Teaching on diversity: The mutual influence of students and instructors.

Abstract

A wide range of emotional experiences, including anxiety, relief, guilt, and anger, are often expressed either implicitly or explicitly by instructors and students in graduate courses focused on diversity and psychotherapy. This article addresses the ways in which teaching on race and ethnicity can lay the groundwork for critical learning, impasses, and enactments. Contributions of psychodynamic perspectives to multicultural education are thought to be particularly relevant to psychologists, because they involve a study of individual and group dynamics as reflective of larger social structures and sociocultural histories. Findings from multicultural research and psychodynamic perspectives related to affective processes involved in multicultural learning will be explored. The author discusses specific experiences of teaching diversity courses to graduate students in psychology with the purpose of illustrating resistance to talking openly about one's feelings about diversity within a group setting, and the difficulty experienced by students and instructors to tolerate undiscovered and/or unprocessed material related to diversity. These vignettes involve an examination of subjectivity of race and ethnicity and its influence on the interactions between fellow students and instructors.

Changing organisational routines in doctoral education: an intervention to infuse social justice into a social welfare curriculum

“…The SJC initiated the SJDE Project initially to raise awareness of the breadth and depth of social justice ideals held by students and faculty to make more explicit the expectations for student competence and for programmatic opportunities and to more explicitly recognize the ways in which students and faculty were embodying and expanding their commitments to social justice. The SJDE Project did not attempt to reach a singular consensus definition of social justice, but rather, identify exemplars of ways to promote social justice through scholarship, teaching, and service that was inclusive of many conceptualizations of the term (Bell et al, 1997;Deal and Hyde, 2004;Fleck-Henderson and Melendez, 2009;Funge, 2011;Garcia and Van Soest, 2000;Granruth, 2009;Tummala-Narra, 2009). Thus, the SJDE Project's first effort was to develop and build internal consensus around exemplars of social justice in doctoral education, a participatory process described in detail elsewhere (Hudson et al, 2014).…”

Counseling Students’ Emotions During Cultural Immersion: Impact on Reactance

“…Specifically, counselor educators could consider how they might engender excitement in students. One approach may be through self‐disclosure (e.g., de Anda, 2007; Tummala‐Narra, 2009), in which instructors describe the range of emotions they have experienced interacting with people who are culturally different, while also emphasizing the joys available in new learning and connection. Alternatively, instructors could assemble a panel of practitioners committed to developing their MCC to address students, highlighting the practical application of course content to the work of counseling, lessening reactance, and building interest in this area.…”

“…Instructors of multicultural counseling courses consistently report challenges in the classroom, including students’ resistance to developing self‐awareness around their values and biases (Buckley & Foldy, 2010; Burton & Furr, 2014; Watt et al, 2009). The journey toward critical consciousness (Freire, 1970/1986) can involve challenging self‐examination that provokes a wide range of difficult emotions, including guilt, anger, shock, denial, anxiety, and apathy (Buckley & Foldy, 2010; Parker, Freytes, Kaufman, Woodruff, & Hord, 2004; Tummala‐Nara, 2009; Watt et al, 2009). The presence of these emotions—and related defense mechanisms (Watt et al, 2009)—can limit students’ engagement with the course, sometimes even resulting in overtly resistant behaviors to the content or instructor (Buckley & Foldy, 2010; Burton & Furr, 2014).…”

Promoting the Social Justice Orientation of Students: The Role of the Educator

“…This may be especially problematic considering the challenges educators face when teaching social justice-related content (e.g., Abrams & Gibson, 2007;Bell et al, 1997;Garcia & Van Soest, 2000;Gutiérrez et al, 1999;Hong & Hodge, 2009;Jacobson, 2009), the difficulties students experience when exposed to this content (e.g., Bell et al, 1997;Deal & Hyde, 2004;Fleck-Henderson & Melendez, 2009;Garcia & Van Soest, 2006;Sciame-Giesecke et al, 2009;Tummala-Narra, 2009), and recent charges of ideological bias leveled against social work education (e.g., NAS, 2007;Will, 2007). Given these challenges, it may be problematic that no significant support or guidance regarding how to attend to this standard effectively in their teaching was reported by these interviewees.…”

“…Confronted with a world view that may disrupt their sense of society and of themselves, students are often resistant to social justice-related content as a consequence of their anxiety and discomfort with the material (Bell, Washington, Weinstein, & Love, 1997;Deal & Hyde, 2004;Fleck-Henderson & Mel endez, 2009;Garcia & Van Soest, 2006;Tummala-Narra, 2009). These reactions may be informed by their social, economic, and cultural backgrounds (Sciame-Giesecke, Ro den, & Park ison, 2009) and/or their cognitive, behavioral, and affective capacities to handle this content (Deal & Hyde, 2004).…”