Teaching critical self-reflection through the lens of cultural humility: an assignment in a social work diversity course

Social workers engage with marginalized groups in society. However, many social workers are of privileged groups and have not personally experienced social exclusions. This study explored social work graduate students’ evaluation of an assignment designed to encourage critical self-reflection as part of a required diversity course. The assignment approaches diversity using a cultural humility lens, which seeks to remove historical, unidimensional approaches to teaching about diverse populations. Data were collected from 47 MSW students enrolled at an urban, Midwestern university in the United States. Thematic analyses of students’ critical self-reflections revealed positive experiences regarding the influence of personal histories, development of professional identity, and importance of cultural humility.     

Social Workers’ Roles in Supporting the Sexual and Relational Health of Children with Disabilities

The purpose of this study was to understand social workers’ roles in meeting the sexual and relational health needs of children (aged 3–11) with disabilities. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 social workers from a range of practice settings. A phenomenological lens privileged the perspectives of social workers in their definitions of disability and sought to convey the meaning they assigned to their experiences of working with children in practice concerning matters related to sexual and relational health. Social workers enacted a broad definition of disability and often came to work with youth in contexts labeled as sexually problematic. In the provision of sexual health services, social workers embodied commonly adhered to roles including as practitioners, enablers, advocates, brokers, and managers. Services are needed that promote positive sexuality and relational health among children with disabilities. It is important that social workers be proactive advocates for the full inclusion of people with disabilities as equal sexual citizens.     

Social Closure and Educational Attainment

This article examines how network closure among parents affects adolescents’ educational attainment. First, we introduce a distinction between informal closure and school‐based closure. Second, we investigate whether and how the effect of informal and school‐based parental network closure varies across social contexts. Findings from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and multilevel models show that parental network closure modestly impacts educational outcomes. Moreover, educational benefits of informal closure in parent networks are contingent on social context. Closure only benefits educational attainment in low‐poverty schools. In high‐poverty schools, informal closure in parent networks lowers educational attainment. The social closure generated in informal connections among parents thereby contributes to the encapsulation of disadvantage in areas of concentrated poverty, which is not the case for school‐based closure.     

Explaining Entrepreneurial Behavior: Dispositional Personality Traits,Growth of Personal Entrepreneurial Resources,and Business Idea Generation

Applying a life‐span approach of human development and using the example of science‐based business idea generation, the authors used structural equation modeling to test a mediation model for predicting entrepreneurial behavior in a sample of German scientists (2 measurement occasions; Time 1, N= 488). It was found that recalled early entrepreneurial competence in adolescence predicted business idea generation. This link was mediated by entrepreneurial human and social capital. Moreover, an entrepreneurial Big Five profile was associated with early entrepreneurial competence and predicted entrepreneurial human and social capital. Results underscore the relevance of the long‐neglected developmental approach to entrepreneurship.     

Bullying and Victimization: The Role of Conduct Problems and Psychopathic Traits

Bullying and victimization occurring in adolescence can have a long‐lasting negative impact into adulthood. This study investigates whether conduct problems (CP) and dimensions of psychopathy predict the developmental course of bullying and victimization from ages 12 to 14 among 1,416 Greek‐Cypriot adolescents. Results indicate that initial levels of bullying were highest among adolescents scoring high on narcissism, impulsivity, or CP—particularly for those also showing high callous‐unemotional (CU) traits. Bullying behaviors were also more stable among youth scoring high on narcissism. Further, youth high on impulsivity showed more stable victimization by peers across development. Importantly, adolescents high on CP+CU were at greater risk for engaging in bullying across development compared with those scoring lower on CU traits or CP.     

Hiding within racial hierarchies: how undocumented immigrants make residential decisions in an American city

In the United States, the residential segregation of Latinos from whites has persisted but has fallen between Latinos and blacks. Demographers offer the size of the Latino population that is undocumented as one potential explanation for these patterns. However, little work has examined undocumented immigrants’ first-hand accounts of residential decision-making. Drawing on interviews with undocumented-headed, Latin American-origin families in Dallas, Texas, we explore how lacking legal status relates to residential selection. We find that some undocumented families perceive certain neighbourhoods to be ‘off-limits’, not only because of financial constraints, explicit legal impediments to their tenure, or individual racial preferences, but also because they perceive them as high-risk: Most sample households agree that law enforcement patrols areas with white majorities in order to exclude Latinos and, specifically, the undocumented. As a strategy to minimise the perceived risk law enforcement poses to their families’ stability, some undocumented families in the study report opting into neighbourhoods with Latino majorities in order to ‘blend in’, whereas others describe feeling safe in neighbourhoods with black majorities where they can ‘hide in plain sight’. We demonstrate how undocumented families’ perceptions of law enforcement in neighbourhoods with differing racial compositions may partly underlie trends in residential selection and stratification.     

Are Conditional Cash Transfer programs for women? Engendering the Philippine Pantawid

Evaluation studies reveal positive outcomes of Conditional Cash Transfer program. This program, however, warrants an analysis using the lens of gender. Based on interview data among selected Pantawid's national, regional, provincial, and municipal personnel, as well as secondary data, this article finds that the program has limited impact on gender justice for it restricts the agency of mothers as grantees. For a social development program to perform democratizing functions, it must challenge unequal, patriarchal relations.     

Breaking Patterns? How Female Scientists Negotiate their Token Role in their Life Stories

Building upon token theory, this paper analyses coping behaviours of women in Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) through a professional identity perspective. It proposes that female scientists need to negotiate and balance conflicting aspects of their professional and gender identities throughout their career. A reconstructive biography analysis of Leitmotif and Gestalt of 15 life stories reveals that gender is the structuring element of the female scientists' self‐presentation. The paper presents two key cases which exemplify two alternative coping strategies: the women either use a similarity strategy, relying on full assimilation to the masculine norms in SET, or a difference strategy, highlighting their otherness and their struggle for equality. The in‐depth analysis reveals that both strategies cannot ‘break patterns', but instead leave the dominance of masculine norms in SET unchallenged. Implications of these findings are discussed.     

The Blurring Hypothesis Reconsidered: How Sector Still Matters to Practitioners

This article asks: Is sector still a useful concept for social science research on nonprofit organizations and related fields, such as social entrepreneurship? We answer that it is relevant to practitioners for whom sector boundaries remain an important orienting feature of their organizational worldviews. This observation is at odds with the recent scholarship on “blurring” sector boundaries, much of which suggests that sector is increasingly an outdated concept. Data from one uniquely blended space—the fair trade industry—coupled with insights from Scott’s (Institutions and organizations: ideas, interests, and identities, 2014) theory about the three pillars of institutions suggest that sector remains meaningful despite developments that appear to render it obsolete.