DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Health and Human Services Team

Pam Kiser

Philip Miller

Sandra Reid


HSS 111 The Art and Science of Helping: Diversity Infusion Action Plan


What is the Goal of the Project?


Human difference is a core, fundamental feature of human services and of the social problems that the field of human services attempts to address.  Therefore, human difference must be a core theme of the course throughout the semester. 

 

As students develop an understanding of human services as a science, they will become familiar with evidence generated through scholarly research that shows how the various components of the Loden’s (1996) Diversity Wheel below come to bear on social problems, individuals’ problems, and human service interventions and policies. 

 

We will have the students consider the following framework as it relates to the Diversity Wheel:  empathy, self awareness, broader implications, and competence.

 

           

 

As students come to understand human services as an art, they will develop greater awareness of how individuals perceive and interact with societal issues based on their own unique identities, histories and psychosocial makeup. 

 

Students will develop a greater understanding of themselves and the human differences they embody, recognizing the ways in which these differences affect the assumptions they carry, how they interact with others, and how they view various issues that they encounter in the field, both academically/intellectually and experientially as they encounter the world around them.

 

Why Is It Important To Do This?

 

Two key features of the diversity focus in human services are

 

  1. cultivating cultural and personal self-awareness and
  2. developing the ability to take the perspectives of people
          very different from oneself. 

Inherent in human service studies is the fact that human service professionals in most cases come from more privileged backgrounds than do the people whose lives are the focus of intervention.  This reality must be addressed directly in human service education and every effort must be made to overcome the significant risks that this reality carries.

 

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

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DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.