Developing transformational curriculum to educate social work students about Indigenous peoples and Indigenous knowledge

• Main Author: Thibeault, Deborah
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: UST Research Online 2018
• Subjects: cultural immersion; service learning; social work education; Indigenous; Native American; curriculum development; Clinical and Medical Social Work; Social Work; Canada; Mi’kmaq
• Online Access: https://ir.stthomas.edu/ssw_docdiss/33; https://ir.stthomas.edu/context/ssw_docdiss/article/1032/viewcontent/viewcontent.cgi

While efforts to recruit Indigenous social work students must be continued, social work educators need to ensure that non-Indigenous social work students are learning about the history, culture, and wisdom of Indigenous peoples. Additionally, social work students need to become aware of the impact the social work profession has had on this population. This awareness and understanding will help social workers practice from a place of being an ally and will assist in altering the views many Indigenous people have about social work. There are three products in this banded dissertation that focus on engaging social work educators in a dialogue regarding how to teach social work students about Indigenous peoples in a culturally sensitive manner. The conceptual framework that guides this scholarship agenda is a Mi’kmaq concept called “two-eyed seeing”. This means one eye sees the strengths and contributions of Indigenous knowledge, the other sees the strengths and contributions of Western knowledge, and merging the two is beneficial. The first product in the banded dissertation includes slides and a summary of a conference presentation that took place at the National Indigenous Social Work Conference in October of 2016 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. This presentation reviews the pedagogies of service learning and cultural immersion; and introduces the concept of cultural service immersion. Service learning connects students with a community where the student provides a service while integrating classroom knowledge and leadership skills. Cultural immersion engages students in a culture different from their own for an extended period of time. Cultural service immersion blends both service learning and cultural immersion. The second product explores the use of cultural service immersion with Indigenous people as a transformational learning method. Not only is it proposed that cultural sensitivity and humility will increase among social work students engaged in cultural service immersion but it is expected that through ...