Student Diversity as grass roots internationalisation in social work education

Marty Grace Rob TownsendDoris TestaJohn FoxPauline O’MaleyJuanita CustanceAngela Daddow

School of Social Sciences and Psychology, Victoria University, Melbourne

VU College, Victoria University, Melbourne

Victoria University

Located in the Melbourne’s culturally diverse western region• High proportion of low socio economic backgrounds

Social Work has a diverse student body• Many are first in family to university• 16% are international students • The inclusion of social work in the skilled migration skills list has

had a significant impact on international enrolments into the course

• Students struggle to attend additional support classes

Diversity within diversity, global families and collectivist cultures impact on the social work curriculum , teaching and field education

In social work education....

In Social Work education, pressure to internationalise goes beyond professional and university imperatives. Many social work programs have very diverse student bodies, including international students, local students from diverse cultural backgrounds, students from low socio-economic backgrounds, mature age students, and students with disabilities (Killick 2006).

What is critical social work education?

• Encompasses critical social work, critical pedagogy (Friere 1996, Giroux, 2011) and critical literacy (Lankshear & McLaren 1993).

• Transformation – of individual lives and the social conditions that contribute to oppression – is central to this approach

• Critical pedagogy – produces citizens who are critical, self reflective, knowledgeable and willing to make moral judgements and act in a socially responsible way’ (Giroux, 2011, pg 3)

• dialogical with a focus on knowledge transformation rather than knowledge consumption; on addressing power relations and privilege. It is not unilateral but rather is always related ‘to the specificity of particular contexts, students, communities, and available resources’ (Giroux, 2011, p 4).

• Critical literacy emphasises not only the functional reading of text, but the ability to understand how language works to reflect and reinforce existing power structures (Giroux 2011).

• These approaches underpin the idea of grass roots internationalisation of the curriculum

• They can be seen as alternatives to Western paradigm pedagogy that includes the ‘othering’ of non-Western students within social work programs.

• there is still an ‘outward gaze’ from social work on indigenous and cross-cultural practices, locating these practices as ‘other than’ what is mainstream social work practice. (Walter, Taylor and Habibis 2011:17)

effective pedagogy is connected with students’ lives, their ‘local histories and community contexts’ (Gonzales & Moll 2002)

learning is a social process, sitting within larger contextual forces that impact on students’ lives and identity formations (Gonzales & Moll 2002)

The dominant paradigms in learning environments often sit outside these contexts.

Given that these paradigms are socially privileged, students sense that their own forms of knowledge are judged as lacking and deficient.

• when seeking a pedagogy that enables students to value their life-based cultural traditions and conventions: a pedagogy that avoids valorising the dominant cultural codes of the university (even as it does teach these), and invalidating previous experience and histories of students. - Gonzalez and Moll, 2002

• ‘Funds of knowledge’ refers to the knowledge and skills used over generations to support family well-being, which tend to be ignored in the education of marginalised students. ......by finding points of connection between students’ everyday lives and their learning experience (Hattam et al 2007)

Victoria University.....internationalisation

• Includes teaching methods that are diverse, inclusive and explicit and that attempt to not disadvantage any student

•Includes teaching that is broadened by an internationally comparative approach

•Develops and assesses intercultural communications skills and critical thinking •Embeds internationalisation in the curriculum, but varies according to discipline and AQF standards

•Is achieved through collaboration with a diverse group of stakeholders in the development of a relevant range of resources

•Is based on a view of culture as complex, dynamic and evolving, and avoids stereotyping, generalisation and monolithic descriptions of cultures including our own

VU Social Work Unit Experience......

We describe three projects undertaken by Victoria University’s Social Work Unit

1.CALD research

1.SLU and LLN project

1.Funds of Knowledge action research project

We argue • that student diversity provides opportunities for grass roots

internationalisation of the curriculum, and

Highlight the importance of • including the funds of knowledge that students bring to social work

education; • influencing how we incorporate this knowledge in classroom

practices and the attitudes we bring as educators to create the spaces for learning about social work theory and practice in a global context.

We discuss • some of the outcomes, tensions and implications for social work

education in diverse communities

Project One: CALD Project:

Noble, C., Egan, R., Martin P. 2007

Diversity and Achievement Project, “I just wanted to be the best I could be” ,

Victoria University, Melbourne

Qualitativepurposive sampling

16 students Stage one

Stage two – small grant from AASWWE

Noble, C., Egan, R., Testa, D., Walker, R. 2009Diversity and Achievement Project, “A frog in a big ocean”

Victoria University, Melbourne

Qualitativepurposive sampling

15 students Semi structured interviews/ narratives

Describe your journey to Australia

Describe your journey to Victoria University, Social Work

Describe your experience of the Bachelor of Social Work

STAGE ONE:

http://www.thestorymaker.org/teachingmen/story/view/32

FindingsPositives..• Many challenges cf library and Teaching and Learning.. Applicable to all

students• Most very positive about anti-oppressive discourse (social justice, human

rights, advocacy, CD)• Unit content connected and had internal logic• Teachers responsive to CALD student needs• Placements good learning opportunities• Subjects e.g. indigenous, CD, Research fresh and exciting and useful• Staff available and supportive• Learning from challenges with staff support• V. happy with teachers and course (make sense) • Knowledge about social systems/social awareness .. Helpful for individual

problems (empowering) .. • Practice skills important/knowledge is power• Good university/ taught by experts- gives everyone a chance. Access and fair

FindingsChallenges

• Demanding course in time/work/family• Language /concepts/ polices and practices- Aust. Welfare and culture

– huge gap in local cultural knowledge• Course/lecturers expectations/availability• Library resources (inadequate) • Traditional cultural practices in tension with anti-oppressive stance

(e.g. feminism)• Caught between two cultures.. Need to find the bridge..• Isolated from cultural knowledge and emotional linkages in new

culture• Feeling intimidated in class by English speakers

Results / discussion• The results indicated that CALD students have particular difficulties

that influence the success or otherwise of their field placement. Students nominated their level of English proficiency and their unfamiliarity with Australian human services organisations as influencing, positively or negatively, their field placement experience. Students also highlighted their lack of local knowledge and values and the use of unfamiliar Western paradigms as adversely affecting the application of social work skills and knowledge.

Conclusions / implications• Overall data indicated that, if CALD students are to successfully

complete a field education placement, the social work programs and human services organisations must address personal, cultural and political dislocation that CALD students experience while undertaking their field education placement.

……words from students“ I’ve been here for quite some time, almost 5 years now so that makes it home, I guess.

I’ve gotten used to the campus, classmates, friends and teachers, the lecturers are all really good. That’s something I really value because its something that I never had-especially in my home country- to find people like that- willing to teach their hearts out”

"I think one thing that Vic Uni do well is about being diversity and the social work unit is accommodated when I was a student that come to the social work unit and I think the ways they handle students from diverse backgrounds - don’t feel that if something happens to them its because they are from a different culture“

New opportunity and further education. I struggle as international student. I feel discriminated against with services and resources and costs of education. Throughout my course I have found staff respectful, open, compassionate, inspiring, knowledgeable

"when you write an assignment – I remember the first one I wrote – because I came from the Diploma and English is my second language I remember when I got my first assignment back – I think it was [identifying name] she gave me feedback and referred me to assistance she did what she was supposed to which is feedback.

Some other teachers I don’t think they ah – they grade your work but you need feedback. I went there and she gave me 60 and wrote in the feedback congratulations. And it felt like congratulations should be a HD or something. I went to see her and I was not like wanting her to give me a better grade, but I was like, you know, 60 is not good I want to know how to do better next time and how to improve, I wasn’t happy – not with the grade"

"Some things about the Australian legislation. I was studying the social work law I would have trouble to understand the differences between the Act, the legislation and the law.

Sometimes the lecturer said you should find the weak point in the social work law. This is a very big job for me because I have absolutely no idea about the law and she asked me to find the weak –point. I was thinking oh my god what can I find."

For some students the metaphors used during the social work course and field education felt ‘very complex’:

"You really need to live here. I don’t know what’s the emotion you should feel. People would all have the same response and I didn’t really understand. I was like, what? Why are people feeling that, why are they feeling sad about this? I can’t respond the way they expected."

Some noted that their experience drew on Western paradigms exclusively:

"In [home country] you are always looking at cultures. They talk about family, community together, but here they talk about the client and their problem, but there to look at the client, you have to think about the community."

Social work staff at VU have sought to respond to these findings in an ongoing manner. The first response, beginning in 1990’s, involved a partnership between social work, the university’s SLU and pilot LLN Strategy

The LLN Strategy has the following aims:

•To build the language, literacy and numeracy capabilities that underpin students’ Victoria University course achievement and which provide a foundation for further learning and for future careers and life choices.

•To build the capacity of Victoria University teachers, curricula developers and LLN support mechanisms to identify and address the LLN development needs of students .

•To evaluate and document the impact of interventions, enabling sustained growth.

Project Two: Student Learning Unit (SLU) and Language, Literacy and Numeracy (LLN) Projects:

2011

Anecdotal evidence indicates that these ‘outreach’ models increase students’ confidence in seeking assistance.

Students report that the ongoing relationship developed with the learning support/LLN staff, together with the latter’s familiarity with the unit content, make for a greater uptake of their services.

It also operates to reduce any stigma, or at least the influence of any stigma, on their seeking help. It has relieved students of having to self-identify as needing help, as interaction with the support staff is part of the everyday interaction in class.

The embedding has, in itself, helped relieve some of this burden as its transparency and prominence have normalised the need to strengthen a wide range of literacy skills.

***Referring students to tutorial has the risk of stigmatising and resistance but the decision to work with these issues

First semester: Outreach model:

•offering support to students who had failed, or nearly failed, their week 5 assignment•Four specific learning support tutorials were offered

Winter schools •Referred ‘at risk’ students •extended the length of one of the unit’s tutorials by an hour and having •jointly taught by both the regular tutor and learning support tutor. • semester 2, 2011, we continued the model

2012 semester 1The staff participating in these tutorials have observed

•a much higher level of disclosure around reading difficulties and •greater confidence in dealing with those difficulties, as compared to previous interactions.

•also observed a clear adaption of many of the reading skills, both in and outside of formal unit interactions.

•for several students who regularly participated, the coordinator reported an improvement of the quality of assessment of up to 10% over the second half of the semester (that is, between the mid-and- end of semester assessments) In general the students grew more confident with grappling with the ideas and sharing difficulties, they engaged as a community of learners who together could build knowledge.

Extended the advantages of the normalisation of learning literacy skills. In particular, we made:•the process of reading and related skills the central focus of our work in tutorials;•the discussion of difficulties in reading an essential part of student presentations, together with a discussion of the manner in which those students overcame those difficulties; and•characterised the unit as a ‘learning community’ with particular emphasis on all of us – staff included – being ‘learners’, making mistakes, and having the capacity to overcome those mistakes.The explicit work on promoting reading skills included the following:

•concept mapping;•‘skimming and scanning’;•paragraph structure analysis (specifically, ‘Topic sentence, Explanation, Evidence and Link back to the central question);•integrating sources; •studying the vocabulary of critical analysis;•focusing on reading behaviours and reading with purpose; andsharing reading strategies.

2012 semester 1A significant number of students met with the support staff on an individual basis. In some cases, this involved several meetings in relation to each assessment.

A series of extensions were granted to allow students to benefit from those meetings.

This has raised some question as to the extent to which the students’ improved confidence and performance were a product of the tutorial or individual supports. It has also raised issues as to the appropriate length of extensions and about the university’s ability to resource such a high level of support.

Attendance for the full duration of the supported tutorials has remained a challenge. In the current semester, students have been encouraged to attend through a variety of measures.

In order to encourage students to remain for the additional hour the content-focussed aspect of the tutorial, together with the literacy support, were integrated into the entire length of the tutorial and the coordinator remained for the first half hour of the additional time.

It was hoped that the coordinator’s continued presence would promote continued participation, given that many students had previously left immediately after the coordinator’s departure from the tutorial room.

The learning support staff then provided an additional half hour of support after the coordinator’s departure, tailoring their activities to individual advice or small group exercises and discussions, depending upon what the remaining students desired. Students could also seek individual support with the learning support staff.

……words from students

2012 semester 1

The literacy activities are time consuming, however, and there is a real risk that the social work specific learning could be compromised by the reduction of time spent on it.

However, it is equally concerning to consider that when students come to university with a poor skill set of academic literacies their engagement with the complexities of the issues and learning encountered in the curriculum is limited.

Without intervention they remain disadvantaged in their ability to participate in and, most importantly, contribute their own voice to the discipline’s discourse.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that this has secured a higher level of attendance, although a significant proportion of those students most needing help continue to attend inconsistently

It appears that to some degree the difficulty in securing attendance is a reflection of the complexity and diversity of the students’ lives

It appears that embedding learning support in the usual structure of tutorials is an appropriate response to the increasing diversity of social work students and their commitments.

Project Three: Funds of Knowledge Project - 2013

Partnership with VU’s Curriculum and Innovation Unit

•Action research that intentionally designs and implement curriculum and pedagogy to access students’ funds of knowledge

• to enable to students to traverse the multi literacies required for success in academic and professional lives

•Design curriculum for two units of study that access less privileged literacies and fund of knowledge

•Researched an refined for implementation across semesters one and two, 2013

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Thankyou