We Need More Praxis: A Case for Praxis Assignments in Psychology Courses

Introduction: This paper explores what praxis is and its importance for catalyzing social justice. Statement of the Problem: At times, psychologists have articulated the importance of bridging the researcher-activist divide via praxis, but progress in creating these bridges has been slow. Literature Review: We examine how praxis can be rooted in decolonial pedagogical approaches and a tool that can bridge scholarship and activism. Building on previous work by teachers of psychology, we review small, medium, and large-scale praxis assignments that have been used in university courses. Teaching Implications: We discuss our own versions of praxis assignments used in four different psychology courses (three of which took place during the pandemic). We reflect on the ways we see students motivated by an assignment with relevance to the real world and potential for creating social change, the ways that students are able to integrate course material more deeply through action, and some of the challenges with these assignments. Conclusion: We conclude by providing recommendations for educators interested in assigning praxis projects in their psychology courses.

Covid-19 and the decolonisation of education in Palestinian universities

Despite the severe social, health, political and economic impacts of the outbreak of Covid-19 on Palestinians, we contend that one positive aspect of this pandemic is that it has revealed the perils and shortcomings of the teacher-centered, traditional education which colonizes students' minds, compromises their analytical abilities and, paradoxically, places them in a system of oppression which audits their ideas, limits their freedoms, and curtails their creativity. While Israeli occupation has proven to be an obstacle in the face of the Palestinian government's attempt to combat and contain the Corona crisis, on-line education, the sole arena that escapes this colonial system, has forced many instructors to give up their domination over the process of education and to create a more collaborative atmosphere of education that is based on dialogue, research and flexibility of the curriculum content. This study is designed to gauge English literature students' responses to this mode of digital learning. We interviewed a hundred students from six English literature programs between March and August, 2020. Thus, through critically examining students' answers, and by drawing on Freire's concepts of banking education, consciousness and dialogue, we propose that online education is an important step towards the decolonization of education and a call for a paradigm shift on the account that the existing paradigm of traditional education is stifling students' creativity and critical thinking.

Impact of nasal photodisinfection on SARS-CoV-2 infection in an industrial workplace.

Objectives: We aimed to evaluate a quality improvement initiative designed to control SARS-CoV-2 (COVID) using the large-scale deployment of antimicrobial photodisinfection therapy (aPDT) for nasal decolonization in a Canadian industrial workplace (a food processing plant). Study design: Using a retrospective chart review of treatment questionnaires, linked to COVID laboratory testing results, a quality improvement assessment was analyzed to determine treatment effectiveness and safety. Methods: This voluntary aPDT intervention involved the administration of a light-sensitive liquid to the nose followed by nonthermal red-light irradiation on a weekly basis. Employees in food processing industries are at increased risk for COVID infection due to the nature of their work environments. In an effort to mitigate the transmission and consequences of the disease among such workers and the community at large, aPDT was added to a well-established bundle of pre-existing pandemic safety measures (e.g., mask-wearing, testing, contact tracing, workplace-engineered barriers, increased paid sick leave). Results: From December 2020 to May 2021, we found high interest in and compliance with aPDT treatment, along with a statistically significant lower PCR test positivity rate in the study population in comparison to the case rates for the local Canadian province. Treatment safety monitoring and outcomes of the aPDT program demonstrated no serious adverse events. Conclusions: This study suggests nasal photodisinfection provides safe and effective COVID viral suppression when deployed across the majority of workers in an industrial workplace setting.

Collecting Race-Based Data in Health Research: A Critical Analysis of the Ongoing Challenges and Next Steps for Canada

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a global effect. The disproportionate impact on Indigenous peoples and racialized groups has brought ethical challenges to the forefront in research and clinical practice. In Canada, the Tri-Council Policy Statement (TCPS2), and specifically the principle of justice, emphasizes additional care for individuals "whose circumstances make them vulnerable", including Indigenous and racialized communities. In the absence of race-based data to measure and inform health research and clinical practice, we run the risk of causing more harm and contributing to ongoing injustices. However, without an accepted framework for collecting, maintaining, and reporting race-based data in Canada, more guidance is needed on how to do this well. Importantly, a framework for collecting race-based data should build on existing guidance from Indigenous and other structurally marginalized communities, the TCPS2, recommendations from the World Health Organization, and involve relevant stakeholders. In this paper, we describe historical examples of unethical studies on Indigenous and racialized groups, discuss the challenges and potential benefits of collecting race-based data, and conclude with objectives for a pan-Canadian framework to inform how race-based data is collected, stored, and accessed in health research.

Decolonizing Time, Knowledge, and Disability on the Tenure Clock

We consider the tenure clock's enmeshment in the neoliberal academy's settler colonial and ableist modes of organizing labor and valuing knowledge, modes in turn informed by heteropatriarchal spatiotemporal logics. The tenure clock in the settler academy relies on labor performed by those positioned outside of its time—such as those in temporary or semi-temporary positions, staff, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Our motivation in tracing these logics and formulating feminist strategies to undo them stems directly from observing "faculty with disabilities" at our university struggling against the tenure clock;as well as seemingly abled women faculty, faculty of color, and contingent faculty, who have strained against the academic clock and ended up debilitated in the process. We articulate ways in which more collaborative understandings of university culture and knowledge production might serve to challenge the peculiar temporalities produced by the tenure clock. Listening and learning at the intersections of feminist, Indigenous, and disability studies scholarship teaches us to work toward imagining a different approach to tenure, and from there, the way to a different academy.

Overcoming the Socioeconomic Impacts of the Coronavirus Pandemic: Social Work Perspectives and Postcolonial Reflections from Ethiopia

The coronavirus pandemic is the most challenging health emergency in generations, as it has already impacted on the capacities of health infrastructures and is dramatically affecting the local and global economy. Since the global spread of the pandemic, the importance of social distancing as well as the hygiene measures for self-protection and protection of other persons has been enforced, to reduce the rapid spread of the coronavirus. However, these ever-more restrictive protection measures are often not feasible for many, especially marginalized and subaltern groups in the Global South, as state-funded social security systems are very limited there. Therefore, it is not surprising that these developments pose a huge socioeconomic threat as well as potential for social and political unrest, especially to those communities living in already politically fragile and precarious situations in countries such as Ethiopia. Developing Santos's understanding of social work epistemologies of the South' and based on a small-scale explorative qualitative study in cooperation with Addis Ababa University, this chapter highlights the impact of historical postcolonial inequalities as well as contemporary political conflicts on the agency of Ethiopian Social and Community Workers as well as their perspectives regarding the multiple crises they confront. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022.

Understanding the Context of Global Health Policies: Their Post-Colonial

The systemic inadequacies of models of health systems propagated by the advocates of global health policies (GHPs) have fragmented health service systems, particularly in middle- and lower-income countries. GHPs are underpinned by economic interests and the need for control by the global elite, irrespective of people's health needs. The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the advocates of GHPs, leading to calls for a movement for "decolonisation” of global health. Much of this narrative on the "decolonisation” of GHPs critiques its northern knowledge base, and the power derived from it at individual, institutional and national levels. This, it argues, has led to an unequal exchange of knowledge, making it impossible to end decades of oppressive hegemony and to prevent inappropriate decision-making on GHPs. Despite these legitimate concerns, little in the literature on the decolonisation of GHPs extends beyond epistemological critiques. This article offers a radically different perspective. It is based on an understanding of the role of transnational capital in extracting wealth from the economies of low- and middle-income countries resulting in influencing and shaping public health policy and practice, including interactions between the environment and health. It mobilises historical evidence of distorted priorities underpinning GHPs and the damaging consequences for health services throughout the world.

On not knowing: COVID-19 and decolonizing leisure research

The COVID-19 pandemic has enfolded waves of uncertainty-intense doses of not knowing-into our daily experience. In this commentary, I stutter into the discomfort of not knowing as a mode of relation. Recognizing that the collective uncertainty surrounding the pandemic has marshaled vital desires to know how to respond, to cope, and even to survive, I think and write toward productive possibilities that arise when we tune attention away from knowing more and knowing better. The journey I take hitches to conceptual anchor points from settler colonial studies, and to moments of personal upheaval associated with both the current pandemic and learning to take responsibility for settler colonization. As I navigate this route of not knowing, I churn up potential decolonizing pathways for leisure researchers to debate, discard, pick up, or move through. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

"If we're lost, we are lost together": Leisure and relationality

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought on a sense of freedoms lost with the emergence of regulatory practices aimed at reducing the spread of the virus. This loss has likely impacted experiences of leisure, particularly in western societies where the perception of freedom is a significant indicator of leisure. The article explores the significance of relationality and leisure from a decolonizing perspective. Building upon observations of the author's experiences during the pandemic, the article will drawn upon relational ontology, the centrality of relationship, and connection with self, family, and other entities of life. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Decolonial dialogues: COVID-19 and migrant women's remembrance as resistance

This contribution presents a text-journey documenting decolonial moments experienced during COVID-19 with other migrant women from Pakistan residing in the Netherlands. It explores women's negotiations of epistemic disregard experienced during integration, by means of Urdu language proverbs that arose during our conversations. Through remembrance, the presence of relationalities and multiple temporalities [Vazquez (2009). Modernity coloniality and visibility: The politics of time. Sociological Research Online, 14(4), 109–115] are expressed in knowledge practices we have brought from Pakistan. This raises crucial questions: How do relational and temporal dimensions (in)form migrant women's practices and struggles? In what ways do migrant women defy modern knowledges and follow their ancestral ways of knowing, being, and doing? In addressing these questions, a decolonial approach is used to create (alternative) spaces, for those bodies that are relational and are sites of memory and temporality. Maria Lugones' [(1987). Playfulness, "world”-travelling, and loving perception. Hypatia, 2(2), 3–19] concept of world traveling and Rolando Vazquez's [(2009). Modernity coloniality and visibility: The politics of time. Sociological Research Online, 14(4), 109–115;Vazquez, R. (October 2015). Relational temporalities: From modernity to the decolonial. Unpublished manuscript] concepts of plural temporalities and relationality are used as a framework to understand remembrance as resistance to dominant world views.

Decolonizing health policy and practice: Vaccine hesitancy in the United States.

Using 2021 data and information related to COVID-19, this paper discusses the contribution of colonization, medical mistrust and racism to vaccine hesitancy. Vaccine hesitancy is defined as 'delay in acceptance or refusal of vaccines despite availability'. Colonization is described as the 'way the extractive economic system of capitalism came to the United States, supported by systems of supremacy and domination, which are a necessary part of keeping the wealth and power accumulated in the hands of the colonizers and ultimately their financiers'. The system of colonization results in policies and practices, including those related to health, that continue to create oppression and support racism. Persons experience trauma as the byproduct of colonization. Chronic stress and trauma create chronic inflammation and all diseases, whether genetic or lifestyle, have a common pathogenesis that is a component of inflammation. Medical mistrust is the absence of trust that healthcare providers and organizations genuinely care for patients' interests, are honest, practice confidentiality and have the competence to produce the best possible results. Finally, racism is described as everyday racism and perceived racism in healthcare.

‘Welcome to a Coronavirus production': Beyond Bows and Arrows' Indigenous on-air community-building during lockdown

This article examines intertribal community-building in Indigenous-produced radio show Beyond Bows and Arrows, broadcast since 1983 in Dallas, Texas, and explores ways in which on-air Indigenous articulations function as acts of resurgence in turn reinforcing an Indigenous internationalism. In this critical exploration, I draw on Beyond Bows and Arrows (BBAA) content broadcast between April and June 2020. I analyse components of the radio sound text such as in-studio talk;discussion topics;music selection and verbal segues;and station-produced informational Public Service Announcements (PSAs);and identify recurring preoccupations over three months of weekly programming during the pandemic's first lockdown. In particular, I consider BBAA's foregrounding of pandemic protocols, calls for Census 2020 participation and Black Lives Matter solidarity at the start of the unsettled yet generative 2020 summer and examine how these articulations coalesce into an on-air structure of feeling which in turn embodies the show's ongoing decolonizing project. © The Author(s) 2022.

Role of antiseptics in the prevention and treatment of infections in nursing homes.

Inadequate infection control, wound care, and oral hygiene protocols in nursing homes pose challenges to residents' quality of life. Based on the outcomes from a focus group meeting and a literature search, this narrative review evaluates the current and potential roles of antiseptics within nursing home infection management procedures. We examine contemporary strategies and concerns within the management of meticillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA; including decolonization regimes), chronic wound care, and oral hygiene, and review the available data for the use of antiseptics, with a focus on povidone-iodine. Compared with chlorhexidine, polyhexanide, and silver, povidone-iodine has a broader spectrum of antimicrobial activity, with rapid and potent activity against MRSA and other microbes found in chronic wounds, including biofilms. As no reports of bacterial resistance or cross-resistance following exposure to povidone-iodine exist, it may be preferable for MRSA decolonization compared with mupirocin and chlorhexidine, which can lead to resistant MRSA strains. Povidone-iodine oral products have greater efficacy against oral pathogens compared with other antiseptics such as chlorhexidine mouthwash, highlighting the clinical benefit of povidone-iodine in oral care. Additionally, povidone-iodine-based products, including mouthwash, have demonstrated rapid in-vitro virucidal activity against SARS-CoV-2 and may help reduce its transmission if incorporated into nursing home coronavirus 2019 control protocols. Importantly, povidone-iodine activity is not adversely affected by organic material, such as that found in chronic wounds and the oral cavity. Povidone-iodine is a promising antiseptic agent for the management of infections in the nursing home setting, including MRSA decolonization procedures, chronic wound management, and oral care.

Domestic Investment Laws, International Economic Law, and Economic Development

‘Development' is a legal concept which has been central to the practice of international economic law (IEL). This Article examines how ‘development' continues to be at the heart of struggles between domestic investment laws (DILs) and international economic law. By examining over 3000 international investment agreements (IIAs) and DILs signed in the last seven decades, this Article identifies the ways in which the concept of development has evolved in tandem with the growth of international economic law by dividing the history of international investment law into six main phases. It traces the emergence of ‘development' in DIL to the decolonization era arguing that post 1990, the proliferation of international investment treaties and growth of investment treaty arbitration have been used as tools of liberalization on the weak premise that this would lead to economic development. In this context, this Article examines closely the interpretation of ‘investment' by ICSID tribunals, promotion of international arbitration for economic development, attempts to internationalize economic development contracts, continued relevance of the New International Economic Order, and shift to sustainable development in IEL discourse.

Covid-19 and research in conflict-affected contexts: distanced methods and the digitalisation of suffering

This research note explores the pressing ethical challenges associated with increased online platforming of sensitive research on conflict-affected settings since the onset of Covid-19. We argue that moving research online and the ‘digitalisation of suffering' risks reducing complexity of social phenomena and omission of important aspects of lived experiences of violence or peace-building. Immersion, ‘contexting' and trust-building are fundamental to research in repressive and/or conflict-affected settings and these are vitally eclipsed in online exchanges and platforms. ‘Distanced research' thus bears very real epistemological limitations. Neither proximity not distance are in themselves liberating vectors. Nonetheless, we consider the opportunities that distancing offers in terms of its decolonial potential, principally in giving local researcher affiliates' agency in the research process and building more equitable collaborations. This research note therefore aims to propose a series of questions and launch a debate amongst interested scholars, practitioners and other researchers working in qualitative research methods in the social sciences.

'Contact zones' of heritage diplomacy: transformations of museums in the (post)pandemic reality

Tracing transformations in the museum agency under the pressure of the pandemic crisis in 2020, the article conceptualizes museums as dynamic 'contact zones' of heritage diplomacy. It explores two foundational components of a contact zone, such as building a social space for a cross-cultural encounter, negotiation and debate as well as offering a platform to address transnational concerns on the heritage decolonization agenda. Drawing on desk research, document analysis and semi-structured interviews with museum professionals, it analyses the case studies of the livestreaming bilateral museum diplomacy and metaverse live heritage pandemic diplomacy, followed by a discussion on the processes of museums decolonization that started to unfold in response to the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement. The research argues that the impact of the digitalization pressures did not only affect the ways, forms, and structures of cross-cultural communications in museums, but also moved them a bit forward in their decolonization processes. [ FROM AUTHOR]

Developing effective collaboration between schools and universities

Sarah Longair launched a collaborative project between school history teachers and university historians in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, Longair and her teacher colleagues, Kerry Milligan and Emma McKenna, share how they used online collaboration to develop a flexible and practical approach to school-university collaboration, and reflect on its impact and the key factors behind its success. The project particularly focused on decolonization in historical research and scholarship. Milligan and McKenna share examples of the work the project enabled them to carry out with their departmental colleagues and students, exploring decolonization and marginalized or silenced histories.

Claves para la resignificación de la universidad pública en la pospandemia covid-19 en el sur global

Luego de una breve reflexión histórica sobre el origen etnocentrado de la universidad como institución legitimadora de ciertos grupos de poder desde su origen, el presente artículo aborda la discusión respecto a la universidad pública popular y su transformación en los últimos tiempos, con miras a alimentar la reflexión respecto a los retos que enfrenta en un presente pospandemia. El objetivo es analizar el impacto social y cultural que su transformación conlleva en las sociedades del sur global y contribuir con las voces que propugnan por una resignificación de la universidad pública popular como bien público y mecanismo de emancipación social. Following the historical reflection that characterizes university as ethnocentric since its beginnings as an institution that legitimates certain power groups such as the Church or the State, this article discusses the public and popular university and its transformation in recent years within the framework of decolonial thinking in a post-pandemic era. The aim of the discussion here is to analyze the social and cultural impact implicit in the transformation of the University within the global south context and to contribute to the voices that claim the public university as a public good and a social mechanism for emancipation.

White Benevolence: Racial and Colonial Violence in the Helping Professions

In particular, the research featured in this collection is primarily situated on the Canadian prairies, a geographical location that is particularly imbued with land-based tensions that are entangled with nation-building narratives with a strong history of dispossessing Indigenous peoples, imposing health and social services as a means to control Indigenous communities (e.g. via Indian Residential Schools, Indian hospitals, etc.), but also a vibrant history of Indigenous resistance to systemic state repression. The first four chapters highlight the first arc which demonstrates the ways in which settler colonial logics and power relations are broadly systemic and produce subjects that both reproduce and resist colonial violence at home ("Living My Family Through Colonialism" by Verna St. Denis), in schools ("Toxic Encounters: What's Whiteness Doing in a Nice Field Like Education?" by Sheelah McLean), within the healthcare system ("How Indigenous-Specific Racism Is Coached into Health Systems" by Barry Lavallee and Laurie Harding) and criminal justice systems ("'Within this Architecture of Oppression, We Are a Vibrant Community': Indigenous Prairie Prisoner Organizing during COVID-19" by Nancy van Styvendale). The next arc is comprised of three chapters which elucidate how colonial violence is reproduced within "helper" identities, namely, white women ("Tracing the Harmful Patterns of White Settler Womanhood" by Willow Samara Allen), teachers ("Policing Indigenous Students: The School/Prison Nexus in the Canadian Prairies" by Amanda Gebhard), and police officers ("The Stories We Tell: Indigenous Women and Girls' Narratives on Police Violence" by Megan Scribe).

School Leadership for Decolonization and Indigenization

Decolonization and Indigenization of k-12 schooling is pressing and important and must move forward within the significant challenges and unique circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper I share what I learned in partnership with school leaders about leading Indigenization in a global pandemic. Through findings from a design-based study I present the needs and challenges of school leaders and chronicle what school leadership looked like towards decolonization and Indigenization. I conclude with questions intended to inspire critical reflection and open up possibilities for educators, policy makers, and educational researchers leading this work in the ongoing pandemic and beyond.