“Community psychology is for poor,
black people”: pedagogy and
community psychology teaching in
South Africa
Ronelle Carolissen, Poul Rohleder, Leslie Swartz
Department of Psychology, Stellenbosch University
Brenda Leibowitz, Centre for Teaching and Learning,
Stellenbosch University
Vivienne Bozalek
Department of Social Work, University of the Western Cape
Focus of the paper:
1. To examine problems inherent in community
psychology teaching and how the human
capabilities approach can provide
conceptual/theoretical direction for facilitating
transformative pedagogy in community
psychology teaching
2. To illustrate a teaching and research project
that incorporates the human capabilities
approach
Brief mapping of presentation
 Community psychology teaching
 Pedagogy
 Human capabilities approach
 Community, self and identity
Project (CSI)
 Implications of CSI project for community
psychology
 Conclusion
Graphic representation of
focus of paper
Community
Psychology implications
teaching
Pedagogy
(Human
capabilities
approach)
Community,
self and identity
project
Community psychology in
South Africa
 1980’s as a response to produce contextually relevant
psychology on a academic, political and theoretical levels
 Major critique of psychology: catered largely to the
needs of white middle class individuals; focusing on intra
psychic causes of problems and not placing an equal
focus on structural problems
 The unleashing of a “turn to community” among
progressive psychologists, focusing on marginalised,
poor black individuals
 Gave rise to the birth of multiple stereotypes about
community psychology which were unwittingly enacted
through teaching practices e.g
 Black people are involved in community psychology:
black academic staff teach community psychology,
service providers are black psychologists, clients are
black and poor
 Community psychology is not real psychology but in fact
is like social work, which occupies a lower rung on the
hierarchy of human service delivery
 Impact on our teaching of community psychology: have to
challenge these stereotypes to make any inroads into
student and practitioners’ thinking about community
psychology.
Problems in community
psychology teaching
 Term “community” carries connotations of social
disadvantage; teaching practices tend to
reinforce marginalisation
 Teaching “process” has been lauded as
important, seldom implemented –focus remains
on content
 Paucity of research on community psychology
teaching
 Curriculum, teaching practice and pedagogy
are silences central to community psychology
 No coherent pedagogical approach: use of terms such as
group based, experiential learning (fall broadly under
service learning as an approach)
 Service learning and its implications for working with
difference—are we merely reinforcing stereotypes?
 Pedagogy is confused with didactics (methods employed
to teach)
 Cannot realise the goals of process teaching: ie.
Developing values of social justice among students and
commitment to civic responsibility if there is no coherent
pedagogy
What do we understand by
term “pedagogy”
 Not only about method of teaching and
learning only. It needs to include
understandings of broader individual and
social processes.
 Pedagogy also relates to the purpose of
learning and teaching and can be
conceptualised as
 Method of teaching in its widest sense, that is, it
extends beyond only the role of the lecturer or
teacher. It involves not only who teaches, but
also who is taught (and of course is interwoven
with what is taught – the curriculum), and the
contextual conditions under which such
teaching and learning takes place. Moreover,
pedagogic action involves a relationship of
power in the transfer of knowledge (Walker,
2006, p.11-12)
Human capabilities approach
 Sen (1995, 2001) and Nussbaum (2006)
•
•
•
Considers students’ position in society-does not assume
that all students enter the educational experience with
same resources
Core concern: how do we foster capabilities so that all
students can flourish- so that education can be a more
fair process?
allows teachers to incorporate social inequalities inherent
in the learning process into the curriculum and in so
doing aims to create a more equal (socially just)
educational experience for all students.
Nussbaum’s 10 capabilities
 life, bodily integrity, sense, imagination and
thought, emotions, practical reason,
affiliation, other species, play and control over
one’s environment.
 Practical reason refers to the ability to critically
reflect in planning one’s life
 Affiliation refers to the ability to engage in
interpersonal interactions by showing both
individual and social concern
 > empathy, focus on social justice
 Values of social justice central to community
psychology and human capabilities approach
 Therefore human capabilities approach might
be valuable as a transformative pedagogy for
community psychology
 Walker (2003) has discussed the implication of
human capabilities approach for pedagogy
 Creates transformative spaces in higher
education through critical dialogue : idea of
knowledge communities
 Recognition from others: important in
gaining self-respect and confidence
 In our current educational context, we
seldom engage with difference, yet we
live alongside it. Allows students and
practitioners to marginalise areas such
as community psychology
Community, self and identity
project: Our students
UWC fourth year social work students –
mainly female, all black, many from
poor backgrounds, all with experience
in community work
Stellenbosch fourth year psychology
students,
mainly female, mostly white (no African
students), most with
little practical community experience
Our students
Age
Gender
Race
Language
Item
U. Stellenbosch
U. WCape
No. of students
45
50
Range
21-52 yrs
21-48 yrs
Mean
24.1yrs
27.4 yrs
Median
22 yrs
25 yrs
F
38
44
M
7
6
African
None
19
Coloured
12
31
White
33
None
African
None
17
Afrikaans
24
22
English
17
11
Dutch
4
None
What we did
Two face-to face day
workshops anchored the
course (one at the beginning;
one at end)
In between: facilitated online
workgroups – specifically
allocated discussion topics
(equal numbers of students
from UWC and US in each
group) explored issues of
identity, difference,
professionalism
First workshop
Participatory action
learning approach
facilitated by Linda
Biersteker (ELRU) at
UWC.
Exercises:
Draw own community
River of life
Myself as future
professional
Final workshop at
Stellenbosch
Student
presentations and
feedback
Guest speaker:
Ariella Friedman
Remix Dance
Company (disability
and identity)
Student quotes
 Affiliation
Through all of this, my identity finally touched base.
Honestly speaking, I was going through a bit of an
identity crisis. Because I am ‘coloured’ I always felt that
we did not have a set culture, I found myself sometimes
adapting to things I did not want to do, just so that I could
fit in. From this collaboration I gained new perspective on
things just because my opinion in the group was valued
equally. This collaboration provided the opportunity to
combat the negative internalisations that existed in me
due to what was installed in me. My position in the
community and my identity within in any community has
thus become areas of which I am proud and has
contributed to my ‘self’ as a whole (US student, coloured
female)
 Practical reason (ability to engage reflexively with others,
recognition of others acknowledgement of difference)
This interaction gave me totally different perspectives of
students of other tertiary institutions as I had my own preconceived ideas about them. I especially thought that
Stellenbosch's people would be snobistic (sic), but was however
pleasantly surprised that this was not the case (UWC, coloured
female)
For me I thought that psychology is better that social work as many
people sees (sic) it as that and social work is not taken
seriously. The preparations of the group project helped me to
understand that and now I am more proud about my
professional thanks to the group presentation (UWC student,
black african female)
Yet another student is able to reflect on an unintentional mistake as
reinforcing power differences among professions.
One of the group’s printed slides only had ‘Psychology’ printed at the top,
thus seemingly excluding social work from their project. A lot of the social
workers were very upset about this and felt that it was derogatory and
disrespectful to them. I thought that this event was quite interesting. The
social work students and psychology students have been working together
for about two months. A great deal of the work covered made us realize
communalities and how our profession actually try to achieve the same
goals to the point that in our groups our visions of community
overshadowed social class, race or profession. I was thus quite saddened by
this albeit insensitive mistake’s impact and how it succeeded in immediately
separating ‘us’ into ‘us’ and ‘them’. I think that above all this highlights how
deeply social categorization and assumed views are embedded in
individuals. It is idealistic to try to entirely change a community’s or an
individual’s deepest beliefs (US student, white female)
Implications of the CSI project and
pedagogy for communtiy
psychology
 Didactics vs pedagogy
Positioning pedagogy in community psychology as method or didactics only, is what has
been limiting. It is important to distinguish between didactics and the broader notion of
pedagogy which questions not only how we teach but why and what we teach in
community psychology.
 Incorporating subjugated knowledges into formal teaching
and learning
The partial incorporation of knowledge into formal higher education, often based on the
knowledge of the socially powerful in society, can lead to a partial view being created
and entrenched and consequently resulting in stereotyping of knowledge. This appears
to have happened in community psychology when community psychology is stereotyped
as a black and working class psychology.
 Inter-disciplinary collaboration and community psychology
Volume 38 (1/2) of the American Journal of Community Psychology of 2006 has been
devoted entirely to examining inter-disciplinary, collaborative research and action. The
importance of inter-disciplinary work for community psychology is clearly illustrated in
our project.
 Synergising teaching, research and
community
Conclusion
•
•
critical pedagogies such as the human capabilities approach
are capable of positioning the teaching process as a
transformative activity.
Given the racialisation and devaluing of community psychology
in South Africa, we particularly need to incorporate critical
pedagogies in our vision for community Given the racialisation
and devaluing of community psychology in South Africa, we
particularly need to incorporate critical pedagogies in our vision
for community psychology teaching to challenge the very
stereotyping that we are in danger of perpetuating via our
teaching practice.psychology teaching to challenge the very
stereotyping that we are in danger of perpetuating via our
teaching practice.