Implementing the Indigenous Psychology Education Project
This year, in response to the global COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter movement, Australian psychologists have had to rethink how we do our work in psychology and refocus on the impact of systemic racism. Racism towards Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples is a part of the continued legacy of colonisation and has been built into the foundations of our nation. In 2016, the Australian Psychology Society (APS) formally acknowledged psychology’s role in contributing to the mistreatment of First Australians with the APS Apology and have since been actively involved in many policy changes, advocacy, and protests against racism. The year 2020 presents new opportunities to advance reconciliation efforts across Australia.
While we still have a long way to go, the increasing number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples taking up psychology training has been pleasing. Another essential goal is improving cultural awareness and cultural responsiveness of students of psychology generally. An important first step in the process of decolonising psychology is to raise the critical consciousness of the next generation of psychologists by beginning with staff and students in psychology programs as well as ‘Indigenising’ the curriculum (see Darlaston-Jones, 2015).
This year, we were proud to be part of the APS Black Lives Matter Statement. The Australian Indigenous Psychologists Association (AIPA), in partnership with the APS, brought together six of Australia’s peak psychology organisations to take a firm stance against racism in any and every form. The Statement affirms that:
“Our profession has a responsibility to acknowledge, address and combat racism, and support people impacted by racism and discrimination. As psychologists, we have a professional and ethical responsibility to defend and uphold the social and emotional wellbeing of all people, providing equitable, effective, and accessible psychological services. Psychologists must do their best to support persons impacted by racism and discrimination and raise our voices against discriminatory systems and practice that threaten the social and emotional wellbeing of individuals and communities. And importantly, we must also reflect on ourselves and address our own racism and unconscious biases.
To start to address racism, we need to purposefully strive for social justice and look, not only at how we as a profession and as individuals can be part of change but also, at what we must do to reform our systems and practice to address systemic racism. Successfully standing against racism will depend on our willingness and ability to engage in reflection, truth telling, (have) courageous conversations, and work together towards action. The time for action is now. We invite all psychologists to stand together against racism and discrimination of all kinds.”
Read the full statement: bit.ly/3cII4F5
The Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project (AIPEP)
Consistent with the APS Statement and commitment to decolonise psychology and the renewed imperative to address systemic racism in Australia, this year we have revived the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project (AIPEP). One of the aims of AIPEP is to increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students graduating from psychology study and consequently increase the number of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people working in the psychology field, including as registered psychologists.
This will facilitate appropriate and effective psychology services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities. Finally, AIPEP also aims to tackle social exclusion and systemic racism by increasing access to, and engagement with, culturally safe mental health services and support programs for the community. Read more about AIPEP at www.indigenouspsyched.org.au
Since AIPEP first commenced in 2013, we have noticed a considerable change in the willingness of higher education providers to include Indigenous studies in their psychology curriculum. The following sections show just a few examples of the innovative changes that are now happening in different universities across Australia.
School of Psychological Science, The University of Western Australia
Jeneva L. Ohan, Associate Professor
Our School’s participation in the Australian Indigenous Psychology Education Project (AIPEP) workshop in Sydney (2017) inspired us to undertake activities that aim to increase our support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students to pursue psychology. To meet this aim, multiple activities are required, each of which we have explicitly connected directly back to our main aim. These activities have been undertaken in consultation with our colleagues in the School of Indigenous Studies (SIS) at our university, working especially closely with the SIS student support officers.
One activity prior to COVID-19 was a co-hosted lunch between our school and the SIS, during which key academic staff from psychology, along with SIS student support officers, met with Indigenous students who were interested and/or enrolled in psychology to address queries about our units and courses in an informal setting. This also gave students the opportunity to advise psychology staff on what other kinds of support would be meaningful to them in pursuing psychology studies. Students requested repeating this gathering each semester.
COVID-19 has since suspended activities. Still, even this single meeting has had positive ongoing outcomes, as it helped to clarify the needs of students and inspire other activities. For example, we are in the process of securing a pathway for entry for Indigenous students into our Honours program, using criteria advised by the students. We are also starting a student mentoring program wherein we match students from the SIS who are interested in pursuing particular aspects of psychology with a psychology postgraduate student with matching interests (e.g., a SIS student interested in clinical psychology is matched with a psychology postgrad student who is in the clinical psychology program) so that they can get to know more about the study and career pathway.
This program is being implemented by a psychology staff member with support from SIS student support officers. We are also pursuing scholarship support for students seeking to enrol in our Honours program. This will help to address some of the immediate financial barriers that the students face, especially in our current uncertain financial environment.
We are hoping that these and other activities will help increase the participation of Indigenous Australians in psychology higher education. Ultimately, in time, this will enable Indigenous Australians to pursue careers in and related to psychology and begin to address under-representation in our state, nation and the psychology discipline more broadly.
School of Psychological Science, Monash University
Danielle Amiet, Assistant Lecturer
Monash University is privileged to have the Gukwonderuk Indigenous Health Unit, a team of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health academics. This team supports Indigenous students, reviews existing content, and disseminates teaching materials across our Faculty. The Gukwonderuk unit also chairs an Indigenous Health Curriculum Committee (IHCC) with representatives across all health degrees, and recently created an online ‘Allies in Indigenous Health’ 10-hour unit that addresses the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Curriculum (ATSIHC) framework.
Prior to the release of the AIPEP frameworks in 2016, the responsibility of embedding Indigenous content sat with select allies. In 2018, the IHCC requested an audit of our Bachelor and Clinical PhD programs, using the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Committee (ATSIHC) framework and AIPEP Workforce Capabilities framework as benchmarks. Through this process, we recognised our approach towards embedding Indigenous health into our teachings was fragmented, and at times, tokenistic.
Since then, content deemed inappropriate according to the frameworks was removed from the curriculum, and missing content was slowly incorporated. We also started collaborating with Aboriginal psychologists and academics to write and deliver their own lectures and provide feedback on existing content.
In 2020, we introduced cultural safety training for staff, and commenced rolling-out the ‘Allies in Indigenous Health’ unit across each course. Currently, all Clinical PhD students are required to complete this unit and two 3-hour workshops prior to placement. We are also conducting a thorough audit across all eight APAC-accredited programs for the first time.
One of the key learnings from this experience has been recognising the importance of hidden curriculums in several of our courses. Specifically, the gaps in our teaching on Indigenous culture and wellbeing could be perceived as us deeming Indigenous material not important enough to include. Our teaching and assessment material often had a deficit-focus, rather than strengths-based approach. It also minimised Indigenous ways of knowing and being, and prioritised Western approaches to mental health and research.
This led us to incorporate challenging aspects into our teaching material, including privilege, racism, systematic discrimination, implicit biases and on-going effects of colonisation, thus encouraging students and staff to reflect on their positions, biases and the impacts of this on practice. Whilst at times this process has been uncomfortable and challenging, these aspects are essential to train the future mental health workforce in cultural appropriateness and to address on-going systematic discrimination in health policy, practice and service delivery.
School of Psychology, James Cook University
Meegan Kilcullen, Senior Lecturer
During 2019, the James Cook University Master of Psychology (Clinical) postgraduate program underwent a major curriculum redesign and redevelopment. The changes to the program went beyond refreshing the existing content. This was a major shift in the philosophical framework with the new aim to not only teaching professional content and skills but to also teach students to explicitly articulate and embrace a critical approach. To achieve this aim, we deconstructed the curriculum to decolonise the foundations of the program.
As the majority of current psychology students are non-Indigenous people, raising critical consciousness through developing awareness of inequalities and power existing within dominant knowledge systems is important as it supports ongoing culturally responsive and reflexive practice (Darlaston-Jones, 2015; Fox et al., 2009; Friere, 1970). We adopted a strengths-based approach based upon Nakata’s (2007) concept of the ‘cultural interface’ to expand cultural ways of knowing through cultural pluralism. The cultural interface is argued to be situated at the intersection between Indigenous and non-Indigenous knowledges where neither knowledge system is dominant nor, importantly, is either system silenced. In our program, the concept of the cultural interface is also applied across cultural contexts including gender, politics, class, and age.
In the program, there are a total of five coursework subjects; three research subjects and three clinical placements. Subjects are taught in workshop/block mode, with the delivery of two separate four- or five-day workshops for each coursework subject. This teaching mode enhances student immersion and engagement in learning. As an APAC (2019) accredited postgraduate clinical course, there is required content, such as professional practice, psychopathology, assessment, and evidence-based practice. Additional content that supports understanding of Indigenous health and wellbeing has also been included, such as the transgenerational impact of colonisation, social determinants of Indigenous health, impacts of cultural identity upon being mentally healthy, and culturally appropriate healing pathways.
Knowledges that underpin critical theory, self-reflexivity and culturally responsive practice are explicitly explored in the initial workshop and intentionally revisited throughout every workshop day and throughout research practice and clinical placements. For example, in the assessment subject, we ask students to consider the social, political and cultural contexts within which psychological assessments were developed and are currently practised; for whom and what purpose assessment tools were developed; the implications of assessments for non-represented groups, including Indigenous people; the social, cultural and historical factors that impact upon an individual’s assessment outcomes; and how to conduct culturally responsive assessments and formulations.
The way in which we approach this content supports lifelong learning at the cultural interface. To deepen learning experiences, students are asked to critically reflect upon all workshop content in relation to their own culture, values, beliefs, and worldviews, and that of psychology as a discipline.While learning content is relatively straight forward, learning and understanding who you are in relation to this knowledge is a more complex process. At every stage, our students and staff are asked to consider this statement, ‘Clinician, know thyself’. Through deconstructing curriculum and content in such a way, we aim to develop graduates’ critical consciousness that supports culturally responsive practice.
Embracing culturally responsive practices
This article presents opportunities that have emerged for Australian psychology as we seek to learn from the unprecedented challenges of 2020 and forge new pathways for the future. As Australian governments renew their commitment to partner with First Australians to deliver the new ‘Close the Gap’ targets, the APS also renewed their commitment to decolonise and combat systemic racism in the psychology discipline in Australia.
Guided by the revival of AIPEP, we will empower Indigenous psychologists and help all psychologists define the boundaries of and build their own cultural responsiveness to facilitate cultural safety and work effectively with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and communities. We have provided three examples from universities that have led the way in seizing this opportunity. We extend an invitation to all higher education providers to join the conversation and to make a stand in the fight against racism.
Join the AIPEP mailing list: www.indigenouspsyched.org.au
Contact the first author: [email protected]