Search

Research suggests a crisis in Native American education. Disparities in academic success are well-documented and have persisted despite myriad intervention efforts. Utilizing a decolonial Youth Participatory Action Research methodology and mixed-methods design, a team of youth researchers and adult collaborators conducted iterative rounds of participatory education, data collection, and analysis. Through this process, we generated evidence of Native-specific school pushout practices or what we call "punches" delivered by the institution: schooling designed for dispossession, curricular harm, disproportionate discipline, and microaggressions/racism. Collectively, our findings support alternative interpretations of the crisis in Native American education and suggest the institution itself must be placed at the epicenter; schools must be accountable to their co-creation of this crisis. We recommend strategies to address these structural factors and pursue educational justice for Native youth.

We report the preliminary findings of a community-based participatory action research project grounded in the principles of emancipatory education. Born as a grassroots response to profound racial and socioeconomic segregation between the "gifted" and "regular" learning programs, this action research collaboration was centered in a middle school. The project curriculum was built on the premise that youth have the potential to become protagonists of integration. With that in mind, the project provided a space in which to become increasingly conscious about segregation and to imagine and enact new possibilities for integration. Findings from in-depth qualitative interviews with six youth participants reveal various youth efforts toward integration in three distinct layers of consciousness that we refer to as voice: (a) reflective voice as an awareness of self in segregated places and the associated social consequences; (b) dialogic voice as communal recognition of the structural nature of segregation, solidarity in opposition to it, and a common need for healing and reconciliation; and (c) praxis voice as the commitment to transforming segregated educational spaces through a critique of segregation and demand for subdermal diversity. We discuss the implications of these findings for continued transformative action at the local site and lessons for educational pedagogies and actions in general.

University-community engagement is increasingly emphasized at institutions throughout the United States, yet there remains concern and confusion about how to conceptualize community engagement to provide benefits for both the university and the public. This article summarizes the history of community engagement and describes dominant paradigms of engagement. Specifically, we explore how conceptualizations of university-community engagement have evolved since the inception of the public university and how different roles of the university confer different benefits to not only the actors within the institution but also the community served by that institution. We argue that community engagement is critical to the modern public university, and we describe a model of nonhierarchical, mutually beneficial public engagement.

In this article, the authors use a comparative historical approach to examine the consequences of professionalization within teaching and social work and to answer the following questions: What are the unintended consequences of professionalization? Has professionalization in these fields supported higher quality practice, increased working conditions and salary, and improved social standing for these professions? What did each of these occupations lose when they professionalized? Did practice change as a result of professionalization? How or how not? (Contains 1 table.)

This manuscript introduces the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute (IWRI), a research and training institute at the University of Washington's School of Social Work. Through the narratives of former and current students, mentees and staff, this manuscript documents the impact of three founding faculty members and reveals how their specialized knowledge of Indigenous health and wellness, awareness of unique barriers and decolonizing strategies for success and vocational calling, have created an organization that works for Indigenous health and wellness. IWRI is an organization that is larger than the sum of its parts; it plays a unique role in social work scholarship and education and we anticipate it will continue to do so for generations to come. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ethical dilemmas in field work often challenge field work supervisors to engage students in a process of learning and reflection. This narrative presents the flip side of that supervision experience as a field work instructor re-tells the story of her own ethical dilemma and decision-making, and explores the consequences of that decision on her field placement, her student's learning, and her professional relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]