GCU academic development and student learning posted: " By Dr. Karen Campbell Image credit: Unsplash As part of the work to evaluate the Anti-Racist Curriculum, in this blog Dr Karen Campbell interviews Occupational Therapy lecturer, Dr Katie Thomson about her personal experience and her preliminary" GCU Academic Development & Student Learning
As part of the work to evaluate the Anti-Racist Curriculum, in this blog Dr Karen Campbell interviews Occupational Therapy lecturer, Dr Katie Thomson about her personal experience and her preliminary work to address racism within the curriculum. Katie makes the point that the context for such work should be the curriculum in the widest sense. That is, the taught, co- and extra-curriculum including work placements.
Why is addressing racism in the curriculum important to you personally?
I have a lead role in the international student experience within the Department of Occupational Therapy, Human Nutrition and Dietetics at GCU. While I was teaching on the Masters programme, my approach was to try to make our international students feel welcome and included within the class. However, I was aware that I wasn't always getting it right. When I'd ask students for contextual examples and experiences from their own cultures sometimes I had the impression that students were almost embarrassed by these cultural differences in the context of a course that is clearly framed from the perspective of a white, English language based curriculum. This experience really shone a spotlight on the issues of racism in the curriculum for me. It led me to seek personal development which I accessed through Advance HE's online training sessions.
What training/CPD have you engaged in regarding racism in the curriculum and how did this impact you personally?
From attending Advance HE's training sessions I became involved in a network of colleagues nationwide who have the same objective – to learn more, share resources and develop work to address racism in the curriculum. Our network formed a reading group where once a month external colleagues from different discipline areas discuss issues raised in Dave Thomas's book about decolonising the University.
The Advance HE sessions were transformational for me. They opened my eyes to racism and what it means. There's no going back once you've had that experience. We were challenged within the sessions to take action; encouraged to set personal goals and to develop action plans. Things I felt I was able to achieve personally I acted on. I've also undertaken the Union Black training which I feel was extremely useful
What work have you been involved in to address racism in the curriculum?[1]
I volunteered to become a member of our departmental EDI group (led by Christine Monaghan) where I feed in my experiences and ideas. I make sure that the anti-racist curriculum is on the agenda for EDI group meetings.
I work with colleagues to review and address our programme content with respect to racism. For example, some of our modules look at how occupational therapists can help to address global health issues. We have revised the content and readings lists and adapted case studies to be more inclusive of different cultures. Our ethics modules that previously did not include material around race or inclusion now do. There's now a departmental commitment to review and revise reading lists, case studies and other materials and resources in terms of the EDI agenda. Our reading lists include texts from the Global South which previously they did not. Case studies have been rewritten to include more diverse examples and scenarios from the perspective of both the occupational therapists and the service users.
Then we worked on our teaching sessions to include more of a focus on racism. Our teaching sessions on working with people with long-term conditions and our ethics sessions and research modules now also have more of a focus on racism. We want to look at our admissions processes also. That work is very much on the horizon.
How has your practice changed as a result of this work?
My increased awareness and knowledge of the issues has changed how I approach things. I am more aware of the challenges people face in life generally from an EDI perspective. I try to highlight to people both in my personal life and at work if I think there is a different view point that should be expressed or a more appropriate term could be used. I feel more comfortable doing so now and am more likely to challenge inappropriate language or viewpoints.
How have you changed personally as a result of this work?
I feel significantly more comfortable and confident about having these conversations with students, especially now that we have the material in place. However, I'm not sure to what extent the students have noticed this change. We need to continue to carry the discussion about racism through all our modules and teaching. We could potentially have a statement of intent for each module whereby students are given the opportunity speak out if we fall short of that intention. That's an idea I'm pursuing with colleagues.
How have you found the experience of engaging in conversations with other staff about racism in the curriculum?
Having these kinds of conversations at work is no longer challenging. Maybe it's about the fact that, as a profession, we aim to enable others, and part of our ethos is to support people and make them feel included? So, there's a general willingness on the part of our colleagues to engage in these kinds of conversations.
How has your involvement in this work impacted your working relationships?
The work I have been involved with has been fairly organic. We teach across modules so we have access to other people's modules and are able to have discussions around content. Our approach is generally very collaborative and our working relationships are very good.
What has been the benefit of this work to you personally?
I have enjoyed working more collaboratively with colleagues from across the university on the GCU Anti-Racist Curriculum Operational Group as well as the work I am involved in at a more national level. I have enhanced my professional development, the work has increased my network and given me other opportunities. For example, I have written a blog that is published on our departmental blog page and I am delivering a conference paper this summer with colleagues from our decolonising the curriculum external network.
What has been the benefit of this work to staff and students at GCU and how do you know?
It's difficult to evaluate the extent to which our changes are impacting students. We have a Staff-Student Engagement Forum led by our Learning and Teaching Advisor (Emma Green) where the EDI agenda is reflected. Some of the feedback we've had is that we could be doing more in terms of the curriculum for marginalised groups and that, for some students, the on-going work feels a bit surface level, tokenistic or 'tick box'.
There is clearly more work to be done. We are still at the early stages. We need to hear more about the students' experiences of racism at all levels of the curriculum. Some of this experience, from my own conversations with students and staff, happens off campus in student placements for example. Some students tell us that they have experienced racism within the NHS and also from service users while on placement. It's challenging but we have to look at the curriculum in the widest sense.
What structures, systems and processes have been impacted by the ARC work you have been involved in?
Thus far we have not been developing our content through any formal structure but we are listening to the feedback from the Staff-Student Engagement Forum, we have put decolonising the curriculum on the agenda for our Programme Board and will be looking at our developments in terms of programme reapproval and admissions.
What challenges remain?
Some of the challenges are the perennial ones – time, workload, keeping the momentum going and keeping the anti-racist curriculum on top of the agenda while there are other areas competing for attention.
How will you address these?
I think it's about doing what you can do in stages; breaking the work down into chunks, setting goals for each semester and keeping to them. The intention is that the work being done now will be embedded in university structures.
[1] 'Curriculum' in the broadest sense: includes co-curricular and extra-curricular aspects and activities
Amanda Khanyi posted: " Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more. It's the time of the year where I am grateful for every single aspect of my life. It may not be going the way I want it to be but I am warm and I am fed. The bare mini" e u n o i a
Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough and more.
It's the time of the year where I am grateful for every single aspect of my life. It may not be going the way I want it to be but I am warm and I am fed. The bare minimum we take for granted is simply what some other person is begging for. They would be more than happy to stop lives for even a quarter of a minute.
"...and to wake up knowing God is on my side , is enough"
It's easy to feel grateful when life is good, but when disaster strikes, gratitude is worth the effort.In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times.
Don't get me wrong. I am not suggesting that gratitude will come easily or naturally in a crisis. It's easy to feel grateful for the good things. No one "feels" grateful that he or she has lost a job or a home or good health or has taken a devastating hit in their life , in general. It is vital to make a distinction between feeling grateful and being grateful. We don't have total control over our emotions. We cannot easily will ourselves to feel grateful, less depressed, or happy. Feelings follow from the way we look at the world, thoughts we have about the way things are, the way things should be, and the distance between these two points. Being grateful is a choice, a prevailing attitude that endures and is relatively immune to the gains and losses that flow in and out of our lives. When disaster strikes, gratitude provides a perspective from which we can view life in its entirety and not be overwhelmed by temporary circumstances. Yes, this perspective is hard to achieve—but my research says it is worth the effort.
Remember the bad
Trials and suffering can actually refine and deepen gratefulness if we allow them to show us not to take things for granted. Well, when times are good, people take prosperity for granted and begin to believe that they are invulnerable. In times of uncertainty, though, people realize how powerless they are to control their own destiny. If you begin to see that everything you have, everything you have counted on, may be taken away, it becomes much harder to take it for granted. The contrast between suffering and redemption serves as the basis for one of my tips for practicing gratitude: remember the bad.
It works this way: Think of the worst times in your life, your sorrows, your losses, your sadness—and then remember that here you are, able to remember them, that you made it through the worst times of your life, you got through the trauma, you got through the trial, you endured the temptation, you survived the bad relationship, you're making your way out of the dark. Remember the bad things, then look to see where you are now.
This process of remembering how difficult life used to be and how far we have come sets up an explicit contrast that is fertile ground for gratefulness.
In these ways, remembering the bad can help us to appreciate the good. As the German theologian and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, "Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy." We know that gratitude enhances happiness, but why? Gratitude maximizes happiness in multiple ways, and one reason is that it helps us reframe memories of unpleasant events in a way that decreases their unpleasant emotional impact. This implies that grateful coping entails looking for positive consequences of negative events. For example, grateful coping might involve seeing how a stressful event has shaped who we are today and has prompted us to reevaluate what is really important in life.So telling people simply to buck up, count their blessings, and remember how much they still have to be grateful for can certainly do much harm. Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happiology. Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity. It means reframing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude.
Remember, your goal is not to relive the experience but rather to get a new perspective on it. Simply rehearsing an upsetting event makes us feel worse about it. That is why catharsis has rarely been effective. Emotional venting without accompanying insight does not produce change. No amount of writing about the event will help unless you are able to take a fresh, redemptive perspective on it. This is an advantage that grateful people have—and it is a skill that anyone can learn.
kiaramillersn posted: " Zen Practices to Enhance Well-Being in the Workplace In the contemporary business world, it doesn't matter whether you are an employer or an employee. You have your own stressors and issues to deal with on a daily basis. In the race to run behind all " ZenHR's Blog
In the contemporary business world, it doesn't matter whether you are an employer or an employee. You have your own stressors and issues to deal with on a daily basis. In the race to run behind all the tasks we have at work, we often forget to take care of our well-being. Well-being is a crucial part of living a healthy and prosperous life. Maintaining and taking care of your well-being does not only prevent health risks but also has many benefits in the workplace.
Ashish Nain posted: " Accenture has agreed to acquire Allgemeines Rechenzentrum GmbH (ARZ), a technology service provider focused on the banking sector in Austria. The acquisition will expand Accenture's cloud-based banking platform-as-a-service offerings, ranging from co" hrnxt.com
Accenture has agreed to acquire Allgemeines Rechenzentrum GmbH (ARZ), a technology service provider focused on the banking sector in Austria. The acquisition will expand Accenture's cloud-based banking platform-as-a-service offerings, ranging from core banking services to online banking as well as regulatory services for banking clients across Europe, a statement said. ARZ is majority-owned by Volksbanken Group […]
wkennar posted: " "How's the book?" "It's good," I said as I held it up and showed it to the barista. He had just brought out my blended mocha and set it down on the table for me. "It's about Giannis, the basketball player," I said. "Oh, basketball," he said " WendyKennar.com
"It's good," I said as I held it up and showed it to the barista. He had just brought out my blended mocha and set it down on the table for me.
"It's about Giannis, the basketball player," I said.
"Oh, basketball," he said it with a bit of a question in his voice.
It might not seem like a book I would pick up. Especially if you checked out my Goodreads record and saw the last book I read was Jasmine Guillory's The Wedding Date.
I try to alternate, reading fiction and nonfiction. And when it comes to nonfiction, I enjoy reading memoirs and biographies. Because I believe everyone has a story. The specifics may vary, but in those specifics you tend to find the universal.
So now I'm reading Giannis: The Improbable Rise of an NBA MVP by Mirin Fader. (In case you don't know, Giannis Antetokounmpo plays for the Milwaukee Bucks. In 2021, they won the NBA Championship.)
On the surface, Giannis and I don't have much in common.
But that's okay. That's more than okay. That's why books are so valuable. They give us the chance to take a peek at someone else's life. To realize the many ways we are similar. To acknowledge that what you see on the surface is rarely the full story.
My family and I are basketball fans. While we always root for our Los Angeles Clippers, we are admirers of the game and those that play with heart and soul.
