Decolonizing Reflexive Practice Through Photo Essay Aisinai’pi Storying Place

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Walsh
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Professional Identities ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Indigenous Knowledges ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Photo Essay

In response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, universities across Canada are currently exploring ways to decolonize and indigenize their institutions and curriculum. The profession of social work has had an historical and ongoing role in the oppression of Indigenous Peoples, and now has the responsibility to advance and integrate Indigenous worldviews for reconciliation and healing. Storytelling has been described as an embodiment of Indigenous knowledges and validates the experiences of Indigenous Peoples. Although traditional stories have been most often shared orally, visual methods of storytelling have gained popularity among oppressed communities as a way to share their realities. This photo essay project was developed as a tool to guide social work educators and students to decolonize their reflexive practice by reflecting on their personal and professional identities in relationship to place.The photo essay presents a series of images evoking stories of original peoples and settlers on this land and fuels important questions about identity and belongingness. Keywords: Decolonization, reflexive practice, photography, storytelling

scholarly journals Decolonizing Reflexive Practice Through Photo Essay Aisinai’pi Storying Place

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine A. Walsh ◽  
Natalie St-Denis ◽  
Anita Eagle Bear
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Visual Methods ◽  
Professional Identities ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Indigenous Knowledges ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
Photo Essay

In response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action, universities across Canada are currently exploring ways to decolonize and indigenize their institutions and curriculum. The profession of social work has had an historical and ongoing role in the oppression of Indigenous Peoples, and now has the responsibility to advance and integrate Indigenous worldviews for reconciliation and healing. Storytelling has been described as an embodiment of Indigenous knowledges and validates the experiences of Indigenous Peoples. Although traditional stories have been most often shared orally, visual methods of storytelling have gained popularity among oppressed communities as a way to share their realities. This photo essay project was developed as a tool to guide social work educators and students to decolonize their reflexive practice by reflecting on their personal and professional identities in relationship to place.The photo essay presents a series of images evoking stories of original peoples and settlers on this land and fuels important questions about identity and belongingness. Keywords: Decolonization, reflexive practice, photography, storytelling 

scholarly journals Uncovering the Experiences of Engaging Indigenous Knowledges in Colonial Structures of Schooling and Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-44
Author(s):  
Mairi McDermott ◽  
Jennifer MacDonald ◽  
Jennifer Markides ◽  
Mike Holden
Keyword(s):  
Professional Learning ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
School System ◽  
Knowledge Building ◽  
Community Partnerships ◽  
Institutional Policies ◽  
Indigenous Knowledges ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Data Collection Process ◽  
Entry Points

In response to the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action (TRC, 2015), a school board teamed with university educators and educational partners to generate a professional learning series to support educators’ engagement with Indigenous knowledges. A research team that assembled two years later interviewed the learning series participants to explore how educators were navigating Indigenous knowledge within a Eurocentric school system.  This research acknowledges the challenges of doing this work within shifting institutional policies and initiatives, the wider politics of Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, building intercultural understandings and community partnerships, and negotiating epistemological difference. The researchers — including Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples — echoed resonances with the participants that occurred throughout the data collection process and often spoke about the parallel paths of research and schooling — both historically used as tools of colonization and now having a role in decolonization. To disrupt colonial propensities, we share our reflections as researchers, specifically around complexities and tensions of engaging Indigenous knowledges throughout our research processes concerning the participants’ experiences. By sharing the tensions and (un)learning that emerged on these parallel paths, we honour diverse entry-points and experiences to animate how trans-systemic knowledge building might ensue.

Social Work and Indigenous Peoples in Canada

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyndy Baskin ◽  
Danielle Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Indigenous Peoples ◽  
Indigenous Worldviews ◽  
History Of

This article explores social work with Indigenous Peoples in Canada, beginning with the history of colonization and the role this profession played, as well as outlining promising approaches to helping based on Indigenous worldviews and the challenges of putting these into practice.

Seeking Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa

2004 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-167 ◽  
Author(s):  
Therese Sacco ◽  
Wilma Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Social Work ◽  
South African ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
To Come

South Africa’s attempt to come to terms with its horrific past; mechanisms and responsibilities of countries endeavoring to deal with such pasts; objectives of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission and critiques of it are identified. A public acknowledgement submitted by some South African social work educators is included.

scholarly journals Narrating Colonial Silences: Racialized Social Work Educators Unsettling our Settlerhood

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-305
Author(s):  
Abdelfettah Elkchirid ◽  
Anh Phung Ngo ◽  
Martha Kuwee Kumsa
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Settler Colonialism ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation Commission ◽  
Call To Action ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Indigenous Resistance ◽  
Truth And Reconciliation ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Nation States

In this paper, three racialized social work educators unsettle our settled colonial silences as acts of self-decolonization and as a way of responding to the call to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Hailing from the uneven manifestations of global capitalism and coloniality in Morocco, Vietnam, and Ethiopia, we draw on various critical theories to interrogate our unique entanglements with the imperial project of entwined settler colonialism and white supremacy. We narrate our embodied coloniality and how the virulent materiality of global processes of displacement and dispossession plays out in each of our personal stories, everyday encounters, and practices as educators. With the aim of teaching for social justice by modeling, we share the processes of unsettling our colonial settlerhood and puncturing our racialized innocence. Each story addresses three themes: contact and colonial relations with Indigenous peoples of Canada, complicity in global coloniality, and responsibility in responding to the TRC call to action. The first story provides a broad outline of our struggles with the Indigenous/Settler binary created to perpetuate the various forms of displacement and dispossession in settler colonialism. The second story probes the complexities in the Settler category by engaging difference-making as a central technology of dispossession. The third story probes the complexities in the Indigenous category through interrogating the perils and promises of recognition and reconciliation in the context of global hierarchies of nation-states and global Indigenous resistance. We conclude bymoving beyond our divergent trajectories and offering shared critical remarks on the human rights framework, the nation-state framework, and the coloniality of social work.

scholarly journals Developing a Poverty-Aware Pedagogy: From Paradigm to Reflexive Practice in Post-Academic Social Work Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (5) ◽  
pp. 1495-1512 ◽  
Author(s):  
Griet Roets ◽  
Laura Van Beveren ◽  
Yuval Saar-Heiman ◽  
Heidi Degerickx ◽  
Caroline Vandekinderen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Critical Reflection ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
The Social ◽  
Reflexive Practice ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Work Education

Abstract Social work scholars have argued that poverty reminds us of the necessary commitment to educate professional social workers. Being inspired by a conceptual framework that captures how poverty-awareness can be the subject of teaching in social work programmes, this article offers a qualitative analysis of the reflections being made by a cohort of students about their learning process in a post-academic course. Five common themes are discussed: (i) from recognising micro-aggressions to tackling macro-aggressions; (ii) poverty is an instance of social injustice and requires collective indignation; (iii) notions of commitment and solidarity are ambiguous; (iv) poverty is an instance of social inequality rather than merely social exclusion; and (v) from being heroic agents to social change ‘from within’. Based on these findings, we raise the lessons learned for social work educators. First, they should invite students to reinvigorate the social justice aspirations of social work practices and take a stance in relation to their environment and the wider historical and socio-political circumstances. Secondly, a poverty-aware pedagogy requires collective and long-lasting supervision at the frontline individual, organisational and societal/social policy level. Collective critical reflection and supervision might open up avenues to collectively challenge and change socially unjust rhetoric and practice.

Critical Pedagogy in Online Social Work Education: Changing Conceptions of Time in the Neoliberal University

Somatechnics ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 73-94
Author(s):  
Kristin Smith ◽  
Donna Jeffery ◽  
Kim Collins
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Online Education ◽  
Critical Pedagogy ◽  
Social Work Education ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Digital World ◽  
Learning Programs ◽  
Recent Graduates ◽  
Work Education

Neoliberal universities embrace the logic of acceleration where the quickening of daily life for both educators and students is driven by desires for efficient forms of productivity and measurable outcomes of work. From this perspective, time is governed by expanding capacities of the digital world that speed up the pace of work while blurring the boundaries between workplace, home, and leisure. In this article, we draw from findings from qualitative interviews conducted with Canadian social work educators who teach using online-based critical pedagogy as well as recent graduates who completed their social work education in online learning programs to explore the effects of acceleration within these digitalised spaces of higher education. We view these findings alongside French philosopher Henri Bergson's concepts of duration and intuition, forms of temporality that manage to resist fixed, mechanised standards of time. We argue that the digitalisation of time produced through online education technologies can be seen as a thinning of possibilities for deeper and more critically self-reflexive knowledge production and a reduction in opportunities to build on social justice-based practices.

"Do not Worry Your Head": The Impossibility of Indigenising Social Work Education and Practice in Africa

2018 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kwaku Osei-Hwedie ◽  
Doris Akyere Boateng
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Knowledge Base ◽  
North American ◽  
Social Work Education ◽  
Culturally Relevant ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
The People ◽  
African Context ◽  
Drawing Board ◽  
Work Education

As the discussions and debates rage on about the content and direction of social work in Africa, the challenges associated with weaning the profession off its Western and North American roots become apparent. The desire to indigenise or make the profession culturally relevant is well articulated in the literature. Some efforts have been undertaken toward achieving this desire. However, it is evident that despite the numerous discussions and publications, it appears that efforts at indigenising, localising, or making social work culturally relevant have not made much progress. While what must be achieved is somewhat clear; how to achieve it and by what process remain a conundrum. The article, therefore, revisits the issue of making social work culturally relevant in Africa and its associated challenges. Despite the indictment of current social work education and practice in Africa, it appears that many academics and professionals have accepted that what is Western is global, fashionable, and functional, if not perfect. Given this, perhaps, “we should not worry our heads” about changing it. Instead, social work educators and practitioners in Africa should go back to the drawing board to determine how current social work education and practice can be blended with a traditional African knowledge base, approaches and models to reflect and align with the critical principles and ideals within the African context. This is with the hope of making the profession more relevant to the needs of the people of Africa.

Towards the Integration of Faith, Love, and Praxis

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-27
Author(s):  
Monica Y. E. Chi
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Intergroup Dialogue ◽  
Christian Spirituality ◽  
Social Work Educators ◽  
Dorothy Day ◽  
Jane Addams ◽  
Faith Based ◽  
Poor Understanding ◽  
Martin Luther King

Non-faith-based social work educators and researchers have a poor understanding of what might motivate Christians in social work and whether Christian motivations have any place in social work. On the other hand, Christians have difficulty articulating actions inspired by their faith in ways that others can comprehend despite feeling misunderstood. The focus of this article is to present the framework of faith-inspired praxis of love and lay the groundwork for intergroup dialogue. The framework draws from the works of Jane Addams, Dorothy Day, Martin Luther King, Jr., Jean Vanier, and Mary Jo Leddy, five notable leaders in Christian spirituality and public initiatives, to discuss their conceptualization of faith, love, and praxis. Practice and research implications of this framework for social work are discussed.

Global HIV and AIDS: Calling all Social Work Educators

2010 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Patrick Natale ◽  
Bipasha Biswas ◽  
Lianne Urada ◽  
Anna M. Scheyett
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Hiv And Aids ◽  
Social Work Educators
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