International education provides an invaluable opportunity to prepare students for international competence in a glocalized future, yet pedagogical frameworks for video-conference education need further conceptualization. This presentation describes educational content and process principles for international video-conference education developed over 16 years of international teaching of global social work with students representing over 30 countries. Based in an international partnership between faculty from universities in the U.S. and Lithuania, the educational content discussed will be interdisciplinary human rights principles and peace-building intervention strategies applied at international, national, community, and family levels.

Learning focuses on developing students’ intellectual knowledge of interventions in diverse cultural and social systems contexts, and increasing students’ capacity for empathic availability to persons with very different values and social contexts. Examples of the content taught include:
• internet-based public health education and advocacy,
• arts-based programming with children from subcultures traumatized by civil strife,
• trauma-focused projects of national reconciliation and community and familial healing, and
• interventions to reduce marginalization and stigma and promote societal participation with persons in poverty, persons currently or formerly incarcerated, and persons with disabilities.

Educational processes stimulate student communication to optimize their learning from each other about diverse societies, cultures, and strategies for peace-building. Specific strategies described include:
• Group presentations and student-authored "ted talks" about global social work practices,
• Sharing specific cultural practices,
• Breakout groups to develop critical thinking skills and empathy,
• Strategies of participation to build ecological validity of knowledge, advance community capacity and intervention effectiveness.

Authors:
Katherine Tyson McCrea, Loyola University Chicago, United States
Jonas Ruskus, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania

About the Presenter(s)
Professor Katherine Tyson McCrea is a University Professor/Principal Lecturer at Loyola University Chicago in United States

See this presentation on the full schedule – Monday Schedule

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