“What to do when you’re raped”: Indigenous women critiquing and coping through a rhetoric of survivance

ABSTRACT

Native women and girls suffer sexual violence at the highest rate of any demographic in the United States—primarily perpetrated by non-Native assailants. In this essay, we explore how dominant Euro-American discourses regarding trauma, sexual violence, and indigenous peoples complicate this epidemic. These discourses individualize trauma, assign it an unrealistic linear timeline that presupposes a stable subject position, and ignore the experiences of women of color. Such rhetoric renders Native bodies as disposable and disguises structural oppression by blaming women for the sexual violence committed against them. Ultimately, we argue that rhetoric of survivance, which combines survival, endurance, and resistance to assert Native presence over historical absence and perceived oblivion, creates a space in which communities disproportionately affected by violence can simultaneously practice collective coping methods while also challenging dominant discourses. To advance this argument we conduct a rhetorical analysis of the illustrated handbook, What to Do When You’re Raped: An ABC Handbook for Native Girls, which was produced by a Native American women’s organization to address sexual violence. We explore how four central characteristics of survivance—infinitive temporality, storytelling, collective agency, and structural critique—assert Native presence and make visible the problem of sexual violence against Native women.     

Ting,tang, tong: Emergent bilingual students investigating and constructing evidence-based explanations about sound production

There is a significant amount of research literature on the importance of identifying and building on students' experiences and ideas for making sense of the natural world, especially when engaging in science practices. Simultaneously, approaches to creating justice-oriented science education promote the need to focus on the diverse sense-making repertoires that students, especially those from historically marginalized communities, bring to science classrooms. However, when it comes to emergent bi/multilingual students, science education has favored narrow definitions of what ways of communicating are seen as productive for figuring out natural phenomena, privileging English-based academic vocabulary. In this article, we investigate the myriad conceptual and semiotic resources that third-grade emergent bilingual students developed and used when explaining sound production. Additionally, we explore how students investigated the sounds produced by a string instrument and unpacked the how and whys that give rise to the pitch of the sounds they heard. Our analyses indicate that: (1) students created mechanistic explanations that identified how changes to the salient physical features of strings affected the pitch of the sounds; (2) students created and laminated multiple semiotic resources when sharing their observations and explanations, particularly sound symbolisms; and (3) students navigated both semiotic convergence and divergence as they worked toward conceptual convergence. Based on our findings, we argue that justice-oriented science learning environments must become spaces where emergent bilingual students can build on all their conceptual, semiotic, and cultural resources, without being policed, as they engage science practices.     

Clinical effectiveness and allied health professionals: an information needs assessment

OBJECTIVE: To determine the information needs and support required by AHPs whilst building services based on clinical effectiveness. METHODS: A qualitative approach using action research in co-operation with a Rehabilitation Department Clinical Effectiveness group, leading to interviews with eight therapists. The sampling strategy was purposive. RESULTS: Therapists have well-developed professional networks, but are unsure how to access traditional library areas. Library training can stop AHPs in asking for help or services, whilst the library is thought to be very different to their everyday work, but confidence in using the library service can be acquired by getting to know a librarian. A departmental-based service was thought to provide better access to, and understanding of, information through mentorship, whilst also providing up-to-date evidence so that clinicians can concentrate on their clinical work whilst being more clinically effective. CONCLUSIONS: When seeking information, AHPs are more likely to use professional networks than libraries. However, when working alongside an AHP, a librarian can upgrade information-seeking skills through mentorship, whilst named library contacts can make it easier to access the library for help.     

Edito: Same journal,new collaborations: looking towards the future

European Journal of Psychology of Education -