Liberation, inspiration, and critical consciousness: Preparing the next generation of practitioners.

Abstract

Worse yet, it [the banking model of education] turns them [students] into "containers" to be "filled" by the teacher. The more completely she fills the receptacles, the better a teacher she is. The more meekly the receptacles permit themselves to be filled, the better students they are.-PAULO FREIRE (2000, p. 53) L iberation psychology compels mental health practitioners to address the systemic and structural influences in the lives of clients so that we do not inadvertently perpetuate the oppression in their lives (Martín-Baró, 1994). The praxis of liberation psychology for students training to be psychologists can be elusive within the structure of accredited doctoral programs due to the constraints of dominant professional perspectives and discourse. This chapter presents the development of a yearlong multicultural specialty track for clinical psychology doctoral students, many of whom are working with underserved communities in the greater Los Angeles basin that seeks to position liberation psychology as a grounding perspective for making applied psychology more accessible and relevant to communities of color. The liberatory frameworks guiding the curriculum development and pedagogy of the specialty track are grounded in African, Indigenous, and Latinx paradigms, which seek to privilege marginalized voices. The course also introduces students to developing theories such as mujerista psychology, a theory infused with a spiritualfeminist liberatory approach (Bryant-Davis & Comas-Díaz, 2016

The public psychology for liberation training model: A call to transform the discipline.

“…Reciprocal knowledge can also take place in the classroom or training site. Castañeda-Sound and her colleagues (Castañeda-Sound et al, 2020) describe a yearlong liberation/multicultural specialty training track for clinical psychology students working with racially diverse underserved communities. The training includes creating a decolonized classroom; that is, an approach that centers Indigenous and African-centered perspectives, incorporates the interrogation of one’s positionality, and seeks student input about their learning, including topics and assignments.…”

“…Although our focus in this article is on the Global Majority (i.e., Black, Indigenous, and People of Color [BIPOC] globally), the model is flexible enough to incorporate other vantage points (e.g., low-income communities, queer, critical disability, and intersectional perspectives). The proposed framework is informed by current training models, including general models such as the public psychology training model (Chu et al, 2012), the cube model of competency development (Rodolfa et al, 2005), and the relational model of supervision (Kennedy et al, 2018), as well as social-justice-oriented training models such as the QIAN model of cultural humility (Chang et al, 2012) and various critical psychology training models (Castañeda-Sound et al, 2020; Mallinckrodt et al, 2014; Toporek et al, 2009).…”

Exploring preferences for multicultural workshop formats: Does the race of the trainer matter?

“…Trainings that follow this format seek to address the gaps left by the cultural model: they provide a sociohistorical approach to multiculturalism in which structural oppression is acknowledged and centered. Racism is named directly, and the systemic and structural influences in people’s life are explored; these characteristics correspond to social justice, intersectional, and liberation psychology training models (e.g., Brinkman & Donohue, 2020; Castañeda-Sound et al, 2020; Toporek & Vaughn, 2010). This format also provides a context for discussion of racism-related national movements such as Black Lives Matter activism.…”

Deep-structure curriculum liberation for social responsiveness in graduate health service psychology training.

“…It is vital that we focus our efforts on liberating and transforming the psychology curriculum toward social responsiveness across all levels of training. Liberation of the curriculum relates to “deideologiz[ing] and develop[ing] critical consciousness about the current structures and processes that maintain the status quo of oppression” (Castañeda-Sound et al, 2020, p. 180). It also includes acknowledging that racism (and oppression overall) is multilevel and, at its core, structural (APA, 2021a).…”