Speech Therapy Telepractice Services in Fiji: A Multicultural Experience for Graduate Student Clinicians

Purpose The University of Maine Speech Therapy Telepractice Program provides speech therapy telepractice services to children with communication disorders at the International School Suva (ISS), Fiji. This partnership has fostered international engagement and multicultural experiences for graduate student clinicians in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders while filling a need for speech therapy services in Fiji. Despite infrastructure, scheduling, and COVID-19 issues, the benefits of this partnership have far outweighed the challenges. Clinical observations of the ISS children's responses have revealed excellent progress toward achieving therapy goals. Parents and school personnel have also reported a high degree of satisfaction with our services. The program has encouraged our graduate students to be resilient, out-of-the-box thinkers as they research a variety of multicultural issues and apply this new knowledge to the clinical programs of their clients. Conclusions This article highlights the partnership between The University of Maine, Speech Therapy Telepractice Training Program and the ISS, Fiji, as an example for other academic programs that are interested in establishing international telepractice partnerships. A description of the telepractice clinical procedures and technology for service provision at the ISS is included, along with a discussion of the challenges and benefits for providing international speech therapy telepractice services. Two case examples illustrate the complexity of providing services to multilingual children with different cultural backgrounds.

Student Stories: Microaggressions in Communication Sciences and Disorders

Purpose Microaggressions and how they affect underrepresented college students have been frequently documented. However, there is a lack of literature on the experiences of underrepresented communication sciences and disorders (CSD) students. The purpose of this study is to understand how underrepresented post baccalaureate, undergraduate, and graduate students in CSD experience microaggressions in their academic programs. Method A 19-item electronic survey was developed by American Speech-Language-Hearing Association's Multicultural Issues Board and distributed via multiple online platforms. A diverse group of 155 underrepresented CSD students completed the survey. A multistage qualitative thematic analysis was used to analyze students' experiences. Results Students (64.51%) who completed the survey have experienced microaggressions in their academic programs. Prominent themes of students' descriptions of microaggressions included feelings of otherness, damaging generalization, maltreatment from faculty, and maltreatment from peers. Students reported various responses to microaggressions including identity management strategies, disengaging, and working hard to exceed expectations and to prove themselves. Conclusions This study illustrates the ways that underrepresented CSD students experience symbolic violence from clients, peers, and faculty. It has implications for the need to cultivate more inclusive learning and social environments in CSD programs. Further research is needed to explore the ramifications of microaggressions and ways to effectively reduce and eventually eradicate them. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.15240723

The Implementation of Multicultural Education in Economic Learning

The emergence of problems related to multicultural issues such as tribal wars, separatism, and other movements that have the potential to cause national disintegration is urgent and requires the right solution. In the Indonesian context, the younger generation (students) are potential subjects for solving multicultural conflicts. In connection with this problem, one form of a potential solution is multicultural education, especially through economic learning because of its potential to build tolerance and mutual respect. Therefore, this article will focus on a discussion on the implementation of multicultural education in economic learning at SMAN 3 Bandar Lampung. The methodology used is a case study with Robert K. Yin design. The results showed that the strategy used by history teachers in implementing multicultural education in history learning was cooperative learning in the form of discussions, group work, and presentations. This strategy is considered suitable because it is able to know the affective, cognitive, and psychomotor aspects of students. The obstacles experienced are very diverse, including student saturation, dissatisfaction with the group of teachers to the limitations of the cost of studying outside the classroom in site observation activities that are in accordance with economic learning materials so that most learning is carried out in class using photos and video media.

Confronting Shifting Identities: Reflections on Subjectivity in Transnational Research

As researchers’ identities impact the research process, researchers need to take a reflexive stance toward their positionality in the research. The issue of positionality is especially important for research focusing on multicultural issues, which necessarily involves dynamic power relations among different racial/ethnic groups. Drawing from reflections on my research focusing on South Korean adolescents’ understandings of migrants, this paper illustrates when and how I confronted my positionality. My positionality as a racial/ethnic minority in the United States affected the process of selecting the research topic and the theoretical framework as well as analyzing interview data while my positionality as an ethnic Korean was salient when making interview questions, interviewing ethnic Korean adolescents, and reporting the findings. There was also a moment in which my identity as an international student from the United States outweighed my ethnic/racial identity during interviews. By sharing my experiences in conducting transnational research in my home country, this paper attempts to contribute to underrepresented discourse on the use of reflexivity in non-Western societies, especially when neither the researcher nor the researched is White.

Promoting Diversity and Multicultural Training in Higher Education

The educational system and academia reside at the core of most professional settings. The issues are that diversity and multicultural content and process continue to be taught in higher education but multicultural issues within programs are sometimes neglected. These concerns occur in and out of the classroom and can be a microcosm of biases in our society. This chapter seeks to promote diversity and multicultural training and discussion of microaggressions to infuse and build higher education programs to become more culturally competent both in content and process. The theoretical concepts are presented to offer a guideline and lens to perceive faculty training. Biases are explored as they pertain to our current state of higher education in both the structure and content. Instances of faculty training are given with case examples to highlight the training process and to promote an academic environment that is open to multicultural discussions and persistent on creating and maintaining safe space and time. Suggestions for future exploration and reading recommendations are made.