, client centered care, and the feminist ethic of care, in an effort to discover if and where the three intersect. Although philosophically similar, the essence of caring practice discovered in this examination resulted in the simple equation: Provider knowledge and skills + client respect = client empowerment. An examination of the meaning of this formula and its implication for practice is included.     

Lessons on social and health disparities from older lesbians with alcoholism and the role of interventions to promote culturally competent services

ABSTRACT

Older adults who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) face greater health risks and possibly more costly care because of their reluctance to seek out health and long-term care services because of limited cultural sensitivity of service providers. This is particularly evident in older lesbians who face substantial risk of health problems associated with alcoholism and are less likely to be open with health care providers because of stigma combined with feelings of alienation, stress, and depression. An estimated 4.4 million older adults are predicted to have problems with alcohol by 2020, and the rates of alcohol-related hospitalizations are similar to those for heart attacks, creating exorbitant medical costs. More culturally competent health and long-term care may reduce health care costs by effectively addressing the dynamics of alcoholism, aging, and lesbian culture. Training initiatives such as those developed by the National Resource Center on LGBT Aging have begun to address the need of a more culturally competent aging services network. This article provides exemplars from empirical data on older lesbians with alcoholism to highlight some of the health, economic, and social disparities experienced in the aging LGBT community. Current interventions in the form of cultural competence training for service providers are presented as a potential step toward addressing health disparities among LGBT older adults.     

Building cultural competence: A systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of culturally sensitive interventions with ethnic minority youth

Growing diversity within the US population accentuates the need for the development and implementation of culturally competent services in the field of child welfare. Despite this, few studies exist that examine the effectiveness of culturally sensitive interventions (CSIs) with ethnic minority populations, who are considerably more at risk of developing psychosocial problems including substance and alcohol abuse, delinquency, low academic achievement, and poor self-esteem. With the demand for evidence-based practice it is imperative that we examine the effectiveness of CSIs designed to prevent and treat youth problems. The main goal of this review was to systematically analyze the methodology of recent CSI research with populations of ethnic minority youth in order to evaluate each intervention's ability to adhere to existing standards of evidence-based practice. The fifteen CSI studies examined in this review illustrate progress in their attempt to adhere to the methodological rigor required of evidence-based practice. This review encourages the field of child welfare to position itself analogously with and embrace the movement toward building cultural competence by further investigating the effectiveness of culturally-sensitive interventions with ethnic minority youth.     

Becoming a (Pan)ethnic Attorney: How Asian American and Latino Law Students Manage Dual Identities

Managing professional and personal identities often belabor upwardly mobile racialized individuals. I examine in this article how Asian American and Latino law students negotiate (pan)ethnic identities while learning to become lawyers. I contend that managing dual identities creates (pan)ethnic duty among Asian American and Latino law students. I focus on those planning to work in law firms, at least initially. While there are many career options for law students, most, irrespective of race, pursue initial careers at law firms. What leads them there? How do racialization and expectations play a role in this career aspiration? And how do students negotiate the pressure to give back, or manage the internally/externally imposed duty they feel to serve respective communities? I find that Asian American and Latino law students draw on a repertoire of strategies (marginal panethnicity, tempered altruism, and instrumental ethnicity) that encompass different accounts, identities, and roles enabling creativity and elasticity for professional and personal identities. The findings suggest that panethnicity remains salient for upwardly mobile individuals of color, even those who do not ostensibly appear to be concerned with panethnic communities and causes.     

Becoming fascinating

The conservative Christian women's movements which include Fascinating Womanhood, the Total Women, and the Philosophy of Christian Womanhood are described. These three groups share the beliefs that men and women are interestingly different; that women ought to submit themselves to their husbands; and that women must keep themselves attractive and well-groomed in order to maintain their husbands' interest and affection. This article attempts to portray some of the processes through which women become involved in each of these groups. With the assistance of Kanter's model of commitment mechanisms involved in participation in communes, this article analyzes the techniques used by the Fascinating Womanhood movement to gain the commitment of new members. Many aspects of this movement are similar to meaning-seeking movements discussed by Klapp.     

Becoming Adult in America

Sociological Forum -     

Becoming Self-Employed

This study explored how persons become self-employed. In critical incident interviews (Flanagan, 1954) with 5 self-employed persons, the critical events that assisted or hindered progress toward self-employment were elicited in chronological order. First, the 108 incidents were organized into 22 categories. Next, using the chronological order of categories of events, 2 basic patterns or plots for becoming self-employed were identified. Last, 8 distinctive themes of personal progress in the patterns were described. In general, becoming self-employed involved establishing conditions of action that enhanced a sense of agency, enabling each person to make a decision.     

Becoming Parents

Ninety-six lesbian adoptive parents were part of a cross-sectional study to explore their adoption experiences, specifically focusing on their sources of consultation/information and possible bias, adoption timeframes and costs, and their satisfaction with the adoption experience. Questions within each of these domains were tested for significant differences across international, private domestic and child welfare adoption venues. While their overall experiences were positive, several key significant findings are discussed, with practice considerations suggested for adoption professionals and other lesbians seeking adoption. Lastly, a call for future research is made to further our understanding of lesbian mothers' transition to adoptive parenthood.     

Becoming Unmanned

Abstract

Forty-nine nations currently have UAV (unmanned autonomous vehicle, or unmanned aerial vehicle) technology. Autonomous technology could potentially alter both the conduct of warfighting itself as well as our understanding of war as a gendered activity. Using drones or ‘robots’ could affect the activities of war through outsourcing killing to technology and removing the aggressors’ physical bodies from the battlefield. Drones could also affect the gendered construct of war as the traditional dyad of protector/protected is altered: a system in which men have traditionally protected women and children is replaced by a new system in which machines protect humans. Analysts like Haraway might interpret these developments as an important step towards posthumanity where man-machine as well as gender distinctions are overcome. However, traditional gendered concepts of warfare have a long history and it is not inevitable that new technologies will change gendered activities, relations and views of war. Instead, the discourse of new technologies as expressed by US military planners and technology developers currently reinforces rather than downplays gender distinctions. Robots themselves have been constructed as subordinate, as a new type of nature which is dominated or feminized, while ‘cyborg soldiers’ with technological implants are constructed as hypermasculine.     

Creating culturally sustainable agri-environmental schemes

Evidence is emerging from across Europe that contemporary agri-environmental schemes are having only limited, if any, influence on farmers’ long-term attitudes towards the environment. In this theoretical paper we argue that these approaches are not ‘culturally sustainable’, i.e. the actions are not becoming embedded within farming cultures as part of conventional ‘good farming’ practice. We propose (following Bourdieu) that, in order to culturally embed the environmental values, beliefs and knowledges that underlie such schemes, policy-makers need to devise approaches that allow the creation of cultural and social capital within farming communities - rather than simply compensating for economic capital lost. We outline the theoretical basis of our position and discuss how the contemporary agri-environmental approach of paying for specified environmental management services restricts the ability of such schemes to generate cultural and, thereby, social capital. Finally, we outline two possible ways of accounting for cultural capital in scheme creation: either through the development of measures of cultural capital that enable its incorporation into contemporary economic models or through a major revision to the way we construct and apply agri-environmental schemes.