Sandra's Reflections

I’m delighted to share the news that the e-book Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice: Re-Shaping Professional Identity in Counselling Psychology was award a silver medal for best e-book design in the in the 2019 Independent Publisher Book Awards.

Since 1996, the “IPPY” Awards have recognized books published by independent authors and publishers from around the world. These awards are well-respected in the book industry. The 2019 medalists were from Australia, Canada, the United States, France, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, New Zealand, Spain, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates, and the United Kingdom.

Sandra

Today is an excited day, because my new e-book is now available for purchase through Counselling Concepts publishing. This e-book presents a new model for culturally responsive and socially just (CRSJ) counselling. Here are some key features of that model:

• CRSJ counselling moves beyond the infusion of cultural awareness and sensitivity into counselling  to support the reshaping of counselling and psychology theory, practice, and professional identity in a way that is actively and comprehensively responsive to cultural diversity and social injustice and inequities in our society;
• CRSJ counselling reframes the concept of cultural competency by prioritizing cultural humility and cultural curiosity. The model is designed to enhance student and practitioner self-reflection, critical thinking, and cognitive complexity as a foundation for approaching all clients. CRSJ counselling begins and ends with who we are as people and how we position ourselves within the context of discourses of difference and marginalization within an unjust society.
• CRSJ counselling positions social justice as inextricably intertwined with counselling practice by considering (a) how we engage in just relationships and just conversations with clients, (b) how we collaborate with clients to conceptualize problems from a contextualized/systemic perspective, and (c) how we co-construct goals and change processes that are responsive to client cultural identities and social locations;
• CRSJ counselling assumes a both/and position by positioning social justice in counselling (a) primarily as a lens that enhances responsiveness of all aspects of the counselling process by taking into account client context and social location  and (b) secondarily as a guide for individual practitioners and the professions as a whole to collaborate with, or take action on behalf, our clients to effect change in the social determinants of health that often bring clients into our practices in the first place. 

You can read more about the CRSJ counselling model through this e-book Preview.

Sandra

I’m very excited to open a new teaching and learning guide designed to support enhancement of culturally responsive and socially just (CRSJ) counselling. You can access this guide at https://crsjguide.pressbooks.com/. The purpose of this guide is to provide a collection of interactive learning activities centred around key concepts that are integrated into the CRSJ counselling model. These activities draw on other open source resources and integrate multimedia to support different learning styles. Click below for a few examples. These activities can be linked directly into online courses, and instructors can copy, edit, build on, or otherwise repurpose them (with credit to the original authors).

• Self-study activity drawing on interactive platform through Canada’s Human Rights Commission
• Self-study based on audio guided visualization
• Self-study using YouTube video
• Partner activity applying principle to case scenarios
• Partner activity drawing on visual images
• Large group activity using YouTube video and experiential exercise
• Class discussion based on YouTube video
• Class discussion based on video from Truth and Reconciliation Commission

This teaching and learning guide provides an advance glimpse into the CRSJ counselling model, which will be more fully presented in the new e-book available here by December 1st, 2018.

Sandra

Greetings. I’m very excited to have a new publication coming out through Counselling Concepts Publishing. I’ve been able to bring together several of my passions through the e-book Embracing cultural responsivity and socially justice: Re-shaping professional identity in counselling psychology.

• This e-book represents an evolution of my own thinking as a life-long learner about culture and social justice, as well as my research, my work with clients and students, and my continuous review of the thinking of others through the professional literature.
• It is also a collaborative work. I am delighted that many colleagues have included reflections on their work and client stories to bring to life the conceptual and theoretical ideas in the e-book. Their experience in working with clients from many cultural contexts brings a depth and richness to the e-book. The model of culturally responsive and socially just (CRSJ) counselling itself, around which the book is centred, evolved through my thematic analysis of over 20 case studies (some of which are published in this e-book).
• The e-book reflects current thinking about the intersectionality, fluidity, contextual nature of cultural identities by using a case study format in which both counsellor and client multiple identities are actively considered. Cultural identities are defined broadly to include ethnicity, Indigeneity, age, ability, gender, gender identity, class, sexual orientation, and religion or spirituality. We have all paid particular attention to clients positioned within nondominant social locations.
• I have chosen an e-book format, because it offers innovation from a teaching and learning perspective. The e-book functions somewhat like a self-contained website. For example, the learning outcomes and key competencies in the model of CRSJ counselling are interlinked to both conceptual and applied practice components of the e-book. This allows the reader to explore a concept like privilege, for example, by navigating back and forth between the model, the glossary definition, the conceptual content on privilege, and examples of client–counsellor stories that exemplify how privilege plays out in practice.

I am very excited to see that this new e-book coming together for use in courses in January 2019 (December 1st publication date). I look forward to using it in my own course at Athabasca University.