Mapping dispositions for social justice: towards a cartography of reflection

As non-White students now outnumber their White counterparts in America’s public schools, it is important for teacher education programs, which graduate a predominantly White cadre of teachers, to focus on the development of dispositions for social justice. When teachers view cultural diversity as a problem, they risk developing erroneous expectations for their students, which can support the surreptitious insertion of prejudices into the latent curriculum. In order to help preservice teachers reflect on their understanding of diverse perspectives, especially those related to cognitive complexity, this study uses social cartography and discourse analysis to map their dispositions. Discussion and self-reflection lead to understanding and self-monitoring, and mapping can help teacher candidates identify those areas in which they may harbour apathetic worldviews or unifocal perspectives.     

Differentiated associations between childhood maltreatment experiences and social understanding: A meta-analysis and systematic review

The extreme parenting experiences encountered by children who are physically abused or neglected place them at increased risk for impaired socio-emotional development. There is growing evidence that maltreated children may apprehend interpersonal encounters in different ways from children without such traumatic histories. This systematic review examines the links between childhood physical abuse and neglect and various constituent skills of social understanding (including emotion recognition and understanding, perspective taking, false belief understanding, and attributional biases) in 51 empirical studies. The review incorporates a meta-analysis of 19 studies on emotion recognition and understanding in this population. This showed an overall negative effect of maltreatment, but moderation analyses revealed that significantly stronger effects were found for measures of emotion understanding rather than recognition, and for younger rather than older age groups. The broader review also reveals a complex and differentiated profile of social understanding among maltreated children. Directions for future research that addresses individual differences in children’s experiences, both within and outside the maltreatment context, are discussed.     

Trainee social justice advocacy: investigating the roles of training factors and multicultural competence

Theoretical research asserts that social justice advocacy (SJA) represents an extension of multicultural competence (MC). However, limited empirical literature examines if and how SJA manifests and is developed as an aspect of trainee MC. The current study used path modeling to examine direct and indirect links between aspects of training environment and trainee MC and SJA for a sample of 197 trainees embedded in counseling-oriented training programs. MC demonstrated the strongest positive association with SJA. In addition, multicultural training environment, but not social justice training environment, influenced SJA indirectly through MC. Results are encouraging of a differentiation between multicultural and social justice training emphases, with practical implications for training programs seeking to enhance and foster both MC and SJA among their trainees.     

Belief in a just world, teacher justice, and bullying behavior

The relation between school students' belief in a just world (BJW) and their bullying behavior was investigated in a questionnaire study. The mediating role of teacher justice was also examined. Data were obtained from a total of N = 458 German and Indian high school students. Regression analyses revealed that the more strongly students believed in a personal just world and the more they evaluated their teachers' behavior toward them personally to be just, the less bullying behavior they reported. Moreover, students with a strong BJW tended to evaluate their teachers' behavior toward them personally to be more just, and the experience of teacher justice mediated the relation between BJW and less bullying perpetration. This pattern of results was as expected and consistent across different cultural contexts. It persisted when neuroticism, sex, and country were controlled. The adaptive functions of BJW and implications for future school research are discussed.     

Value-based praxis in community psychology: moving toward social justice and social action

The purpose of this paper is to articulate a rationale for value-based praxis in community psychology. Although values need to promote personal, collective, and relational wellness at the same time, it is argued that community psychologists pay more attention to personal and relational wellness than to collective wellness. In order to address this imbalance it is important to promote the value of social justice. While praxis requires that we engage in a cycle of reflection, research, and social action, community psychologists devote more resources to the first two phases of praxis than to the last one. This paper offers a framework for deciding what values and what praxis considerations we should attend to and how we may advance social justice and social action in community psychology.     

Trans,gender diverse and non-binary adult experiences of social support: A systematic quantitative literature review

Abstract

Background: Trans, gender diverse and non-binary (TGDNB) adults experience significant health disparities relative to their cisgender peers. While social support is a known health-protective factor within the general population, no systematic reviews of TGDNB experiences of social support exist.

Aim: To systematically review prior research of social support for TGDNB adults. We sought to assess the defining characteristics of the research, the participants and the research findings, mapping emerging trends across disciplines.

Methods: Six electronic databases (PubMed, MEDLINE, CINAHL, Web of Science, LGBT Life and PsycNet) were searched for literature pertaining to TGDNB adults, social support, and health or well-being published in the past decade.

Results: The findings illustrate a predominance of USA-based quantitative research that measures social support of friends, family and a singular intimate partner. The majority of participants were white, binary-identified transgender women and TGDNB people living in metropolitan settings. Social support was commonly reported as a protective factor, with TGDNB peer support the most frequently reported correlate of health and well-being for TGDNB adults.

Discussion: The results suggest standardized inventories do not capture the emic nature of social support for TGDNB adults. A key opportunity lies in an inductive, hypothesis-forming approach to the study of what is socially supportive for TGDNB adults. In turn, this knowledge will enable the appropriate measurement, implementation and interpretation of social support studies.     

组织公正氛围的理论机制、研究视角及研究框架

组织公正是员工对工作场所公正环境的心理感知, 研究层面有个体与群体之分。以往研究多集中在个体层面, 以致研究结果缺乏对群体现象的有效解释。进入新世纪学者们开始关注群体层面的公正氛围研究, 并在理论和实证方面取得了较大突破。通过回顾相关研究可以发现：(1)在理论机制上, 公正氛围的形成可以通过社会信息加工理论、吸引-选择-磨合模型、公正传染概念和公正启发理论来解释; (2)在研究视角上, 主要存在维度视角、整体视角、感知来源视角、氛围属性视角和第三方视角; (3)在研究主题上, 主要涉及领导、团队和组织三方面对公正氛围的影响, 以及公正氛围对个体、团队和组织三个层面的影响效果。未来研究可着重从多种领导行为对不同公正氛围影响的比较、其他领导因素对公正氛围的影响、不同公正氛围对结果变量影响的比较、新视角公正氛围测量方法的尝试, 以及文化因素对公正氛围的影响研究等方面入手。     

Up against the wall: ecotourism,development, and social justice in Costa Rica

Nearly one-quarter of Costa Rica's export earnings derive from an expanding tourist sector, one that is increasingly diversified in a mix of tourist niches. Ecotourism is the fastest growing niche and its promises are featured in a range of sites and practices, including the largest multinational hospitality and hotel corporations. These companies promote a vision of sustainability that relies on expanding consumption of ‘environmental' amenities through profit-driven global corporations – a vision that is, to some, antithetical to the very meaning of ecotourism. Our study explores the historical evolution of tourist development in Costa Rica, specifically large-scale coastal development, as a means for national development. Amid pressures to attract foreign direct investment in a neoliberal era, Costa Rica has struggled to maintain its developmentalism, which includes social welfare, environmental protection, and public goods, including coastal preservation and public access. We argue Costa Rica's simultaneous protection of coastlines and public access and the promotion of large-scale private investment by global real estate and hospitality industries exposes contradictory ethical paradigms of developmentalism, one rooted in the principle of inclusion and the other in exclusion. We highlight these contradictions in two events in order to raise questions about development, ethics, and inclusion.     

Hope and positive religious coping as predictors of social justice commitment

The present study tested a theoretical model of dispositional hope and positive religious coping as unique predictors of social justice commitment over and above impression management in a sample of graduate students (N?=?214) in helping professions at an Evangelical Protestant university in the USA. This empirical study utilised a cultural psychology approach with a theoretical framework developed from (a) an earlier cultural psychology study of hope and social justice using the social philosophies of Martin Luther King, Jr, Cornel West, and Paulo Freire and (b) several liberation and Pietistic theologians. Results supported the discriminant validity hypothesis with dispositional hope and positive religious coping each predicting social justice commitment over and above a measure of spiritual impression management. Implications are considered for contextually sensitive training and future empirical and interdisciplinary research on social justice commitment.     

Consumer spaces as political spaces: A critical review of social,environmental, and psychogeographical research

The purpose of this review is to critique the social and environmental psychology literature on spaces and places with a focus on consumer culture and neoliberalism. By drawing on social theory and the Continental philosophical literature, the review argues that an alternative approach to knowledge production is required. To this end, recommendations are provided for what a psychogeographical approach in social and environmental psychology could look like. It argues that such work could be of benefit to academic and local communities by exposing the social costs and consequences associated with consumer culture and neoliberalism.     

Using client feedback in training of future counseling psychologists: An evidence-based and social justice practice

Training in counseling psychology has evolved to emphasize both evidence-based practice (EBP) and social justice, though these two dimensions have often seemed disconnected, or even at odds in the practice of psychotherapy. The Partners for Change Outcome Management System (PCOMS), an EBP that monitors treatment outcomes and the therapeutic alliance across treatment (often called “client feedback”), may offer a means to connect evidence-based and socially just practices. The purpose of this article was to outline how the use of PCOMS in psychotherapy and supervision can serve as a useful training tool that is a form of EBP and also promotes a socially just paradigm in psychotherapy. We also offer an implementation example from a counseling psychology doctoral program to demonstrate how PCOMS can be used with clients in psychotherapy and included within the supervisory process.     

Populism vs. elitism: social consensus and social status as bases of attitude certainty

This study examined the effects of social consensus and social status on attitude certainty that is conceptualized multi-dimensionally as perceived clarity and correctness of one's attitude. In a mock opinion exchange about a social issue, participants were either supported (high consensus) or opposed (low consensus) by most of the confederates. They were informed that their opinion (high status) or their opponents' opinion (low status) had the alleged psychological significance indicative of future success. Post-experimental attitude clarity was significantly greater when attitudinal position was associated with high rather than low status. Attitude correctness was interactively affected by social status and social consensus. Supporting the compensatory effect hypothesis, attitude correctness was comparable across the levels of social consensus as long as they were associated with high status, and across the levels of social status as long as they were associated with high social consensus.     

Threatened identities: the experiences of women in transition to programmes of professional higher education

The aim of the research described in this article was to investigate how women experience the transition to programmes of professional higher education. The investigation took place in a school of a British university where the professional areas chosen were social work and health care education. Most of the participants were new to the higher education system and were entering as mature students, but a few were making educational transitions and had previous involvement in higher education. As the central focus was an investigation of subjective accounts, a phenomenological perspective was adopted and the methods used were mainly qualitative. A multiple methods approach to data collection was taken. The investigation took place over two phases, covering the period of transition to programmes over two consecutive years. Anxieties were commonly experienced by participants in the transition to their programme. Breakwell's (1986) theory of threatened identities seems useful in understanding the emerging issues. Anxieties could be explained in terms of threats to identity ‘principles’; however, these arose from the social context and coping with them is not always psychologically based. Issues which appear to assist the transition are highlighted. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Faith and Understanding: Specifying the Impact of Higher Education on Religious Belief

This study examines the impact of educational enrollment and attainment on several measures of religious belief using nationally representative panel data. Although college does not appear to substantially alter the religious beliefs of most emerging adults, findings do reveal a modest increase in skepticism toward super‐empirical religious beliefs among college students and graduates compared to those who have never attended any form of postsecondary education. This effect is dependent on college type, with students attending elite universities exhibiting the greatest increase in skepticism. Apart from changes in super‐empirical belief, graduating from college modestly increases preferences for institutionalized religion while simultaneously reducing adherence to exclusivist religious belief. Faculty commitment to secularism, the degree of student academic engagement, and developing social identities may play a role in religious belief change, particularly at elite universities.     

Family and social networks after bereavement: experiences of support,change and isolation

The role of family and social support networks on grief experiences following the death of a family member in a road traffic accident is explored. Twenty‐one bereaved informants were interviewed and the data analysed using grounded theory methodology. We outline the ways in which a crash fatality impacts upon familial and social relationships. The data clearly demonstrate that although the death of a loved one precipitated closer familial and social bonds in some instances, it was more common that those relationships deteriorated and collapsed. Implications for service delivery, grief education and research are discussed.     

Moving beyond reflection in a hall of mirrors: developing critical reflective capacity in teachers and teacher educators

Using reflection to merely affirm existing beliefs rather than engaging in confrontation and examination of beliefs is like reflecting in a hall of mirrors. This study explores the process of critical reflective development of practicing teachers through program reflections written to prompts during master’s-level coursework, seeking to understand: How does critical reflective capacity develop and change in practicing teachers enrolled in advanced coursework in an M.Ed. program? Researchers used a three-level reflective practice pyramid as a frame for examining teachers’ reflective writings. Specifically, 103 reflections from 26 PK-12 teachers were available for analysis. Where finding a clear trajectory in teacher’s reflective development was an anticipated outcome in which teachers would progress from the technical to contextual to dialectical levels of reflection, findings did not indicate such linear development for most teachers. As faculty analyzed the data, they engaged in critical reflection, also questioning purposes and program outcomes. This paper reports on both our study’s findings in response to the research question and on the results of faculty reflective engagement. Results reinforce the understanding that reflection is an individual journey for teachers and faculty alike; results also highlight the importance for engagement in critical reflection for both teachers and teacher educators.