The "strong Black woman" construct has been well-documented in the United States as both an aspirational icon and a constricting burden for African-heritage women. It has not been examined among African-Canadians. Drawing on qualitative interviews and standardized measures with 50 African-heritage women in Eastern Canada, our analysis reveals their perceptions of the construct as both strongly endorsed as a source of cultural pride, yet also acknowledged to take a terrible toll on health and well-being. The construct arises from and directly benefits racism. It is imperative that health professionals understand the ways it shapes health and help-seeking behaviors.

Depression is a topic that is often avoided in discussions among Black women for a myriad of reasons. The purpose of this study was to investigate the midlife health of Black women living in the province of Nova Scotia, Canada. This paper will present one of the key findings of this research; midlife depression. It will examine the factors associated with depression among mid-life African Canadian women and how these women deal with depression. A triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods guided by the principles of participatory action research (PAR) was used in the study. Data collection methods included 50 in-depth interviews of mid-life African Canadian women aged 40-65, focus groups, and workshops as well as the CES-D structured instrument. Purposive sampling method was the primary recruitment strategy and 113 people participated in the study. Although the women rarely openly discussed depression, they described depression as emotional feelings that range from "feeling blue" to being clinically depressed. Women viewed midlife depression as the consequence of a complex set of circumstances and stressors that they face. At midlife, Black women frequently recognize the importance of greater self-care and the need to pay more attention to their health, but they are reluctant to do so because they have to be "strong" in order to deal with their daily experiences of racism. Racism, among other things, leads to accumulated stress and undermines Black women's ability to cope and make healthy life choices. This signifies the implications of these research findings for clinical practice.

Educators are seeking to meet student needs in increasingly diverse university classrooms. Two contrasting ways of responding to cultural difference are planning instruction on the basis of cultural styles or repertoires of culturally-based experiences (Gutiérrez & Rogoff, 2003). Use of learning styles to address individual differences in learning is relatively commonplace (Young, 2008). More controversial is the use of cultural styles that assume commonalities in approaches to learning based on cultural background. There are benefits and problems with using individual or cultural learning styles. Gutiérrez and Rogoff (2003) proposed that we abandon the use of the styles construct in favour of working with students' repertoires of culturally-based experiences. This cultural historical approach has different views of the learner and his or her relationship to cultural communities, the learning process, and the appropriate instructional practices to address diversity. After contrasting the styles and cultural historical approaches, a compromise position is presented along with recommendations for further research and the optimal use of both the styles and cultural-historical approaches.