Community psychology is for poor, black people: pedagogy and community psychology teaching in South

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Community psychology is for poor, black people
pedagogy and community psychology teaching in
South Africa

• Ronelle Carolissen, Poul Rohleder, Leslie
  SwartzDepartment of Psychology, Stellenbosch
  University
• Brenda Leibowitz, Centre for Teaching and
  Learning, Stellenbosch University
• Vivienne BozalekDepartment of Social Work,
  University of the Western Cape

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• Focus of the paper
• 1. To examine problems inherent in community
  psychology teaching and how the human
  capabilities approach can provide
  conceptual/theoretical direction for facilitating
  transformative pedagogy in community psychology
  teaching
• 2. To illustrate a teaching and research project
  that incorporates the human capabilities approach

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Brief mapping of presentation

• Community psychology teaching
• Pedagogy
• Human capabilities approach
• Community, self and identity
• Project (CSI)
• Implications of CSI project for community
  psychology
• Conclusion

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Graphic representation of focus of paper
Community Psychology teaching
implications
Pedagogy (Human capabilities approach)
Community, self and identity project
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Community psychology in South Africa

• 1980s as a response to produce contextually
  relevant psychology on a academic, political and
  theoretical levels
• Major critique of psychology catered largely to
  the needs of white middle class individuals
  focusing on intra psychic causes of problems and
  not placing an equal focus on structural problems
• The unleashing of a turn to community among
  progressive psychologists, focusing on
  marginalised, poor black individuals
• Gave rise to the birth of multiple stereotypes
  about community psychology which were unwittingly
  enacted through teaching practices e.g

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• Black people are involved in community
  psychology black academic staff teach community
  psychology, service providers are black
  psychologists, clients are black and poor
• Community psychology is not real psychology but
  in fact is like social work, which occupies a
  lower rung on the hierarchy of human service
  delivery
• Impact on our teaching of community psychology
  have to challenge these stereotypes to make any
  inroads into student and practitioners thinking
  about community psychology.

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Problems in community psychology teaching

• Term community carries connotations of social
  disadvantage teaching practices tend to
  reinforce marginalisation
• Teaching process has been lauded as important,
  seldom implemented focus remains on content
• Paucity of research on community psychology
  teaching
• Curriculum, teaching practice and pedagogy are
  silences central to community psychology

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• No coherent pedagogical approach use of terms
  such as group based, experiential learning (fall
  broadly under service learning as an approach)
• Service learning and its implications for working
  with differenceare we merely reinforcing
  stereotypes?
• Pedagogy is confused with didactics (methods
  employed to teach)
• Cannot realise the goals of process teaching ie.
  Developing values of social justice among
  students and commitment to civic responsibility
  if there is no coherent pedagogy

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What do we understand by term pedagogy

• Not only about method of teaching and learning
  only. It needs to include understandings of
  broader individual and social processes.
• Pedagogy also relates to the purpose of learning
  and teaching and can be conceptualised as

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• Method of teaching in its widest sense, that is,
  it extends beyond only the role of the lecturer
  or teacher. It involves not only who teaches, but
  also who is taught (and of course is interwoven
  with what is taught the curriculum), and the
  contextual conditions under which such teaching
  and learning takes place. Moreover, pedagogic
  action involves a relationship of power in the
  transfer of knowledge (Walker, 2006, p.11-12)

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Human capabilities approach

• Sen (1995, 2001) and Nussbaum (2006)
• Considers students position in society-does not
  assume that all students enter the educational
  experience with same resources
• Core concern how do we foster capabilities so
  that all students can flourish- so that education
  can be a more fair process?
• allows teachers to incorporate social
  inequalities inherent in the learning process
  into the curriculum and in so doing aims to
  create a more equal (socially just) educational
  experience for all students.

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Nussbaums 10 capabilities

• life, bodily integrity, sense, imagination and
  thought, emotions, practical reason, affiliation,
  other species, play and control over ones
  environment.
• Practical reason refers to the ability to
  critically reflect in planning ones life
• Affiliation refers to the ability to engage in
  interpersonal interactions by showing both
  individual and social concern
• gt empathy, focus on social justice

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• Values of social justice central to community
  psychology and human capabilities approach
• Therefore human capabilities approach might be
  valuable as a transformative pedagogy for
  community psychology
• Walker (2003) has discussed the implication of
  human capabilities approach for pedagogy
• Creates transformative spaces in higher education
  through critical dialogue idea of knowledge
  communities

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• Recognition from others important in gaining
  self-respect and confidence
• In our current educational context, we seldom
  engage with difference, yet we live alongside it.
  Allows students and practitioners to marginalise
  areas such as community psychology

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Community, self and identity project Our students
UWC fourth year social work students mainly
female, all black, many from poor backgrounds,
all with experience in community
work Stellenbosch fourth year psychology
students, mainly female, mostly white (no
African students), most with little practical
community experience
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Our students
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What we did
Two face-to face day workshops anchored the
course (one at the beginning one at end) In
between facilitated online workgroups
specifically allocated discussion topics (equal
numbers of students from UWC and US in each
group) explored issues of identity, difference,
professionalism
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First workshop
Participatory action learning approach
facilitated by Linda Biersteker (ELRU) at
UWC. Exercises Draw own community River of
life Myself as future professional
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Final workshop at Stellenbosch
Student presentations and feedback Guest speaker
Ariella Friedman Remix Dance Company (disability
and identity)
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Student quotes

• Affiliation
• Through all of this, my identity finally touched
  base. Honestly speaking, I was going through a
  bit of an identity crisis. Because I am
  coloured I always felt that we did not have a
  set culture, I found myself sometimes adapting to
  things I did not want to do, just so that I could
  fit in. From this collaboration I gained new
  perspective on things just because my opinion in
  the group was valued equally. This collaboration
  provided the opportunity to combat the negative
  internalisations that existed in me due to what
  was installed in me. My position in the community
  and my identity within in any community has thus
  become areas of which I am proud and has
  contributed to my self as a whole (US student,
  coloured female)

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• Practical reason (ability to engage reflexively
  with others, recognition of others
  acknowledgement of difference)
• This interaction gave me totally different
  perspectives of students of other tertiary
  institutions as I had my own pre-conceived ideas
  about them. I especially thought that
  Stellenbosch's people would be snobistic (sic),
  but was however pleasantly surprised that this
  was not the case (UWC, coloured female)
• For me I thought that psychology is better that
  social work as many people sees (sic) it as that
  and social work is not taken seriously. The
  preparations of the group project helped me to
  understand that and now I am more proud about my
  professional thanks to the group presentation
  (UWC student, black african female)

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• Yet another student is able to reflect on an
  unintentional mistake as reinforcing power
  differences among professions.
• One of the groups printed slides only had
  Psychology printed at the top, thus seemingly
  excluding social work from their project. A lot
  of the social workers were very upset about this
  and felt that it was derogatory and disrespectful
  to them. I thought that this event was quite
  interesting. The social work students and
  psychology students have been working together
  for about two months. A great deal of the work
  covered made us realize communalities and how our
  profession actually try to achieve the same goals
  to the point that in our groups our visions of
  community overshadowed social class, race or
  profession. I was thus quite saddened by this
  albeit insensitive mistakes impact and how it
  succeeded in immediately separating us into
  us and them. I think that above all this
  highlights how deeply social categorization and
  assumed views are embedded in individuals. It is
  idealistic to try to entirely change a
  communitys or an individuals deepest beliefs
  (US student, white female)

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Implications of the CSI project and pedagogy for
communtiy psychology

• Didactics vs pedagogy
• Positioning pedagogy in community psychology as
  method or didactics only, is what has been
  limiting. It is important to distinguish between
  didactics and the broader notion of pedagogy
  which questions not only how we teach but why and
  what we teach in community psychology.
• Incorporating subjugated knowledges into formal
  teaching and learning
• The partial incorporation of knowledge into
  formal higher education, often based on the
  knowledge of the socially powerful in society,
  can lead to a partial view being created and
  entrenched and consequently resulting in
  stereotyping of knowledge. This appears to have
  happened in community psychology when community
  psychology is stereotyped as a black and working
  class psychology.
• Inter-disciplinary collaboration and community
  psychology
• Volume 38 (1/2) of the American Journal of
  Community Psychology of 2006 has been devoted
  entirely to examining inter-disciplinary,
  collaborative research and action. The importance
  of inter-disciplinary work for community
  psychology is clearly illustrated in our project.

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• Synergising teaching, research and community

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Conclusion

• critical pedagogies such as the human
  capabilities approach are capable of positioning
  the teaching process as a transformative
  activity.
• Given the racialisation and devaluing of
  community psychology in South Africa, we
  particularly need to incorporate critical
  pedagogies in our vision for community Given the
  racialisation and devaluing of community
  psychology in South Africa, we particularly need
  to incorporate critical pedagogies in our vision
  for community psychology teaching to challenge
  the very stereotyping that we are in danger of
  perpetuating via our teaching practice.psychology
  teaching to challenge the very stereotyping that
  we are in danger of perpetuating via our teaching
  practice.