Forget cultural competence, ask for an autobiography

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Forget Cultural Competence; Ask for an Autobiography David Hollinsworth Published online: 16 Oct 2012.

To cite this article: David Hollinsworth (2013) Forget Cultural Competence; Ask for an Autobiography, Social Work Education: The International Journal, 32:8, 1048-1060, DOI: 10.1080/02615479.2012.730513 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2012.730513

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Social Work Education, 2013 Vol. 32, No. 8, 1048–1060, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02615479.2012.730513

Forget Cultural Competence; Ask for an Autobiography

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David Hollinsworth

Recent management practices seek to standardize and routinize practice through formulaic assessment processes and casework to ensure risk minimization and cost effectiveness. Such pressures have become entrenched in social work practice in Australia and other economically developed societies. Under such regimes cultural competence is rendered as expert knowledge about the other to be acquired and applied in ways to ensure maximum efficiency. But working effectively across racial and cultural differences demands critical reflection on one’s own position and the complex interactions between different aspects of identity. While some versions of cultural competence incorporate the need to examine our own values and behaviours, the paper argues that rather than focusing on knowledge of differences, social workers should concentrate on critically listening to our clients’ autobiographies to reveal over time what aspects of their social and cultural lives matter to them. The paper reviews findings from teaching Australian social work undergraduate and graduate students engaging with these challenges with particular reference to working effectively with Indigenous people. Keywords: Cultural Competence; Essentialism; Critical Reflection; Intersectionality; Autobiography

Rise of Cultural Competence Australia is a diverse society of 24 million people including Indigenous people and immigrants from over 200 countries. Twenty-seven percent of Australia’s population were born overseas while 41% have at least one foreign-born parent (ABS, 2010). In 1974 the Whitlam Labor government adopted a policy of multiculturalism (Lopez, 2000). Support for significant legal and structural pluralism has been generally low with a greater emphasis on managing diversity through a mix of funding programmes within a commitment to core national values (Jayasuriya, 2003). Multicultural policies have been criticized as superficial and as focusing on ‘ethnic’ differences in ways that

Correspondence to: Adjunct Professor David Hollinsworth,School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Business, University of the Sunshine Coast, Maroochydore DC, Queensland 4558, Australia. Email: [email protected]

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ignore Anglo-Celtic hegemony (Hage, 1998). Recent shifts in political discourse emphasize social cohesion (Jupp et al., 2007) and responsibilities over rights (Silver, 2010). These discursive and policy moves have also seen the creation of a citizenship test for those seeking naturalization, and government mandated symbolic and curriculum nationalism for Islamic schools (Tavan, 2009; Koleth, 2010). In multicultural societies such as Australia, health and social care services have been a key site for struggles for recognition of cultural and racial diversity in the light of significant disparities in outcomes across these sectors (Fraser, 1995). A highly politicized aspect of these struggles is the appalling social disadvantages experienced by many Indigenous Australians, often glossed as living a ‘third world existence in a first world country’. Current Australian government Indigenous policy is committed to ‘closing the gap’ within a generation or less (FAHCSIA, no date; Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, no date). More broadly, questions of social capital, information and communication, access and equity, and quality of service have moved to centre stage in planning and evaluating service provision and delivery, and workforce education (Healy and Lonne, 2010). Early efforts to provide better services across cultural boundaries focused on information dissemination, and translation and interpreting services. These were often accompanied by employment and training strategies to target members of minority communities although in some cases these were mostly in less influential paraprofessional roles of community liaison (Lopez, 2000). A key component emerged with cultural awareness training for staff from the dominant cultural and linguistic group. This training often involved presentations of cultural differences of particular communities, preferably facilitated by members of those communities with an emphasis on showing the reasonableness or relative worth of such beliefs, values and practices [see Hill and Augoustinos (2001) for a critical evaluation of the effectiveness of such programmes].

Critique of Cultural Competence Culture is a term that has hundreds of popular and scholarly meanings and usages. Cultural competence compounds this lack of definitional clarity given the widely disparate understandings and theoretical underpinnings of the concept (Reitmanova, 2011). It is also often confused with related concepts including cultural awareness, cultural sensitivity, cultural safety, cross-cultural communication and cultural proficiency. Different disciplines and professions have used the term to promote significantly divergent approaches and goals. Several attempts have been made to develop a model that can express these different approaches as a learning process (Cross et al., 1989; Hains et al., 2000; Betancourt et al., 2003; Balcazar et al., 2009). Much of the literature refers to three components: knowledge, attitudes and skills, suggesting that all three are required to mutually enable and reinforce cross-cultural care (Betancourt, 2003). Johnstone and Kanitsaki describe cultural competency as going beyond ‘cultural awareness and sensitivity’ in that it requires ‘not only possession of cultural knowledge

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and respect for different cultural perspectives but also having skills and being able to use them effectively in cross-cultural situations’ (2008, p. 135). Most social work education, as with other professions, struggles to impart and assess these skills and tends to focus on the relatively more straightforward provision of knowledge and fostering of positive attitudes (Simmons et al., 2008; Abrams and Moio, 2009; Funge, 2011). Graduates further report that managers and colleagues are unsupportive and organizational structures are inimical to effective cultural competency (Harrison and Turner, 2011). As Green concluded: A huge cleavage is emerging between what social workers learn about in universities regarding the importance of inequalities and values, critical social theory and eclectic and informed methods of intervention, and what service users or providers, who tend to adopt an anti-intellectual and anti-political stance, want or expect from them. (2006, p. 259)

In recent years the Australian Association of Social Workers has established minimum curriculum standards in cross-cultural practice as well as child protection and mental health (AASW, 2010). AASW standards for Indigenous education are currently being finalized. Accreditation processes require that curriculum and pedagogy are mapped against these standards but the process can become formulaic given that there is little opportunity to seriously evaluate depth of study, pedagogic processes or graduate outcomes. Racialization, Essentialism and Culturalism Debates about the proper conduct of cross-cultural education in the professions involve critiques of approaches that are regarded as unduly or uncritically focusing on knowledge and/or attitudes. The most powerful criticism concerns the question of cultural knowledge and expertise within what could be called a multicultural or categorical approach (Betancourt, 2003, p. 561). This approach is demonstrated in textbooks with specific chapters for particular ethnic groups—but rarely the dominant group (Congress and Gonzalez, 2005; Ellis and Carlson, 2009). It is common for health and social care and educational services to provide training or resources that ignore or misrepresent the diversity, complexity and sometimes even the very existence of ethnic or social categories (Ortiz and Jani, 2010). Generic statements are made about the ‘Burmese’ when there are dozens of minority communities that are not ‘Burman’ and who are over-represented as refugees in countries such as Australia. Even more ridiculous characterizations would include Africans, Indians or Chinese (Pon, 2009). The homogenization of cultural and religious groupings to which we do not belong is one of the starkest manifestations of cultural racism and should not be reproduced in cultural competency education or service delivery (Abrams and Moio, 2009). Failure to recognize diversity within racialized groupings is an integral part of discursive processes that ‘other’ those people by rendering them as fixed, static and not subject to history or change (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992; May, 1998). These representations essentialize the ‘other’ as possessing essential, inherent and immutable qualities that mark them as a category and which radically distinguish

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them from ‘ourselves’ (Roman, 1993; Werbner, 1997; Gilroy, 2000). In many cases such racialization and essentializing is negative but even when the imputed characteristics are apparently positive such as ‘academically gifted and hard working Asians’ or ‘spiritual Indigenous peoples’, the effect of such representations is to obliterate their diversity and the messiness of our shared human existence. Essentialism is the belief that categories of people share an inherent and immutable ‘essence’ that is not subject to context or historical change. Essentialism ignores or denies the fluid and relational aspects of identities and cultures and typically fails to recognize similarities, parallels and commonalities between cultural identities. Partly this reflects the reductionist thought that underlies essentialism but it also flows from a failure to acknowledge intersectionality (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1992). Rather than privileging a single social category such as class or gender, intersectionality reminds us that we occupy multiple identity classifications that intersect and operate simultaneously and dynamically. The mantra of ‘race, gender and class’ was fundamental to early progress in theorizing and acting against oppressions, especially when these were seen not as additive or cumulative but as intermeshed and structured in complex, historically and spatially specific ways (Anthias and Yuval-Davis, 1983). For social work theory and practice, it is important to understand intersectionality to include age, education, sexuality, disability, religion and other forms of identity and sociality beyond the trinity (Murphy et al., 2009). Without acknowledging the interpenetrating, hybrid and fluid factors that construct and shape our identities, cultural knowledge degenerates into essentialized traits that reinforce stereotypes and prevent genuine engagement (Fuller, 2002). Discussions of ‘culture’ often occur in both professional and popular discourses with a focus on difference, on apparent deviations from that regarded as normal by the observer. Inevitably such discourses are highly political and inflected with powerful affective meanings. Frequently such characterizations oversimplify cultures into systematized lists of facts and presumed values that are attractive because of their simplicity and apparent usefulness in guiding our actions (Rizvi and Crowley, 1993). Such lists or guides are now widely used in health care, education and social work/counselling settings partly because of the misplaced confidence they provide workers who are often anxious about their effectiveness with ‘others’ or who are frightened of being racist (Stanford, 2010). Turning complex, fluid, relational and contextual ways of seeing, thinking, being and acting into stable ‘cultural’ differences often involves a strong belief that such cultures are determining of people’s behaviours, feelings etc. Significantly, ‘we’ (those positioned as dominant racially or culturally) often do not experience our own cultural backgrounds as so powerful in determining our own decisions and thoughts. In reflecting on our behaviour we refer to our individual autonomy and choices supposedly based on rational theories and factual information, to a commitment to superior knowledge and clear universal values (Reitmanova, 2011). Yet culture is often regarded as all-powerful for ‘others’, serving as sufficient explanation to criticize or

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excuse their actions. This idea that cultures are extremely powerful in shaping, even controlling, (others’) lives is called culturalism (Hollinsworth, 2006, p. 274). Given the multiplicity of factors and influences that form modern intercultural identities, what is actually important or causative varies in every different context and situation. Thus identity is relational and is better understood as positionality (Sands, 1996 cited in Fook, 2002, p. 75). When with other members of my language group, my gender or religious affiliation or party allegiance may be crucial. When with my extended family, my generational status or whether I have had children may be most significant. Aspects of my self that are salient to me or to others often differ, and will change over time and for particular purposes (Carr, 2011). The emphasis on ‘culture’, understood in unsophisticated and essentialized terms in most of the cultural competence literature, derives from the common lack of familiarity and confidence many social workers from the dominant group feel in relation to members of minority communities who the worker only meets when minority people need, or are required, to interact as clients with the state (Walter et al., 2011). While such anxieties are common in working with diverse populations, they are especially critical in relation to Indigenous people in settler societies like Australia. Over the past decade there have been many calls for social work to incorporate Indigenous knowledges and approaches (Weaver, 1999; Gray et al., 2008; Munford and Sanders, 2011). Lynn (2001) argues that social work serves Indigenous people poorly because of its narrowly modernist epistemology and ontology. When Indigenous differences are recognized, they are seen as marginal though necessary to engage the ‘other’ rather than as contributing to the discipline/profession generally. ‘Under the modernist project indigenous social welfare work approaches have been silenced and relegated to the periphery as deficit theory and practice in the landscape of social work’ (Lynn, 2001, p. 903). Such marginalization of Indigenous values and practices ignores their potential as ‘best practice’ for all or many regardless of racial or cultural identities (Furlong and Wight, 2011). Learning from the Client Instead of Knowing (About) the Client In a widely cited article, Dean (2001, p. 624) rejects cultural competence as an unachievable and undesirable aspiration based on a modernist project to control and manipulate. She argues that seeking understanding offers much more than acquiring knowledge about the other, given the diversity, fluidity and hybridity of individuals and families. Understanding can emerge within relationship building when ‘working from an appreciation of one’s lack of competence’: The paradoxical combination of these two ideas—being “informed” and “not knowing” simultaneously—captures the orientation to one’s “lack of competence” that I am suggesting is needed in cross-cultural work. (Dean, 2001, p. 628)

If we do not, indeed cannot ‘know’, we must rely on the information and insights offered by the client. Johnson and Munch (2009, p. 223) argue that modern social work has shifted from knowing about the client to learning from the client. This shift is widely asserted in social work education and professional protocols and guidelines but

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is contradicted in many cross-cultural practice training and programmes that still seek to provide generic knowledge of the nature of cultural differences and their implications (Pon, 2009). The ‘client-as-expert’ is increasingly regarded as a core tenet of progressive social work theory (Fook, 2002; Adams et al., 2009). What recognition of client expertise means in practice is less clear, especially in cases where the client is significantly unlike the worker in terms of class, culture, ‘race’, education and lifestyle (Sakamoto, 2007; Pon, 2009). Even in avowedly anti-oppressive practice, close attention is needed to the micro-level of power dynamics in working with clients (Sakamoto and Pitner, 2005). One way to seriously alienate racialized clients is for social workers to claim insider knowledge and to flaunt their cross-cultural expertise, especially as that knowledge is likely to be superficial and not apply to the particular client (Bessarab and Crawford, 2010). Respectful and trusting relationships are fundamental to effective social work especially when worker and client are dissimilar in social, cultural and political location. For Indigenous clients trust is often difficult and relationship building critical (Cox, 2007; Bennett et al., 2011). Issues of trust and disengagement are common for all clients who are racialized and/or have negative experiences of state intervention (Bowes and Sim, 2006; Kohli, 2006). Yet there is little explicit curriculum content or practice training on establishing trust and building relationships across such silences. Key components of such critical education would include the importance of consistent respectful and collaborative practice behaviours, with routine checking of the client’s experiences and expectations. Some Indigenous Australian social workers refer to such relationship building as cultural safety including the following recommendations: building the relationship in environments where the person feels comfortable; being aware of community protocols regarding with whom to consult; working alongside people; not going straight down to business or being outcome and process driven; providing choices about with whom they might want to work (Aboriginal or nonAboriginal); giving information and working from a position of humility and dealing with people with dignity. (Bennett et al., 2011, p. 29)

Contrary to cautions against self-disclosure, Indigenous clients often expect to learn who the worker is, their family and on what basis they believe their insights and advice will be useful. Establishing this rapport often takes time and may require considerable flexibility, qualities that are increasingly harder to deliver with increasing managerialism (Ferguson, 2008; Harrison and Turner, 2011). Managerialism is the set of beliefs and practices that assumes social problems can be solved by more effective managerial practices within the structural, budgetary and operational processes of human services. Managerialism ignores the root causes of inequality and disadvantage while relegating responsibility to staff that compromises their professionalism (Muetzelfeldt and Briskman, 2003). Demonstrating humility and respectful listening and observing before offering judgements or recommending actions is important especially given the extremely corrosive effects of discourses of Indigenous deficit and dysfunction (Briskman, 2007; Fawcett and Hanlon, 2009).

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Teaching Critical Reflection in Cross-Cultural Practice The following is based on my own experience teaching Indigenous studies and antiracism courses in social work and other professional programmes in Australia since 1980. One core component in acquiring the tools of critical reflection in cross-cultural encounters for most social workers in Australia is recognition of their white privilege (Walter et al., 2011; Young and Zubrzycki, 2011). Following Fook, critical reflection involves changing practice to avoid unwittingly perpetuating power inequalities through examination of ‘how structures of domination are created and maintained’ (2002, p. 41). Such an approach moves from casting cultural differences as ‘other’ or alterity to an unexamined and normative ‘whiteness’ to recognition of our intercultural world where all identities are formed and work within interpenetrating and inter-referential social and cultural domains. Students who see themselves as committed to social justice and often see themselves as disadvantaged by gender or class or sexuality may resist recognition of such privilege or claim that their politics absolve them of unintended dominance and unearned advantages (Tatum, 1992; Aveling, 2006). Critical reflection enables students to identify discourses in use and not in use to ‘gain access to how we are positioned within them in often contradictory ways and opens conceptual space as to possible alternative positioning’ (Bay and MacFarlane, 2011, p. 748). Central to developing a critical awareness of positionality and privilege in social work practice is an engaged learning and teaching approach that recognizes where each of us has come from, what we value and why, and how these impact on our openness or resistance to acknowledging others’ perspectives and the partiality of our own. While detailed, accurate and complexly argued knowledge of inequality, cultural diversity and racism in all its forms is essential in social work education, it is not sufficient or able on its own terms to eradicate racist beliefs and practices from individual social workers or from their institutional structures and processes (Jeffery, 2007). Our knowledge of what works and why in anti-racism education is still incomplete (but see Pedersen et al., 2011). Didactic lectures have a place, especially in relation to long ignored or suppressed aspects of colonialism or racial oppression, but students have to be able to contest safely and mechanisms and protocols for open and respectful dialogue are crucial (Tatum, 1992). Often the most pivotal incidents are unplanned student interjections, and the responses of teachers and peers. Avoiding anger, dismissal or humiliation is absolutely essential though sometimes hard. Students who do not endorse racist or bigoted opinions will still align themselves with a student who is unfairly treated by staff. Equally staff need to ensure that all students can speak, be heard and have their concerns addressed (Brookfield, 2011). As we rely more on online methods of instruction, self-directed learning and assessment, the challenge of promoting rigorous critical reflection is increasing. Often scenarios are used to build up students’ awareness of the contexts of practice and their implications for interventions (Green et al., 2009). Such problem-based learning is widely used in Indigenous studies to good effect (Mackinlay and Barney, 2010).

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Perhaps the most effective learning and assessment tool is a reflective journal that requires a combination of critical analysis of required readings with personal/profes­ sional reflection on their implications for practice (Swindell and Watson, 2006; Bay and Macfarlane, 2011). This method is core to learning in the undergraduate and postgraduate courses on ‘Working Effectively with Aboriginal People’ which I currently teach. Such journals should focus on analysis and deconstruction of course material, incidents, discussion and responses and avoid being ‘therapeutic’ or overly concerned with feelings at the cost of critique (Morley, 2008). For this reason, specific challenges and questions are used rather than completely open choice and the journal is confidential between student and teacher. An electronic discussion board allows for lively interchange between students on these issues but is kept separate from the assessed element. The key learning comes from the student’s struggle with the material and the teacher’s feedback that has to be tailored to the particular student, requiring an awareness of their individual background, values, self-identity and relevant experience in order to provide the necessary relevance, support and authority to extend understanding and encourage risk taking and honest communication (Fook and Askegard, 2007). For this reason, journal assignments are structured around weekly responses that are responded to immediately for the postgraduate online course and at week 5 and week 13 for internal undergraduates. Internal students are expected to bring their journals to class and can receive feedback by appointment. Weekly tutorial discussions are framed around the emerging responses to these questions. Each student’s contribution to these debates is also assessed. As with any form of learning and assessment, some students choose not to attend classes or participate in discussion, and others appear not yet ready to seriously engage with critical reflection but remain content with utterances of presumed political correctness. Heron’s study on feedback about ‘race’ in Scottish placement courses found comments were inadequate, failing to promote learning through dialogue (2008, p. 386). Feedback should be iterative and cumulative, and should motivate students to accept uncertainty and risk especially given the common anxiety about appearing/being racist. My graduate students stress the key role of effective supervision both in study and work situations to support their journeys in very challenging circumstances, both personally and professionally. This is daunting for staff and for students from dominant and subordinate groups (Rossiter, 1995; Fook and Askegard, 2007). As teachers asking for significant courage and honesty and intellectual effort, we need to model appropriate and effective engagement, questioning and feedback in our teaching as a way to impart understandings that will inform and guide practice in intercultural settings (Aveling, 2006). In a powerful study from South Africa, Leibowitz et al. (2010) urge us to recognize and embrace ‘discomfort as a pedagogy’. Our teaching must align with the open, negotiable stance we advocate for in our practice; what Parrott (2009) calls ‘constructive marginality’ and what Laird described as becoming ‘more informed not knowers’ (1998, p. 30). Some students find helpful the concept of a liminal space, ‘an inbetween, a space of transformation, where you are no longer in the state you were, but haven’t yet arrived

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at a new state’ (Somerville, 1999 cited in Lynn, 2001, p. 904 ). This open, decentred space remains unfinished and in dialogue, in stark contrast to the fixed notions of knowledge usually found in cultural competence. I have observed that often students are seriously destabilized in this journey to uncertainty and require considerable peer and teacher support to risk letting go of modernist props. There is debate on the impact of lecturer ethnicity in diversity courses (Sonn, 2004; Housee, 2008). Indigenous staff can be subjected to racist responses or confined to restricted and onerous roles as ‘representative’ of their ‘race’ (Santoro and Reid, 2006; Joseph and Hirshfield, 2011). Arguably, the responsibility for teaching anti-racism falls on those who share white privilege. Perhaps the best option is co-teaching between Indigenous and non-Indigenous lecturers (Dumbrill and Green, 2008; Gollan and O’Leary, 2008). Authorship of course readings, video and other learning material should reflect the full range of positionalities, not just of racial identities but also gender, geography, age and politics. Such a critical approach is consistent with Fook’s (2002, p. 118) proposal for a postmodern perspective on assessment as the ‘construction of professional narratives’. We need to purposively guide students’ learning of how to establish relationships and build up these shared narratives [see Murphy-Erby et al. (2010) for one approach]. The key is an open-ended dialogue avoiding prejudgement and essentialized categorization. Rather than seeking cultural competence, we should work to elicit and deeply listen (Bennett et al., 2011) to our client’s life story, including their history and present needs and wants. Such an autobiographical approach reveals what is salient to them including their negotiation of diverse cultural identities while avoiding culturalism and deterministic interpretations. Students and graduates report the injunction to ‘forget cultural competence and ask for an autobiography’ has been a powerful tool in their learning to work confidently and effectively with diverse clients. More research is needed on how best to encourage skills in sharing these stories and using them in practice, especially in the face of managerialist opposition, but abandoning essentialized cultural competency is a good first step.

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