This book challenges the current child protection culture and calls for family-minded humane practice where children are understood as relational beings, parents are recognized as people with needs and hopes and families as carrying extraordinary capacities for care and protection.
The traditional lines of demarcation between service providers and service users are shifting. Professionals in managed service organizations are working to incorporate the voices of service users into their missions and the way they function, and service users, with growing access to knowledge, have taken on the semblances of professional expertise. Additionally, the human services environment has been transformed by administrative imperatives. The drive toward greater efficiency and accountability has weakened the bond between users and providers. Reimagining the Human Service Relationship is informed by the premise that the helping relationship should be seen as developing in the interactive space between those who provide human services and those who receive them. The contributors to this volume redefine the contours, roles, institutional divisions, means, and aims of providing and receiving services in a range of settings, including child welfare, addiction treatment, social enterprise, doctoring, mental health, and palliative care. Though they advocate an experience-near approach, they remain sensitive to the ambiguities and competing rationalities of the service relationship. Taken together, these chapters reimagine the service relationship by making visible the working relevancies of service delivery.
Reimagining Anti-Oppression Social Work Research explores the challenges, tensions, and possibilities of engaging with anti-oppression epistemology in social work research. Through in-depth discussion of methodologies such as phenomenology, surveys, decolonizing research principles, autoethnography, and critical arts-informed research, the authors provide insights about the application of these approaches to studies with marginalized populations and on a variety of social issues. Outlining principles for engaging with communities, research in organizational contexts, and the importance of fluidity and practices of unknowing, this edited collection invites readers to reflect critically about research frameworks. The authors explore the complexities of research on topics such as whiteness, racism, disability, and trans experiences, as well as working within feminist contexts and institutional social service settings. An ideal resource for social work students and scholars, this insightful and highly accessible volume highlights the value of anti-oppressive research for social change.
Re:Imagining Change provides resources, theory, hands-on tools, and illuminating case studies for the next generation of innovative change-makers. This unique book explores how culture, media, memes, and narrative intertwine with social change strategies, and offers practical methods to amplify progressive causes in the popular culture. Re:Imagining Change is an inspirational inside look at the trailblazing methodology developed by the Center for Story-based Strategy over fifteen years of their movement building partnerships. This practitioner’s guide is an impassioned call to innovate our strategies for confronting the escalating social and ecological crises of the twenty-first century. This new, expanded second edition includes updated examples from the frontlines of social movements and provides the reader with easy-to-use tools to change the stories they care about most.
Thought-provoking and engaging, this edited volume invites readers to examine how anti-oppression practices can be fostered as a platform for transformation within social work education and organizational settings. Written by practitioners, educators, and students who have long engaged with anti-oppression and social justice frameworks, the chapters in this collection offer in-depth insights into how anti-oppression principles can enhance social work practice. Through supportive critiques and an exploration of the complexities of practice with and by marginalized populations, the authors seek to push the scope and boundaries of anti-oppression practice. They offer concrete examples on a diversity of issues, including developing Indigenous practice principles, addressing anti-Black sanism, challenging normative constructions of grief, supporting queer resistance, and advancing critical practices with children and youth. A well-timed contribution to the literature, this edited collection will be an indispensable resource for social work students, scholars, and practitioners.
A student's personal identity constantly changes as part of the lifelong human process to become someone who matters. Art educators in grades K-16 have a singular opportunity to guide important phases of this development. How can educators create a supportive space for young people to work through the personal and cultural factors influencing their journey? Laura Hetrick draws on articles from the archives of Visual Arts Research to approach the question. Juxtaposing the scholarship in new ways, she illuminates methods that allow educators to help students explore identity through artmaking; to reinforce identity in positive ways; and to enhance marginalized identities. A final section offers suggestions on how educators can use each essay to engage with students who are imagining, and reimagining, their identities in the classroom and beyond. Contributors: D. Ambush, M. S. Bae, J. C. Castro, K. Cosier, C. Faucher, K. Freedman, F. Hernandez, L. Hetrick, K. Jenkins, E. Katter, M. Lalonde, L. Lampela, D. Pariser, A. Pérez Miles, M., and K. Schuler. Laura Hetrick is an assistant professor of art education at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and the coeditor of the journal Visual Arts Research.
Universal school-based social and emotional learning (SEL) interventions seek to improve the social-emotional competencies (e.g. self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, responsible decision-making) of students through explicit instruction in the context of learning environments that are safe, caring, well-managed and participatory. In recent years, SEL has become a dominant orthodoxy in school systems around the world. In this important new book, leading researchers provide a comprehensive overview of the field, including conceptual models of SEL; the assessment of social and emotional competence in children and young people; key issues in the implementation of SEL interventions; the evidence base on the efficacy of SEL in improving students’ outcomes; and critical perspectives on the emergence of SEL. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the role of schools in promoting children's wellbeing. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Education.
Teaching for Joy and Justice is the much-anticipated sequel to Linda Christensen's bestselling Reading, Writing, and Rising Up. Christensen is recognized as one of the country's finest teachers. Her latest book shows why. Through story upon story, Christensen demonstrates how she draws on students' lives and the world to teach poetry, essay, narrative, and critical literacy skills. Teaching for Joy and Justice reveals what happens when a teacher treats all students as intellectuals, instead of intellectually challenged. Part autobiography, part curriculum guide, part critique of today's numbing standardized mandates, this book sings with hope -- born of Christensen's more than 30 years as a classroom teacher, language arts specialist, and teacher educator. Practical, inspirational, passionate: this is a must-have book for every language arts teacher, whether veteran or novice. In fact, Teaching for Joy and Justice is a must-have book for anyone who wants concrete examples of what it really means to teach for social justice.
“Reading this courageous book feels like the beginning of a social and personal awakening...I can’t stop thinking about it.”—Brené Brown, PhD, author of Atlas of the Heart For readers of Emergent Strategy and Dare to Lead, an activist's roadmap to long-term social justice impact through four simple shifts. We need a fundamental shift in our values--a pivot in how we think, act, work, and connect. Despite what we’ve been told, the most critical mainspring of social change isn’t coalition building or problem analysis. It’s healing: deep, whole, and systemic, inside and out. Here, Shawn Ginwright, PhD, breaks down the common myths of social movements--a set of deeply ingrained beliefs that actually hold us back from healing and achieving sustainable systemic change. He shows us why these frames don’t work, proposing instead four revolutionary pivots for better activism and collective leadership: Awareness: from lens to mirror Connection: from transactional to transformative relationships Vision: from problem-fixing to possibility-creating Presence: from hustle to flow Supplemented with reflections, prompts, cutting-edge research, and the author’s own insights and lived experience as an African American social scientist, professor, and movement builder, The Four Pivots helps us uncover our obstruction points. It shows us how to discover new lenses and boldly assert our need for connection, transformation, trust, wholeness, and healing. It gives us permission to create a better future--to acknowledge that a broken system has been predefining our dreams and limiting what we allow ourselves to imagine, but that it doesn’t have to be that way at all. Are you ready to pivot?