Adrienne B. Dessel

Prejudice in Schools: Promotion of an Inclusive Culture and Climate

Public schools represent the pluralism of American society. Unfortunately, many children experience their public school environment as unwelcoming or even violent. Prejudicial attitudes contribute to problematic intergroup relations in public school settings. Furthermore, teachers are often unprepared to work with the diversity of class, linguistic groups, sexual orientation, and other sociocultural backgrounds that make up the student body in their classrooms. This article discusses theories of prejudice and how they inform an understanding of bullying, conflict, and violence in schools. Evidence-based prejudice reduction approaches are presented that teachers and school administrators can use to improve school culture and climate.

Effects of Intergroup Dialogue: Public School Teachers and Sexual Orientation Prejudice

Prejudice and hate crimes against lesbians and gay men are prevalent throughout the United States. Prejudice in public school settings is particularly problematic for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) students and LGB parents. Efforts to reduce prejudice for LGB groups have met with limited success. Creating safer and more inclusive school environments is essential. An experimental mixed methods field design tested outcomes of an intergroup dialogue intervention on public school teacher attitudes, feelings, and behaviors toward LGB students and parents. Quantitative results indicate dialogue participation resulted in statistically significant positive changes in attitudes, feelings, and behaviors. Qualitative data analysis confirmed positive changes as a result of dialogue participation.

Intergroup dialogue courses on sexual orientation: lesbian, gay and bisexual student experiences and outcomes.

Intergroup dialogue is a method of social justice education. Most intergroup dialogue research explores race and gender identities. Sexual orientation dialogues are uncommon and not yet examined empirically. This qualitative study explores sexual orientation dialogue courses from the perspective of lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) student participants. Understanding target, or marginalized, group perspective of planned intergroup experiences is important given concerns raised in the literature. We document student motivations for participating in dialogues, core outcomes, and main challenges that arose in dialogue. Core outcomes include learning about and accepting ones sexual identity and empowerment. Challenges include those stemming from invisibility of sexual orientation identity. Recommendations are made for intergroup dialogue practice and research.

CAN RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION AND SEXUAL ORIENTATION AFFIRMATION COEXIST IN SOCIAL WORK? A CRITIQUE OF HODGE'S THEORETICAL, THEOLOGICAL, AND CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORKS

Social work strives to be inclusive of all cultural groups and religious identities. However, a tension exists in the profession between freedom of religious expression and full acceptance of lesbian, gay, and bisexual people. David Hodge and others claim social work is oppressive to evangelical Christians. This article critiques primarily Hodges arguments using an analysis of biblical scriptures, new class theory, freedom of expression, and social work ethics. Social work and human rights principles are discussed as a guide for negotiating these issues in the social work educational environment. Intergroup dialogue is offered as a pedagogical method for addressing the tension in social work classrooms.

LGBT Discrimination on Campus and Heterosexual Bystanders: Understanding Intentions to Intervene.

Discrimination targeting lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) students on college campuses occurs. Bystander intervention is important in supporting targeted students and improving campus climate for LGBT students. Peer-familiarity context (i.e., who the bystander knows in the situation) can play a role in bystander intervention, but researchers have not explored the nature of bystander intervention in specific peer-familiarity contexts concerning LGBT discrimination. Using hypothetical vignettes, we examine heterosexual students’ (n = 1616) intention to intervene across 4 peer-familiarity contexts, namely, when the bystander knows no one, only witnesses or targets, only perpetrator, or everyone. We explore the role of student inputs (sociodemographics, self-esteem, attitudes toward LGBT people and political ideology) and experiences (LGBT social contacts, LGBT and social justice course content, and perceived and experienced campus climate) on their intentions to intervene in these contexts. Multiple regression results suggest that across all peer-familiarity contexts, being older, having higher self-esteem, having LGBT friends, taking courses with social justice content, and affirming attitudes toward LGBT people were independently associated with higher intentions to intervene. Males were more likely than females to intervene when they knew no one, while females were more likely to intervene in all other contexts. Race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, witnessing heterosexist harassment, perceptions of campus climate for LGBT students, and student standing were significant in particular peer contexts. Recommendations to promote bystander intervention and future research are presented.

Social Work Faculty's Attitudes Toward Marginalized Groups: Exploring the Role of Religion

Social work facultys attitudes contribute to creating inclusive and productive classroom climates when discussing racism, sexism, and heterosexism. Little is known about facultys attitudes toward marginalized groups and the intersection of these attitudes with religion. This study describes social work facultys attitudes about people of Color, women, and lesbian and gay people, and the relationship among these attitudes, religious affiliation, and religiosity. Results indicate religiosity predicts less accepting attitudes towards lesbian and gay people for Christian faculty; religious affiliation and religiosity did not predict attitudes towards women or people of Color. Intergroup dialogue is recommended for social work faculty learning.

Arab/Jewish Intergroup Dialogue Courses Building Communication Skills, Relationships, and Social Justice

Tensions emanating from the Israeli/Palestinian conflict lead to misunderstanding, segregation, and conflict between Arab and Jewish students on U.S. college campuses. Teaching about this conflict presents particular challenges for faculty and student affairs staff. This study uses a participatory action research method that engages Arab and Jewish students in understanding and changing issues of concern to their own campus communities. A qualitative analysis of the final papers and interviews from the students in Arab/Jewish intergroup dialogue courses indicated that the students had different pre-perceptions of each other, experienced conflict and strong emotions in the dialogue, and reported outcomes that progressed from the development of communication and listening skills to critical self-reflection, perspective-taking and empathy, development of friendships, and action for social change. The students continued to struggle with understanding each other and maintaining relationships. Recommendations for pedagogy and research are discussed in this article.

The Minds of Peace and intergroup dialogue: two complementary approaches to peace

Numerous intergroup practices have engaged Palestinians and Israelis with the hope of peacemaking and peacebuilding. As many have noted, this work has yet to achieve the desired conflict reduction and sustainable peace in the region. One important grassroots effort in building peace is a small-scale Israeli–Palestinian public negotiating assembly called the Minds of Peace Experiment. Another conflict resolution effort is intergroup dialogue, a sustained facilitated group experience designed to provide a safe space for participants to address divisive issues. This article compares and contrasts these two peacebuilding methods and how they inform each other to be used in tandem to secure a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Theater and Dialogue to Increase Youth's Intentions to Advocate for LGBTQQ People.

Objective: This study evaluates the effectiveness of an intervention using theater and dialogue to raise awareness about homophobia and transphobia and increase intentions to participate in macro-level change efforts around lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQQ) issues. Methods: Using a pretest–posttest design, this study examines changes in advocacy intentions around LGBTQQ issues among middle school and high school students who participated in the intervention (n = 515). Results: Students reported a significant increase in intentions to advocate. Existing intervention behaviors and increased recognition of homophobia/transphobia as problems were associated with greater increases in intention to advocate. Respondents with higher existing intervention behaviors, as well as White students and cisgender women, reported higher advocacy intentions compared to students of color and cisgender men. Further, we found indication of greater awareness of homophobia/transphobia as a problem in school. Conclusions: Youth-led theater and dialogue-based interventions may be a promising strategy for addressing heterosexism and genderism in schools.

Parents Will Be Parents: Conceptualizing and Measuring Nonoffending Parent and Other Caregiver Support Following Disclosure of Sexual Abuse

A gap exists in the literature with regard to the theoretical conceptualization of nonoffending parental and other caregiver (NOC) support of sexually abused children. Measures need to be developed that appropriately capture this construct. The purpose of this article is to present a qualitative study that asked 17 NOCs in different ways how they supported their sexually abused children after the disclosure of the sexual abuse. The multiple different types of support were coded and, using grounded theory, the structure of NOC support emerged from the data. The final structure of NOC support had 8 dimensions, including basic needs, safety and protection, decision making, active parenting, instrumental support, availability, sensitivity to child, and affirmation.