Liza Lorenzetti

Addressing Power in Conversation Enhancing the Transformative Learning Capacities of the World Café

The World Café (TWC), used as an effective conversational tool around the world, shares several tenets with other participatory approaches to learning and development. It has not been critiqued, however, for its insufficient attention to reflexivity, power differentials, and structural inequalities within its process, specifically in relation to TWC facilitators. As a group of women from diverse social locations and backgrounds committed to the pursuit of social justice, we sought this opportunity to explore and investigate the transformative learning capacities of TWC, with the broader goal of enhancing its usability in education and community settings. We reviewed and critiqued TWC conversation approach, suggesting stronger links to liberatory education and transformative learning theories. Using a participatory action research process leading to cocreated knowledge, we developed an Emancipatory Learning Charter, a new tool that can enhance the transformative learning potential of TWC.

Research as a Social Justice Tool An Activist’s Perspective

The congruence between social work activism and transformative research resonates with those who are looking to change the root causes of oppression. This article reflects the journey of integrating the identity of activist practitioner and researcher. The process of becoming a social justice researcher includes the discovery of a new set of lenses, emerging tools, and new pathways while maintaining a critical perspective rooted in antioppressive praxis. Research becomes an extension of one’s own identity as a human rights activist, which requires leveraging the skills and capacities of research as a strategy to move to a more socially just world.

Psychosocial and career outcomes of peer mentorship in medical resident education: a systematic review protocol

BackgroundMany medical residents lack ready access to social and emotional supports that enable them to successfully cope with the challenges associated with medical residency. This absence of support has been shown to lead to high levels of burnout, decreased mental wellbeing, and difficulty mastering professional competencies in this population. While there is emerging evidence that peer mentoring can be an important source of psychosocial and career-related support for many individuals, the extent of the evidence regarding the benefits of peer mentorship in medical residency education has not yet been established. We describe a protocol for a systematic review to assess the effects of peer mentoring on medical residents’ mental wellbeing, social connectedness, and professional competencies.MethodsStudies included in this review will be those that report on peer-mentoring relationships among medical residents. Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies will be eligible for inclusion. No date or language limits will be applied. We will search EMBASE, MEDLINE, PsychINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, ERIC, Education Research Complete, and Academic Research Complete databases to identify relevant studies. Two authors will independently assess all abstracts and full-text studies for inclusion and study quality and extract study data in duplicate.DiscussionThis is the first systematic review to explicitly explore the role of peer mentoring in the context of medical residency education. We anticipate that the findings from this review will raise awareness of the benefits and challenges associated with peer-mentoring relationships, further the development and implementation of formal peer-mentoring programs for medical residents, and, through identifying gaps in the existing literature, inform future research efforts.Systematic review registrationThis protocol has not been registered in PROSPERO or any other publicly accessible registry.

A Transformative Approach to Social Work Education

The paper presents an overview of “The Journey Guides Program” - a mentorship and experiencial learning framework developed by the Faculty of Social Work, University of Calgary in Canada. This program was implemented in an Advanced Graduate Seminar, a preparatory course for graduate Social Work students prior to entering their field placements. This article begins by discussing critical pedagogy, the theoretical framework that undepinned the “The Journey Guides Program”, followed by a description of the eight-step process we adopted to implement this program. The authors conclude by discussing the benefits of the Journey Guides program, and plans for ongoing development and transferability of this model. Keywords: Journey guides, transformative learning; mentorship; social work