Abstract
There is a necessity for students to learn about multicultural multilingual (MM) content in speech-language-pathology curricula. One reason for doing so is personal motivation: an awareness of and commitment to developing competence in working with diverse clients. Awareness can grow given specific instructional experiences in the form of special projects that aim to build cross-cultural relationships with the goal of fostering empathy and compassion. This chapter provides a tutorial explaining one such instructional experience: the cross-cultural communication (CCC) project. Central to the project are face-to-face meetings and reflective journaling on topics including counteracting stereotypes and planning for culturally responsive service provision. Activities have antiracist intentions guided by the moral obligation to care for fellow human beings (as per ethics of care [EoC] theory). This chapter provides (1) theoretical underpinnings of the project, (2) procedures for its completion, and (3) description of a modification of the project for a language disorders course.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” —attributed to Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
TopBackground
Professional Mandates
Several American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) policies mandate aspects of service provision to clients from MM backgrounds. These policies guide clinical service and are used by course instructors in the academic preparation of students. Among the ASHA policy documents mentioning MM service provision are: the code of ethics, position papers, and certification and accreditation standards to which students and accredited academic programs are held. For representative examples of these documents, see Appendix A. Each of these policies was generated following one of the most dynamic sociopolitical shifts in US history, the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
The Civil Rights Movement as a Backdrop to ASHA MM Policy Development
During the Civil Rights era, existing systemic racism in the social institutions of the US was contested through several legal decisions. Before this, however, the Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) decision held that “separate but equal” public services were legal under federal law. The case was brought to the Supreme Court when an African American man (James Plessy) refused to sit in a “Blacks-only” train car. After the passage of Plessy, and for the next 50 years, Jim-Crow segregation was official, common practice in the south. However, the Brown v. Board of Education (1954) decision determined that separate but equal was, in fact, not equal when Oliver Brown, a resident of Topeka, KS, attempted to enroll his daughter in a segregated, Whites-only school. Even with the passage of Brown, it was not until The Civil Rights Act (1964) was tied to federal funding of public institutions that the administrations of many southern schools felt the pressure to desegregate. And even then, many southern schools held out and remained segregated until well into the 1970s (Wilkerson, 2011). It was on the heels of this broader sociopolitical movement that ASHA’s membership began to follow suit; first through the development of the Position Statement on Social Dialects (ASHA, 1983), and most recently in the condemnation of racism offered in the Response to Racism Position Statement (ASHA, 2020). It is only by situating ASHA’s history in this broader context can we understand the reason why ASHA’s policy documents are valuable to us, its membership (Horton-Ikard et al., 2009; Taylor, 1986). This collection of policies serves as an antiracist guidepost for us to follow in pursuing a common goal of social justice.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ethics of Care (EoC): The EoC theory holds that moral action includes justice but centers on care and benevolent action, virtues that are shown within the context of interpersonal relationship.
Multicultural/Multilingual (MM): MM describes the array of human cultural and linguistic differences.
Antiracist Pedagogy: An active and conscious effort to explain and work against the persistent and multidimensional aspects of racism.
Stereotype: A widely held and over-generalized conceptualization or mental image about a particular sociocultural category of people.
Antiracist Practice: Antiracist practice is one of the methods of pursuing racial justice typically viewed through a Critical Race Theory lens.
Integral Infusion: Integral infusion is the embedding of MM curricular content into the entire curriculum via careful planning, with a broad definition of cultural diversity, via both an MM-dedicated course or courses and infusion of MM content into ND courses.
Handicap: Handicaps are (as defined by the World Health Organization (WHO)) the result of an impairment or disability that limits or prevents the fulfillment of one or several roles regarded as normal depending on age, sex and social and cultural factors.
Critical Race Theory: Critical race theory is a theory that guides anti-racist practice via the assumptions that white supremacy exists to perpetuate unequal societal power structure, and transformation of policy and institutional organization should be attempted in an effort to pursue justice by redressing inequity and diminishing oppression.
Racism: Any internalized mental construct that suggests one racial group is inferior or superior to another racial group in any way.
MM Education: MM education encompasses MM pedagogy along three continua: (1) focus of content (on one social variable, such as race, to the entire array of cultural difference), (2) pedagogical focus (on social action vs. decontextualized study of cultural difference), and (3) service delivery models (ranging from generic infusion of content throughout course to integral infusion, encompassing a dedicated course with well-planned, integration of MM content throughout the curriculum).
Intersectionality: Intersectionality is a framework that accounts for the interconnected advantage and privilege, discrimination and oppression based on multiple social categories such as race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability status, etc.
Antiracist Educational Practice: Rooted in antiracist pedagogy, specific educational strategies that aim to reduce prejudice and racism.