many others I cannot begin to list. I thank my significant other, my ISU family, and my biological family for their unending love and support. Most importantly, I thank the scholars and activists who have come before me, who continue to model the physical, emotional, and intellectual labor necessary to redress inequities and further the social justice turn. A. J. H. 1 CHAPTER I ENGAGING IN CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE, DISABILITY, AND GENDER: AN INTRODUCTION Ensuring that our research practices and pedagogies are inclusive has become an important and necessary task for technical and professional communication (TPC) teacher-scholars. As the TPC field is grappling with issues of systemic racism and the structural opportunities of Whiteness 1 , we are also trying to examine the ways that cultural-rhetorical research practices and pedagogies might encourage inclusivity in our research, in our classrooms, in the discipline, and in our institutions as a whole. We have reached a point where we can no longer ignore the overwhelming Whiteness of our field and institutions, and we must address the ways that institutionalized racism has silenced BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) teacher-scholars and students. The question we must ask, then, is: How can we, as TPC teacher-scholars, actively promote inclusive practices in a field and in institutions that continually (re)produce and normalize racist ideas and policies? With these specific issues in mind, this thesis examines how instructors might take up a cultural-rhetorical approach to teaching TPC and how we might negotiate team contracts 2 in a predominantly White institution (PWI). I would like to acknowledge upfront that as a graduate student, I have only taught first-year composition courses here at Illinois State University (ISU), and I have not had the 1 Throughout this thesis, I have intentionally made the decision to capitalize "White" when referring to the racial category. In my mind, to not capitalize "White" is to not recognize White as racialized, which risks reproducing Whiteness as the default. 2 Here, I am referring to team contracts in the pedagogical sense. The "team" constitutes a group of students who are about to engage in a collaborative endeavor/project, and the "contract" is a means through which the group of students may negotiate individual goals, differences in literacies and access, individual responsibilities, leadership roles, etc. I address team contracts more explicitly in chapter three.
To improve the dissemination and actionability of mental health research, many mental health professionals have developed online informational resources to increase the general public’s awareness of mental health difficulties and available treatments. Yet, limited information exists on the quality and scope of these resources. This study aimed to explore the scope and quantity of online, free, evidence-based mental health resources. Fifty-two mental health professionals nominated 105 resources, which predominantly consisted of homepages and links to more information. When reviewing the original nominations, our team identified an additional 290 resources (e.g., fact sheets linked from a nominated homepage). Of the 475 total nominated resources, 72 were screened out due to not meeting the inclusion criteria of being free (inter-screener reliability = 94%), evidence-based (inter-screener reliability = 92%), and online (inter-screener reliability = 95%). Nominated resources most commonly covered anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (n = 69) and suicide (n = 60). Resources providing information about the mental health problem were most common (n = 215) and resources providing information about immediate help (e.g., hotline) were least common (n = 58). Our findings indicate many free, online, evidence-based resources are available and raise questions of whether efforts to disseminate mental health research are recreating the issue of information overload. Other considerations and future directions for improving the utilization and synthesizing of available resources are discussed.
The COVID-19 pandemic created compounding stressors for school-aged children, parents, and teachers and underscored the urgent need to widely implement evidence-based programs for promoting youth mental and behavioral health. In two community-engaged studies, we piloted psychoeducational workshops that taught behavior management and stress management strategies to parents and teachers. The research team partnered with a northern California school district to develop and implement these psychoeducational workshops. In study 1, parents (N = 165) participated in a series of workshops on behavior management. Parents perceived the strategies covered in each workshop to be acceptable, appropriate, and feasible and were able to accurately describe behavior management strategies following each workshop. In study 2, teachers (N = 113) participated in workshops on behavior management and stress management. Teachers perceived the strategies covered in each workshop to be acceptable, appropriate, and feasible and were able to accurately describe the strategies following each workshop. Findings suggest that psychoeducational workshops may be a promising avenue for promoting youth mental and behavioral health. Lessons learned from conducting this community-engaged research are discussed, as well as future directions for widely implementing psychoeducational workshops for parents and teachers.
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