Posters (Asynchronous Session)
Learning without Limits: Exploring Culturally Responsive Teaching in South Africa View Digital Media
Poster Session Zelma Mokobane
The aim of this study is to promote culturally responsive practices in South Africa. The need for culturally responsive teaching is more pressing than ever before, especially when you consider the deep demographic gaps between teachers and students in South African schools. Research has shown that the key to help students to succeed in diverse settings is to relate teaching content to their cultural backgrounds and not assimilation. Teaching that ignores the cultural background of students limits the learning of students and provokes resistance, while teaching that is responsive to the culture of students prompts involvement and success. A phenomenological design was used in data analysis, interpretation and description of how participants experience the practices of culturally responsive teaching in schools. Using nonprobability sampling methods, 40 teachers as participants were purposively and conveniently selected. Data was then collected using the modified Zimmerman and Weider’s Diary-Interview method. Participants were commissioned to keep a record over time according to the thought-triggers which were then used subsequently for intensive interviewing. The questions for intensive interviewing were individually generated after inspection of each diary. Findings reveal that schools in South Africa are not yet culturally responsive. Several reasons for the failure were given by participants, ranging from confusion with practice, lack of training and guidance, implicit bias, and lack of cultural competence and humility. Finally, critical comments were developed that can be used by schools to be more culturally responsive.
The Race to Attract Foreign Workers Among the Three Giants in ASEAN View Digital Media
Poster Session Akadet Chaichanavichakit, Seongsu Chi
Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand are economic development success stories in Southeast Asia. Since the formation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in the late 1960s, these three countries have been the leading economies in the region. As economies of ASEAN countries have gradually been developed and as the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), which was created to reduce barriers to trade and investment in the region, has recently been in effect, intra-regional trade, investment, and human movement have all been rapidly accelerated. Singapore, Malaysia, and Thailand, in fact, have relied heavily on foreign workers to sustain their current level of economic development. Attempting to fulfill their labor demands, these three countries enacted immigration policies both to promote and control the volume of labor inbound. With close proximity and comparable benefits, these guest programs have regularly resulted in the competition among these countries to attract foreign workers. This paper examines how these countries have adjusted and reformed their immigration policies, their implementations, along with their effectiveness. Findings suggest that the success of these countries’ immigration policies, besides affixed working and residential conditions, have also largely been determined by immigration policy consistency, coherence among policies linking with immigration management, management capacity, pressure from the private sector, and cultural proximity between the immigrants and the locals.
Narrative (and) Power : Facilitating Learning at the Intersection of Intercultural and Critical Literacy Pedagogies in Community College Literature Classes View Digital Media
Poster Session Jen Westmoreland
In the poster session, I share a multimodal resource site that combines my own scholarship with concrete ideas for community college literature classroom (and beyond the classroom) praxis. The focus is teaching literature through a model that exists at the intersection of interculturality and critical literacy pedagogy, grappling with questions regarding how cultural/social/racial selves are constructed, how systems are culturally/socially/racially constructed, how power functions locally and globally, and the historical and contemporary impacts of systemic oppression. The resource site includes theoretical discussions linked to practical applications, sample lessons and projects, and a space for collaborative ideation with colleagues from around the world. https://narrativeandpower.org/
Cross-disciplinary Educators and Trauma-informed Teaching: Diverse Students, Multiple Layers of COVID-era Needs, and Revised Goals View Digital Media
Poster Session Diana Rios, Graciela Quinones-Rodriguez, Mary Helen Millham
Drawing from experiences of cross-disciplinary educators who teach Communication, Latino Studies, and Women Studies, this auto-ethnographic research discusses the “new normal” COVID environment that will not disappear. We describe and define what “trauma-informed” means in the literature and realistically for academic lives, and curriculum. Our insights come from a small private and a large public university. We acknowledge how pedagogical approaches, assessments, reading selections, have permanently shifted to meet increased psycho-social needs of students, whose learning challenges have been accentuated by crisis. Our educational organizations are playing catch-up to update instruction-related policies/guidelines. "New normal" means heightened sensitivity working with larger percentages of students with problems in emotional health, physical health, cognitive processing, poverty, intersections of race/gender, etc. We pose that all educators will need to acknowledge/plan a future that domestic and global crises have impacted, and that this new teaching environment will not retreat. Temporary assignments during lockdown, racial, civic, and political strife, may become standard assignments for students who continue to take blended, hybrid, distance education. For example exercises such as “ice cream pizza”, “badge of courage”, “affirmations to yourself”, “congratulatory note to self”, are morale boosters that can be integrated. The US is a patchwork of COVID hotspots, or disaster zones. Higher education organizations are still planning how to best nurture young minds in crisis. While policies are being changed and updated for the organization, cross-disciplinarians in the classrooms cannot wait. We must reinvent ourselves, be resilient, revise our curriculum and goals to best serve students in need.
Valuing Peer Services in Mental Health Care: New Legislation Creates Peer Certification and Reimbursement for Services View Digital Media
Poster Session Dale Mueller
The positive impacts of peer to peer interaction during mental health service interventions is well-known in the field. The value of lived experience, especially where linguistic or cultural backgrounds are also relatable, is well-documented in the process of recovery. Until landmark legislation in 2020, California, the most populous and diverse state in the USA, did not have hiring opportunities for peers in the mental health system except as volunteers. Advocacy groups persisted in acknowledging the value of peers in mental health interventions through lobbying, focus groups, and data supporting the effectiveness of peer interventions. Over the past decade, persistent attempts to create equity and career advancement for peers in the mental health system had not been successful. Breakthrough legislation in 2022 created competencies for peer certification as well as reimbursement avenues for services provided. The legislation, SB803, brought peer providers into full employment status within mental health organizations and opened opportunities for a career ladder as well. The poster includes prior efforts and successes in other states, then primarily the landmark inclusions of the legislation: definitions, competencies, intended opportunities and mandates for organizations to establish peer positions within their service structure. Implementation will create more diverse organizations and will offer an expansion of valuable mental health resources in the community served.
How Can “Lawrence’s Daughter”of West World Develop as a Chicana-Latina Leader?: Recreate Pieces of Your New Story, As You Re-imagine, Rewrite Her Story View Digital Media
Poster Session Graciela Quinones-Rodriguez, Diana Rios
We use the starting point of a young, fictional Mexicanized character to facilitate possibilities for Chicanxs-Latinxs, and others, who recreate themselves over time. Lawrence’s Daughter (“LD”), is a character in HBO’s blockbuster series WestWorld. She doesn't have her own name, yet reveals enormous possibilities beyond a female living in a Spanish mission-style “rancho”. She must break her story loop. She is permanently nested in the U.S.-Southwest, while others break geography/time. The writers never develop LD’s character. Using a "feminista" lens, we review archetypes/tropes of Mexicanas-Latinas in U.S. popular culture. As media products are part of a national fabric, mainstream societies place similar limitations on real women. Hollywood’s ignorance is symptomatic of US society’s bewilderment about real “Chicanas”-Latinas whose cultural roots in the Americas predate European conquest. Latinxs are the largest ethnic grouping in the US at 18% of the nation (U.S.Census, 2019). Latinxs are long overdue for fair, inspiring, monumental media representations. We weave new futures for the Mexicanized female character LD based on: researchers' borderless imaginations and real statements about Latina heroines from students (Fall-2021) in “Latinas & Media” course. In this process, diverse "mujeres" recognize their cultural treasures, work/labor contributions in the real world. We take steps/leaps toward what we define as leading in our communities. LD’s new future and our real possibilities are a “qüilta”, “colcha” we respect in our leadership voyage. In remaking LD’s fictional life, we visualize new pieces of our selves.
