Navigating Ethnic Diversity: Ethnographic Interviewing School Social Work Association of America

1. Navigating Ethnic Diversity: Ethnographic Interviewing School Social Work Association of America Annual Program Meeting, St. Louis, MO April 8, 2010 Christine Anlauf Sabatino, Ph. D., L.I.C.S.W., C-SSW Associate Professor Director, Center for the Advancement of Children, Youth, and Families National Catholic School of Social Service The Catholic University of America Sabatino@cua.edu 202.319.5461

2. IntroductionYour Goals • What brings you to this presentation? • What would you like to take away from this presentation?

3. IntroductionPreparatory Exercise • Think of an example from your own practice, when cross cultural issues became a concern during an interview with a child or family, or in a team meeting with staff members. • How did you prepare for this interview/meeting? • What types of questions worked & did not work? • List some unfamiliar terms that were used. • How did you learn the meaning of these terms?

4. Presentation Background U.S. Census Bureau statistics Knowledge Building How is knowledge developed? (What is truth)? Skill Development Ethnographic interviewing techniques Discussion of Case Examples Successes and Lessons Learned

5. Background • Increasing levels of immigration to the U.S. have resulted in larger proportions of foreign-born persons (6.2% in 1980 and 12.5% in 2006). • In 2006, of 53.4 million children 5 to 17 years old, 10.9 million spoke a language other than English at home and 2.8 million spoke English less than “very well”.

6. How many different languages were reported for children 5-17 years old? • 229 languages/language groups reported

7. What are the main languages spoken by school children 5-17 years old? Spanish Chinese Vietnamese French Korean Arabic German Russian French Creole Tagalog

8. First Nation People or American Indian • 400 tribal groups • 250 distinct languages (Kominski, Shin, Marotz, 2008).

9. How does this impact school social work services? • We must prepare for multi-cultural school social work practice by developing self-awareness, knowledge, and skills. • We must become skilled interviewers who can navigate ethnic diversity and demonstrate culturally sensitive practice.

10. From Where Does This Imperative Come?Professional Mandates • NASW - Cultural and Linguistic Competence in the Social Work Profession - Standards for Cultural Competence in Social work. • CSWE Educational Policies and Accreditation Standards • NIH Human Subject ResearchCertification

11. How Do We Build Knowledge? • Knowledge building draws it principles from many disciplines including science, philosophy, and psychology. • Consequently, there are competing ideas about how knowledge is developed.

12. Features Ontology: • What is the nature of reality? • What is truth? • How do things really work? Epistemology: • What is the relationship between the investigator and the subject? Methodology: • How does the investigator go about discovering knowledge?

13. History Core knowledge has been derived from: • Ideology: There is one truth that is derived from a particular viewpoint, such as Church Doctrine, and tries to facilitate transformation of knowledge. • Positivism & Post Positivism: There is one truth that is derived from science through reason and logic. Knowledge exits ‘out there’ separate from ourselves and is driven by immutable natural laws and mechanisms. P and PP aims to predict and control natural phenomena.

14. History • Social Constructivism: There are many truths derived from multiple social interactions. The aim is to develop consensus on a subject through dialogue. • Personal Experience: Truth is dependent for its form and content by the person who holds it. It is local and specific to the individual and his/her narrative stories. It aims to help one understand the self and the world.

15. Practice Dilemma • U.S. Department of Education and State School Systems operate within a positivist-like paradigm. They require standardized curriculum and instruments to demonstrate cause and effect. It is assumed that confounding factors can be controlled and do not effect outcomes. It is assumed that test scores will reveal the ‘truth’ about a student’s knowledge level. • AYP • RTI • IEP

16. Practice Dilemma • The historic role of school social workers has been built on a social constructivist-like paradigm where we serve at the intersection of the home, school, and community that considers multiple perspectives impacting school success and works toward developing problem-solving consensus.

17. Culture • Culture is a worldview consisting of shared beliefs and values by an identified people that guides and motivates behavior thereby providing standards of appropriate conduct and human behavior. • Culture is “the totality of ways being passed on from generation to generation.” (NASW Standards for Cultural Competence in Social Work, p. 9).

18. NASW Standards for Cultural Competencein Social Work • Ethics and Values • Self-awareness • Cross-Cultural Knowledge *** • Cross-Cultural Skills • Service Delivery • Empowerment and Advocacy • Diverse Workforce • Professional Education *** • Language Diversity • Cross-Cultural Leadership

19. Professional Education Debate • Acquire particularistic knowledge about different cultural groups (Positivist-like approach) or • Develop an informed, not-knowing stance, to formulate exploratory questions (Social Constructivist-like approach) (Lee and Greene, 1999)

20. Professional Debate Does knowledge about various cultures make us • culturally competent practitioners? or • culturally sensitive practitioners? (Hutchinson, 2008)

21. Thesis Statement • We need to recognize that we work daily with folks who have a different cultural, psychological, sociological, regional, and religious background than our own. Each has a definition of ‘truth’ that guides conduct and behavior. • We need to recognize that it is difficult to be “competent” in the culture of another, but we can be “sensitive” in a way that fosters communication and positive relationships; guards against errors in data collection, assessment, and intervention; and applies the client point of view to goal setting.

22. How do school social workers build culturally-sensitive knowledge? • Use supportive general social work practice frameworks • Develop an ethnographic interview model that places the person in the role of expert

23. General Practice Frameworks 1. Ecological Perspective Germaine, C. & Gitterman, A. (1980). The life model of social work practice. New York: Columbia University Press. 2. Strengths Perspective Saleebey, D. The strengths perspective in social work practice (4th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon. 3. Empowerment Perspective Pinderhughes, E. (1989). Understanding race, ethnicity, and power. New York: The Free Press

24. Culturally-Centered Practice Framework Leigh, J.W. (2001) Communicating for cultural competence. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press, Inc.

25. Additional Sources Devore, W., & Schlesinger, E. (1999). Ethnic-sensitive social work practice. (5th ed.) Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Fong, R. & Furuto. S.B. (Eds.)( 2001). Culturally competent practice: Skills, interventions, and evaluations. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Greene, J.W. (1999). Cultural awareness in the human services. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Lum, D. (1999). Culturally competent practice: A framework for growth and action. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole. Lum, D. (2004). Social work practice with people of color: A process stage approach. Pacific Grove, CA: Thompson/Brooks/Cole.

26. Additional Sources Pedersen, P. B. & Ivey, A. (1993). Culture-centered counseling and interviewing skills: A practical guide. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. Rothman, J.C. (2008). Cultural competence in process and practice: Building bridges. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Smith, C.J., Gabriel, J., Lott, B., & Hirano, M. (2000).Teaching racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity in social work. Alexandria, VA: Council on Social Work Education. Sue, D. W. (2006). Multicultural social work practice. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

27. Leigh’s Ethnographic Interviewing Model • To learn about an individual, first learn about the world of the individual • Become attuned to how the individual experiences their uniqueness • Leigh uses social constructivism & inquires about personal experience

28. 1. Setting the Stage • Prepare for the interview - Note puzzling areas of a person’s life experience • Enter the interview - an attitude of learning from your client - suspend your interpretations & judgments - be a sensitive observer - believe in the veracity of the narrative

29. Domains • Gender • Race • Ethnic group • Nationality • Skin color • Religion • Ability/Disability • Sexual Orientation • Age • Social Class • Immigration Status • Region of the country • Size and Appearance (Rothman, 2008)

30. Domains • Language and communication styles • Education, upward mobility • Family life style, child-rearing practices • Roles of children, elderly, spouses • Roles of men and women • Religious beliefs and practices • Orientation toward time, space, work, health • Orientation to help-seeking • Attitude toward authority, justice • Problem-solving methods • Locus of Control, Privacy (Jackson, 2005)

31. 2. Global Questions • Ask open-ended questions • Ask questions that will provide information about the client’s worldview • Avoid “you” questions

32. 3. Cover Terms • Cover terms are words that literally cover a range of ideas, meanings, objects or relationships that are a part of the client’s world. • Cover terms consist of unfamiliar and familiar words, phrases, and jargon that seems to have meaning for the client • Cover terms are linguistic cues about a person’s background that are important to a person’s cultural experience.

33. 4. Descriptors • Descriptors are verbal statements about cover terms • Ask questions to elicit the characteristics of the cover term, which should take you further into the client’s world. • Descriptors are meant to elicit specificity, concreteness, and draw out distinctions • Descriptors are the meanings the individual sees in his or her own experience • Descriptors are the way the client can tell ‘all’ of what he or she wants to say. • More cover terms will arise in discussing descriptors

34. How is someone treated when he/she has a cold? How is someone treated when he/she is sick? If a person has a cold, is the person sick or just someone with a cold?

35. Case Examples • Setting the Stage/Preparation • Global Questions • Cover Terms • Descriptors

36. My Goals For This Presentation • Introduce a new approach to thinking about knowledge development or the question of What is Truth? • Introduce concepts for developing ethnographic interviewing skills/provide additional resources for further learning • Support confidence in the value of “not knowing” as a highly sophisticated and professional approach

37. Conclusion “There are many truths and many ways of knowing. Each discovery contributes to our knowledge, and each way of knowing deepens our understanding and adds another dimension to our view of the world…we must not turn our backs on any opportunities to enhance our knowledge… the boundaries of our profession are wide and deep… no one way of knowing can explore this vast and varied territory.” Ann Hartman

38. References Guba, E. (1990). The alternative paradigm dialog. In Guba, The Paradigm Dialog (pp.17-30). Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications. Jackson, V. (2005). NASW Policy on Cultural and Linguistic competence in the social work profession. Retrieved February 7, 2010 from http://www.socialworkers.org/da/da2005/policies0505/documents/cultural.pdf Kominski, R. A., Shin, H.B., & Marotz, K. (2008). Language Needs of School-Age Children. Retrieved February 7, 2010 from http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/paa2008/Language-Needs-of-School-Age-Children-PAA-2008.ppt Hutchinson, E.D. (2008). Dimensions of human behavior: Person and environment (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Lee, M. & Greene, G.J. (1999). A social constructivist framework for integrating cross-cultural issues in teaching clinical social work. Journal of Social Work Education,35(1), 21-38.

39. References NASW (2001). Standards for Cultural Competence in Social work. Retrieved February 7, 2010 from http://www.naswdc.org/practice/standards/NASWCulturalStandards.pdf