Moving Beyond Discriminations - Rewriting Life Stories

Abstract

Concerns about the educational needs of social work students to work effectively with minority groups with anti-discriminative attitudes have been well documented (e.g. Camilleri & Ryan, 2006; Lim & Johnson, 2001). Hong Kong has established the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) in 1996 to implement anti-discrimination ordinance on different minority groups, such as racial minorities and disability groups. The Home Affairs Bureau also set up the sexual minority forum in 2004. In spite of these government efforts, some Hong Kong social work students still perceived minority groups, such as disability and sexual minority groups from a single perspective as "sick and pathological or deficient"(e.g. Kwok, 2009). In addition, teaching materials on these issues are mostly based on Western cultures, which cannot address the indigenous Chinese cultural context. Studies suggested that some teaching and learning strategies may reduce students' discriminative attitudes and increased their cultural sensitivities: e.g. facilitating students' contacts with minority group members; creating experiential reflective space for students and writing life stories etc. (e.g. Plugge-Foust & Strickland, 2000; Snively et al., 2004). This teaching and learning project would like to explore the above suggested teaching and learning strategies."