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Strongly emerging Indigenous methodologies have attracted researchers to employ diverse research paradigms within a moral commitment to conducting research based on ethical sensitivities and appropriate research protocols, as informed by research work with marginalized and unfamiliar groups including Indigenous Communities. However, adopting Indigenous methodological approaches may raise additional ethical considerations requiring a nuanced examination of what these may entail and competing ethical claims regarding research funding, research processes, outcomes and output. In this article, we draw sociological insights from Bourdieusian theory, as well as feminist epistemology, to explore the ethical implications arising from qualitative research the authors recently completed with Indigenous communities in equatorial Malaysia and Costa Rica, where Indigenous land rights and access issues form the contextualizing and comparative backdrop to the study, with reference to relevant international UN policies such as the Sustainable Development Goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The liberal arts education is one that is increasingly being adopted in regions far removed from the USA, such as the United Arab Emirates. The importing of this American educational model is, however, associated with the inexorable influences of dominant cultural forms through the effects of globalisation. However, at the same time international teaching also requires that curricula are culturally empathic to the needs of students in ethnically diverse regions. This paper explores the author's development of teaching material designed to engage deep learning activities with students from the United Arab Emirates in relation to achieving culturally responsive teaching practice.

Background: This qualitative study discusses family care-giving of children with developmental disabilities in the United Arab Emirates. Findings were reviewed in terms of the influence of culture on gender norms governing parental behaviour and aspirations. Method: An ethnographic approach is used in which parent participants were interviewed intensively. The data were then analysed commensurate with ethnographic methodology in which parental care was considered in terms of gender differentials, in addition to other factors. Results: Although mothers carried the main burden of support, this is ameliorated by cultural interpretations of the role of motherhood as well as practical coping strategies. Discrimination towards disability as well as gender is evident although countered by maternal strategies of resistance. Conclusions: These indicate that daughters with disabilities are subject to oppressive attitudes and commensurate behaviour within the family setting, as well as in the wider society. However, such measures may in turn be challenged by mothers who demonstrate parental coping strategies that are both influenced by as well as subversive of cultural norms.

This paper focuses on findings from a qualitative study of care-giving Arab Muslim families of children with developmental disabilities in the United Arab Emirates. The perceptions of mothers in relation to family acceptance and social inclusion issues are explored. Parental views of existing provision are also considered with regard to existing services for children with special needs in the region. Findings indicate that, in common with other Middle Eastern countries, social stigma is prevalent and this impacts upon the disabled child as well as the mother. However, this is in turn ameliorated by the influences of religion, which constitute an example of family resilience, in addition to the strides made in social development in this region. (Contains 1 note.)

OBJECTIVES: The aims of the paper are to subject the ontologies of social welfare in Britain to critical scrutiny, in respect of examining political ideologies of neoliberalism and austerity; and the impact of these upon the value-driven role and remit of professional social work, which has developed as an essential arm of the post-War, British Welfare State. THEORETICAL BASE: Although the erosion of the Welfare State has been subject to a number of social policy critiques, here the authors offer an alternative understanding of social welfare, as inspired by the Islamic principle of zakāt. METHODS: This paper offers a conceptual, discursive analysis. OUTCOME: Operating as a socio-religio-political concept, zakāt provides a sharply contrasting alternative understanding to social weald, capitalism and the State, serving to reframe prevailing political rationalisations and policy measures as that which are fundamentally harmful to social cohesion in generating rising social need. SOCIAL WORK IMPLICATIONS: Growing social need, artificially inflated through political ideology, carries ruinous implications for social work provision in terms of State (un)accountability for social welfare and overtly politicised social work mandates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A social worker's personal experiences of medical social work in both Malaysia and the US as British-trained social work academic are illustrated. Social work continues to struggle to achieve recognition and the status that it fully deserves through attempts to reinforce the notion of a professional elite in Malaysia.