Focused Discussions
Improving Transition from Incarceration through Mentoring for Youth and Families: Transition from Juvenile Incarceration
Focused Discussion Corinne Datchi, Niki Weller, Theresa Ochoa
The high juvenile recidivism rate is a national concern in the United States. Despite educational and rehabilitative programming, approximately 55% of all juveniles released from long-term residential confinement return to incarceration within a year (Davis et al, 2014), indicating that any gains made while in confinement are often lost upon release. Transition support is necessary to reduce the likelihood that youth will return to crime and incarceration (Ochoa, Levy, Spegel, & Ovares, 2015; US Departments of Education and Justice, 2014). The Helping Offenders Prosper through Employment (HOPE) is a program for incarcerated youth and their families. Researchers from education and sociology recruit, train, and support undergraduate students who provide mentoring to youth during and after incarceration. Simultaneously, a family coach is trained and supervised by a researcher in counseling psychology to offer support to a family member. Mentoring and family support are both protective factors against recidivism. We present results of a pilot study from one high security prison for youth in which mentoring support was provided to youth and family coaching to the family during and after incarceration. A Meet-and-Greet will be hosted by HOPE on Friday July 12 from 10-1 for people interested in learning more about research related to juvenile delinquency and prevention. Location to be announced.
Cultural Influences on Latin American Perceptions of Inclusion and Diversity
Focused Discussion Ronald R. Rojas
The literature trends on global organizational development is signaling a shift of interest from diversity as a mandate towards inclusion as an organizational value, and consequently, to constructs that are more in tune with interpersonal and relational frameworks. The diversity and inclusion strategies of many North American organizations operating within Latin America play a significant role in social change, albeit, adapted somewhat haphazardly to cultural differences. Latin American countries—as portrayed in Hofstede’s cultural dimensions— demonstrate strong interpersonal tendencies that suggest a different approach to inclusion and diversity when compared with the North American perspective. These cultural differences, if fully understood are key in designing and adapting inclusion strategies and training programs for Latin American subsidiaries. Implications for training programs will be discussed in this session.
Taking Land, Making Race
Focused Discussion Carol Scotton
Land as place, a space to be, is little mentioned in economic theory. Yet, place is critical to ideas of ownership and the notion of property. The modern state – built on colonization – required bounding the land and defining citizenship, so that the colonizers could call the place ‘home’. People and land had to be re-conceived as objects to justify the taking of land as well as the taking of people (or pushing them aside). A case had to be made for dispossession. Care of the land and resources had to be downplayed and erased along with cultures tied to place. A hierarchy depending upon ‘race’, rather than ability or status, had to be instituted. These mechanisms made ‘settlers’, workers and laborers needed for the project of colonization and imperialization, complicit in the task. The promise of a ‘claim’ to land, and citizenship, based on the superiority of belonging to the right ‘race’, required a narrative that those originally occupying it, or brought as slaves, were not human, not equals, not ‘up to the task’ of ownership or property rights and certainly not governance. Ownership and property “rights”, matters of exclusion and accumulation, could then be cast as a basis in ‘law’ not just ‘might’. Stratification economics provides a framework for how such notions take hold. Charles Mills’ racial emancipation re-frames the discussion on race. The indigenous sense of grounded normativity brings back the primacy of land. This session considers of the intersection of land and race.
The Impact of Globalization on the Realm of Education: A New Reality
Focused Discussion Janelle Christine Simmons
This discussion introduces the impact of globalization as a foundation for the impact of technology worldwide. Special attention is paid to the introduction of technology in the realm of business. It also examines the current and future impact on the realm of education. In addition, technological advances in regards to education, especially as it applies to online learning are explored. Furthermore, the presenter demonstrates in real time the difference that technology has made on the face of education. Finally, one last question will be asked. Where do we go from here?
Situated Learning in a Non-traditional Destination: Exploring Host Family Perspectives in a Swahili College Homestay Program in Tanzania
Focused Discussion Kaia DeMatteo
Extant studies on host family perspectives in homestay research advocate popular language and study destinations in the Global North without addressing the unique sociocultural and economic landscape of programs in indigenous language communities in the Global South. Euro-American worldviews and frameworks applied to homestay programs are not necessarily transferable to host families’ livelihoods in the Global South. Drawing on situated learning theory (Lave & Wenger, 1991), this qualitative study explores host family motivations for participating in a Swahili college homestay program; it considers the sociocultural, historical, and local contexts in which meaning is constructed and from which norms, ideologies, and practices are derived. Based on multiple semi-structured interviews conducted with eight host families, this study identifies strategies for widening host family participation in homestay program design in non-traditional destinations. Hosts narratives underscore the need to revisit program planning in indigenous language communities and incorporate host families as co-participants in decision-making. Several themes emerged surrounding social dimensions of learning amongst hosts: the role of relational linkages, local ways of knowing, and collectivism being central to local Tanzanian communities’ livelihoods. By combing relevant literature with research findings, the presented framework situates the homestay as a learning community of practice within a wider cultural lens comprising existing local social norms, values, and ideologies. Research implications highlight the importance of challenging program stakeholders to identify ways of involving host families’ voices to consider social dimensions of learning within programs’ local contexts and support worldviews amongst indigenous language communities in future program planning and development.
Nationalism, the Chicana/o Movement, and Mexican American Music in the Southwest
Focused Discussion Guadalupe San Miguel
In the past several decades historians have investigated the complex origins, evolution, and legacy of the Chicana/o Movement in the U.S. None of them however have focused on the impact this movement had on Mexican American music in the Southwest. This review provides an overview of the Chicana/o Movement and its impact on Mexican American music in Texas and California during the 1960s and 1970s.
