What’s in a Pronoun?: The Ungovernability and Misgendering of Trans Native Kids in Juvenile Justice in Washington State

ABSTRACT

Recognition of transgender identities and best practices in care for trans youth in juvenile justice settings have been gaining increased visibility. However, in interviews with juvenile justice defense attorneys, I have found that even attorneys who want to be supportive and affirming of transgender youth struggle with consistently affirming the youth’s pronouns, especially in the case of Native trans youth. In this article, I will explore the ways that systems of “justice” are not set up to recognize transgender and Native youth correctly, because the goal is always to make Native youth invisible/assimilated and to make trans youth normative. For a transgender Native kid, even the best intentions of people working within this system are not going to be enough to overcome these systemic goals of settler colonial justice systems. This article highlights the limits of the U.S. juvenile justice system and argues for a turn to two-spirit critiques to fundamentally change the justice system for transgender Native youth.     

Health Staff Responses to Domestic and Family Violence: The Case for Training to Build Confidence and Skills

ABSTRACT

Domestic and family violence (DFV) is a serious, worldwide public health concern and the literature suggests that women who have experienced violence identify health care providers as the professionals they would most trust with disclosure of abuse. Social work is well positioned to respond to women presenting in hospitals after experiencing DFV and in advocating for systems and policy initiatives to support health staff in becoming adequately trained and supported to detect and respond appropriately. This paper reports on research that surveyed health staff in two hospitals in Queensland, Australia, to identify what DFV training they had received, whether this training increased their knowledge, skills and confidence to address DFV and what services they would access to support women presenting with DFV. The results showed that the respondents were an experienced staff group who had worked in the health sector for 10–20 years but despite having access to State-based training, the majority of them had not completed any in-house training and only 12% had received face-to-face training, and when they did undertake training, it was usually only a two-hour session. Seventy-five per cent of respondents would refer to their hospital-based social worker and 40% would make referrals to other support services, primarily social work.

IMPLICATIONS

• Hospitals need to prioritise, commit to, and resource appropriate and regular training to better equip health staff to identify and respond to DFV.

• Training needs to build the knowledge and skills of staff members to address their confidence to intervene and offer support.

• Social work can provide an important role in advocating and developing training and procedures to sustain health staff members’ capacity to respond appropriately to DFV.

     

Novel biotechnologies for eradicating wasps: seeking Māori studies students’ perspectives with Q method

Aligned with the New Zealand government’s ‘Predator-Free 2050’ target for Aotearoa New Zealand, National Science Challenge: Our Biological Heritage supports research into five distinct ‘novel biotechnological controls’ of exotic wasps. A framing question within this project is which controls are considered ‘socially acceptable’ and thus suitable for further development to control and potentially eradicate introduced wasps? How can the public answer this question without first engaging with complex technologies? Can they develop and express an informed view that still reflects their ‘gut’ reactions and unique positions? To model and explore the views of an ‘informed public’, university students in Māori studies engaged in reflection, writing and mapping activities; choice and ranking exercises; Q Method; and focus group interviews. Amongst the interviewees, Q Method analysis distinguished three ‘factors’, describing unique viewpoints: those who see the potential of biotechnologies, those who are in doubt about them and those in a position of trust in scientists. Overall, the group see potential in new biotechnologies for wasps but are wary of political, economic and social decision-making mechanisms.     

Do we practice (or teach) what we preach? Developing a more inclusive learning environment to better prepare social work students for practice through improving the explorationof their different ethnicities within teaching,learning and assessment opportunities.

ABSTRACT

Teaching experience at the University of Suffolk noted anecdotally that Black Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) students avoid discussing their identity, cultural heritage, norms and values, in lectures, tutor groups and in assignments.

To improve the integration of different cultural perspectives into the social work curriculum, we devised a small-scale qualitative research project Spring, 2017, to explore students’ views of teaching, learning and assessment about cultural norms and differences, seeking the views of both BAME students and white students on the programme in order to compare and contrast their experiences.

Focus groups were used to gather the views of BAME and white students about the opportunities and barriers to discussing identity, culture, and anti-racism. The findings raised significant issues, specifically about the barriers for both BAME and white students to considering cultural differences. Student perspectives suggest more sensitive approaches to considering cultural differences; more responsibility for white lecturers to explore white privilege and its impact; and more safe spaces to manage emotional responses to oppression to enable exchange of experience and learning about different cultural norms and values. The article analyses the findings, discussing ways forward to improve the student experience and promote good practice in teaching and learning.     

Parsimony in personality: predicting sexual prejudice

Extant research has established numerous demographic, personal-history, attitudinal, and ideological correlates of sexual prejudice, also known as homophobia. The present study investigated whether Five-Factor Model (FFM) personality domains, particularly Openness, and FFM facets, particularly Openness to Values, contribute independent and incremental variance to the prediction of sexual prejudice beyond these established correlates. Participants were 117 college students who completed a comprehensive FFM measure, measures of sexual prejudice, and a demographics, personal-history, and attitudes-and-ideologies questionnaire. Results of stepwise multiple regression analyses demonstrated that, whereas Openness domain score predicted only marginal incremental variance in sexual prejudice, Openness facet scores (particularly Openness to Values) predicted independent and substantial incremental variance beyond numerous other zero-order correlates of sexual prejudice. The importance of integrating FFM personality variables, especially facet-level variables, into conceptualizations of sexual prejudice is highlighted. Study strengths and weaknesses are discussed as are potential implications for prejudice-reduction interventions.     

Leader self-development: A contemporary context for leader development evaluation

Organizations are moving toward self-development as a means to supplement formal leader development programs. However, the highly individualized nature of self-development presents unique challenges for evaluation. We suggest a mixed methods approach, including not only a summative evaluation (i.e., examining self-development outcomes), but also emphasizing a formative evaluation (i.e., examining why certain self-development activities are more or less effective). Accordingly, the purpose of this article is threefold. We first introduce a taxonomy of attributes indicative of the effectiveness level of a leader self-development activity. Second, we present a methodology for utilizing this taxonomy to evaluate whether a given self-development activity, or collection of activities, is higher or lower in effectiveness. We also describe some data from two field studies to illustrate the link between this taxonomy and the performance outcomes of task performance, team performance, and leader adaptive performance. Finally, we discuss the practical implications of undertaking an evaluation utilizing this taxonomy.     

New Tool,New Function? Toddlers' Use of Mutual Exclusivity When Mapping Information to Objects

Prior research has suggested that 24‐month‐old toddlers will rapidly map the function of a novel object but that, unlike preschoolers and adults, they will use the tool for other purposes as well. Here, this nonexclusive pattern of object use was explored. Because it has been unclear whether a mature “one tool, one function” bias in assigning object functions is rooted in deployment of general learning principles or artifact‐specific thinking, Study 1 explored 24‐month‐olds' exploitation of social‐pragmatic cues when mapping labels, facts, and functions to novel objects. Results demonstrated that toddlers readily used a principle of mutual exclusivity to constrain assignments of labels and facts but not functions. This performance was corroborated in Study 2. It appears that 24‐month‐olds have a developing understanding that artifacts have specialized functions but that mutual exclusivity does not guide this development.