Women of Color and Philosophy

Book Review of Naomi Zack's Women of Color and Philosoph

Designing a design thinking approach to HRD

This article considers the value of design thinking as applied to a HRD context, Specifically, it demonstrates how design thinking can be employed through a case study drawn from the GETM3 programme. It reports on the design, development, and delivery of a design thinking workshop which was created to draw out and develop ideas from students and recent graduates about the fundamental training and skills requirements of future employment. While design thinking has been widely deployed in innovation and entrepreneurship, its application to HRD is still very much embryonic. Our overview illustrates how the key characteristics of the design thinking process resonate with those required from HRD (e.g. focus on end user, problem solving, feedback, and innovation). Our contribution stems from illuminating a replicable application of design system thinking including both the process and the outcomes of this application. We conclude that design thinking is likely to serve as a critical mind-set, tool, and strategy to facilitate HRD practitioners and advance HRD practice

Designing a Design Thinking Approach to HRD

This article considers the value of design thinking as applied to a HRD context, Specifically, it demonstrates how design thinking can be employed through a case study drawn from the GETM3 programme. It reports on the design, development, and delivery of a design thinking workshop which was created to draw out and develop ideas from students and recent graduates about the fundamental training and skills requirements of future employment. While design thinking has been widely deployed in innovation and entrepreneurship, its application to HRD is still very much embryonic. Our overview illustrates how the key characteristics of the design thinking process resonate with those required from HRD (e.g. focus on end user, problem solving, feedback, and innovation). Our contribution stems from illuminating a replicable application of design system thinking including both the process and the outcomes of this application. We conclude that design thinking is likely to serve as a critical mind-set, tool, and strategy to facilitate HRD practitioners and advance HRD practice

Sustainable horticultural supply chain: the case of local food networks in the United Kingdom

In the UK there is widespread support from Government, media and consumers for local food networks. These have the potential to provide a more sustainable supply chain and are well suited to the unique production and consumption characteristics of horticultural products. In terms of food marketing, local food is in its relative infancy and is still without any formal definition. This lack of clarity hampers research activities. Although the profile of local food buyers and their expectations has been explored, our knowledge of its social, economic and environmental aspects is minimal. This research contributes by exploring the structure and scope of local food activities in the UK in terms of profiling those specialised retail outlets who provide consumers with the opportunity to purchase locally grown horticultural products

The Unlevel Knowing Field: An Engagement with Dotson’s Third-Order Epistemic Oppression

Social justice demands that we think carefully about the epistemic terrain upon which we stand and the epistemic resources each of relies upon to move across that ground safely. Epistemic cartographies are politically saturated. Broadly speaking these terrains are unlevel playing fields—I think of them as unlevel knowing fields— that offer members of socially dominant groups an epistemic home turf advantage. Members of marginalized groups must learn to navigate this field creatively

Navigating Epistemic Pushback in Feminist and Critical Race Philosophy Classes

My contribution to this conversation sets out to accomplish two things: First, I offer a definition of epistemic pushback. Epistemic pushback is an expression of epistemic resistance that occurs regularly in classroom discussions that touch our core beliefs, sense of self, politics, or worldv iews. Epistemic pushback is structural: It broadly characterizes a family of cognitive, affective, and verbal tactics that are deployed regularly to dodge the challenging and exhausting chore of engaging topics and questions that scare us. It can take such forms as direct deep hostility, knee jerk skepticism, or silence. Good teaching should not only track the production of knowledge, but also the production of ignorance. There are forms of epistemic pushback that are ignorance producing, so I work with students to cultivate a mindfulness around epistemic pushback by treating it as a ‘shadow text.’ The remainder of the paper explains the nature of shadow texts, and offers suggestions for how to navigate them

Improving Access to Antenatal Care in Ngara, Tanzania Through Implementation of the Lady Health Worker Programme

Maternal mortality is one of the greatest health disparities facing the world today. A disproportionate number of women who die from pregnancy-related complications live in developing countries: the average maternal mortality in developed nations is 12/100,000, compared to 239/100,000 in developing nations; this rate is even higher in several sub-Saharan African nations. Reasons for this disparity include a lack of providers, inaccessibility to care, and poor quality of treatment in developing nations. Women living in the sub-Saharan country of Tanzania face many of these barriers, and as a result the country’s maternal mortality rate is 398/100,000. Antenatal care is an important method to improve birth outcomes and decrease maternal mortality. The Lady Health Worker Programme (LHWP) is a community-based intervention aimed at improving access to antenatal care in predominantly rural environments. The program trains local women to be community health care workers who are capable of providing preventative primary care in their communities. These women also help foster communication between the community and healthcare professionals. The LHWP will be implemented in three healthcare facilities in Ngara District, Tanzania. Thirty trained Lady Health Workers (LHWs) will be responsible for providing care to a total of 4500 households with reproductive-age women. Based on current data, the LHWP in Ngara anticipates reaching roughly 450 pregnant women per year. The program targets improved access to and early initiation of antenatal care, as well as recognition and referrals of pregnancy complications associated with maternal morbidity and mortality. LHWs will treat women in the district, recording their interactions in logbooks and submitting the data for analysis every six months to determine trends of the performance measures. These analyses, together with a comparison of outcomes before and after implementation, will determine the effectiveness of the LHWP. If successful, utilization of antenatal will improve in pregnant women of Ngara district, which will eventually decrease maternal mortality in the area