Teaching & learning guide for cultural appropriation: What it is and why it matters

Cultural appropriation is a highly contested subject within the media and society more broadly, often provoking moral outrage. It is receiving increasing interest within the academy and the last 20 years have seen the publication of a number of important studies. Cultural appropriation takes many forms, covers a range of types of action, and has many consequences. It is not a uniform practice and needs to be assessed on a case by case basis but there are common themes and issues. What follows is a discussion of the key concepts and literature in the field.     

When and Where Global meets Local: A multilevel analysis of determinants of social trust in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi's transformation to a modern society in recent decades provides an ideal context to explore the interplay of tradition, transition, and modernization at various levels, which shapes the trajectory of the development of social trust. This study offers multilevel analyses of the effects of social, psychological, and ethnical factors on social trust by using data from Abu Dhabi General Social Survey conducted in 2018. The results sustain the validity of both social capital and social network theories in explaining social trust. Contrary to the findings in other Middle East countries, in Abu Dhabi, the full‐time employed and people who are more satisfied with their household income tend to show a higher level of trust. A negative but insignificant relationship is found between community ethnic fragmentation and social trust.     

“Value in diversity”: School racial and ethnic composition,teacher diversity,and school punishment

American schools have become increasingly punitive and characterized by racial and ethnic disparities in punishment outcomes. Scholarship on the causes and consequences of this shift has highlighted the potential salience of school context. The current study extends this work by exploring the potential effect of an underexplored factor, teacher diversity, on suspension disparities. To date, explorations of the role of teacher diversity have been limited to its impact on academic outcomes, teacher perceptions, and behavioral outcomes. The current study fills a void in the existing literature by examining (1) whether greater teacher diversity is associated with reductions in racial and ethnic suspension disparities and (2) whether greater teacher diversity interacts with the size of the racial and ethnic student population to influence suspension disparities. This study contributes to the existing literature by extending the “value in diversity” perspective to the school setting. Additionally, the findings suggest that racial and ethnic diversity in positions of authority in the school setting fosters a more equitable approach to the administration of student punishment.     

Integrated care workforce development: university-community collaboration

ABSTRACT

Behavioral health workforce shortages to provide quality care services for children, adolescents, and transitional age youth are well established. This paper highlights the workforce shortage and the need to infuse interprofessional education to engage in integrated care for children, adolescents and transitional age youth with behavioral health needs. A specialized training curriculum to build behavioral health workforce in Nevada was conceptualized and delivered through 10 workshops under the auspices of the Health Resources & Services Administration (HRSA) funded Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training (BHWET) grant funded in 2014. To train existing workforce and in alignment with the spirit of the grant to build behavioral health workforce and existing workforce, workshops were extended to social service providers in the community. In an effort to enhance university-community collaboration, workshop presenters were invited from various units in the University and from social service agencies in the community. Implications of such training are addressed from a policy, practice, research, and university-community collaboration perspective.     

Co‐production in the epidemiological clinic: A decentred analysis of the tensions in community‐based,client‐facing risk work

Public health policies to prevent disease within populations are giving rise to shifting patterns of healthcare delivery in the late modern era. There is an inherent tension in modern medicine between evidence‐based standardisation, on the one hand, and patient‐centred specificity on the other. This tension manifests in recent policy narratives regarding public health risk (which we have characterised in terms of the epidemiological clinic) and co‐production. Drawing on co‐produced data with health trainers (lay health workers tasked with supporting behavioural change in patients at high risk of cardiovascular disease) in a deprived post‐industrial region of England, our decentred analysis focuses on three extended narratives from this data set. Our analysis builds on and develops emerging theories of risk work, informed by Habermas, and we explore the extent to which elite narratives of public health risk are resisted, absorbed, or bracketed off by client‐facing health workers—emphasising the heterogeneity of responses—and locate these responses within the context of the workers' employment conditions, their embodied experiences, and their wider beliefs and traditions. We argue that co‐production—albeit in a highly constrained form—is possible while delivering public health interventions. However, in the context of a community where health is so adversely affected by wider social problems and where task shifting has drawn lower status healthcare workers into these client‐facing roles, workers must find their own ways to negotiate and attempt to reconcile this context with the risk‐framed practices they are required to carry out.     

The logic of bio-meritocracy in the promotion of higher education equity

Abstract

This article argues that there is incomplete acknowledgment of the historically racist and ableist meaning of merit in the promotion of higher education equity. Consequently, a masquerade of merit positions mechanisms of standardization – including physical environment, classroom norms, and co-curricular activities in addition to admissions criteria – as seemingly neutral practices in the academy because they construct able-bodiedness/mindedness as naturally occurring and empirically measurable. Thus, merit-based decisions are afforded the status of simply making sense. Individuals are understood to succeed because of their natural talents and hard work, rather than because they resemble the normed archetype of higher education fitness. We call this the logic of bio-meritocracy, and argue that it operates pervasively, yet paradoxically, within systems of higher education. The continual marginalization of individuals labeled with disabilities within the academy is therefore not arbitrary, unintended, or accidental, but rather tied to the maintenance of able-bodied/minded supremacy.     

Feeling like an “Alien” or “Family”? Comparing students and faculty experiences of diversity in STEM disciplines at a PWI and an HBCU

This qualitative exploration of diversity experiences among undergraduate and graduate students and faculty in STEM disciplines at a predominantly White institution (PWI) and a historically Black college or university (HBCU) in a Mid-Atlantic state finds that the level of diversity and inclusiveness may matter to how Students of Color experience inclusion in their academic programs. Participants at the PWI described feeling excluded, voicing concerns about institutional struggles with creating an inclusive campus climate; whereas, participants at the HBCU perceived STEM disciplines to be diverse and viewed their programs and the institution as supportive of their needs.     

Management gender composition and the gender pay gap: Evidence from British panel data

Women continue to earn less than their male counterparts globally. Scholars and feminist activists have suggested a partial explanation for this gender gap in earnings could be women's limited access to power structures at the workplace. Using the linked employer–employee data of the Workplace Employment Relations Study 2004–2011, this article asks what happens to the gender gap in earnings among non‐managerial employees when the share of women in management at the workplace increases. The findings, based on workplace‐fixed time‐fixed effects regression models, suggest that workplace‐level increases in the share of women in management are associated with decreases of the non‐managerial gender gap in earnings. This effect appears to be largely unrelated to changes in equality and diversity policies, family‐friendly arrangements and support for carers at the workplace.     

Facilitating Transformation in Workforce Training: Using Clinical Theory to Understand Psychological Self-Sufficiency

Acknowledging the scarcity of a bottom up social work practice model in facilitating the development of success in workforce development programs, this study explores Psychological self-sufficiency (PSS) as an emerging social work practice theory. Phenomenological studies of low-income jobseekers in employment training along with the empirical validation of measures of the core constructs of PSS – employment hope scale (EHS) and perceived employment barrier scale (PEBS) – and testing of the theoretical model resulted in the emergence of a new theory of PSS. PSS was conceptually defined as a dynamic and internal drive that activates the process of transforming cognitively and affectively perceived barriers into hope driven action – the process that enables individuals to move forward toward goals. Based on the evidence of PSS, a participant-centered group intervention model called transforming impossible into possible (TIP) program was developed. This article delineates the trajectory of PSS theory development by critically reviewing various streams of practice theories influencing the PSS theory. Next, the conditions that necessitated the creation of the TIP program and its core principles underlying the functions of PSS are explained. By depicting the TIP program with direct quotes of clients’ experiences, authors exemplify the successful self-discovery process through enhanced PSS skills as a result of participating in the TIP program.     

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.