Yesterday Holly McAlister (my PhD student) presented an excellent seminar at the Children's Voices Centre Community Research Presentation. Her presentation was titled:
Weaving together culturally responsive and participatory action frameworks
Abstract: Frameworks developed in a Western context have dominated academic research for decades. However, it is vitally important when conducting research with communities from diverse cultural backgrounds that culturally responsive frameworks and methodologies are applied to support culturally safe and appropriate engagement for these communities. Child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) frameworks, such as the Lundy model (2007), have been developed on the background of the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child (United Nations, 1989). Hopf and colleagues developed the Culturally Responsive Teamwork Framework in 2021, with the aim of supporting culturally responsive practices on intrapersonal, interpersonal, intraprofessional, and interprofessional levels. Research methodologies have been developed by Pasifika scholars to support culturally responsive research engagement for Pacific Islander communities and include but are not limited to the Samoan fa’afaletui (Tamasese et al., 1997) and Tongan kakala (Johansson Fua, 2014; Thaman, 1997) methodologies. This presentation will compare research frameworks and methodologies developed within Western and Pasifika contexts for child-focused participatory action research (C-PAR) and cultural responsiveness. The relationships between Western and non-Western methodologies and the process of decolonisation of academia and scholarship will also be discussed.
Biography: Holly McAlister is a speech-language pathologist living and working on Wiradjuri country in Young, NSW. Holly completed an Honours degree in 2020 which looked at multilingual Fijian children’s speech sound development. Holly’s PhD research project brings together culturally responsive research frameworks and applies these to the question of how we can provide culturally responsive speech-language pathology services to children and families with Pacific Islander heritage, particularly those living in the diaspora in countries such as Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. Holly has presented her research at national and international conferences in the Pacific, Asia and North America. Holly is also passionate about supporting children’s voices in research and advocacy for the regional allied health workforce.
It was very lovely to have her working in The Beehive at The Treehouse. She brought a bee to add to our collection of bees from visiting scholars around the world.
