Teaching compassion for social accountability: A parallaxic investigation

Background: In an arts integrated interdisciplinary study set to investigate ways to improve social accountability (SA) in medical education, our research team has established a renewed understanding of compassion in the current SA movement. Aim: This paper explores the co-evolution of compassion and SA. Methods: The study used an arts integrated approach to investigate people’s perceptions of SA in four medical schools across Australia, Canada, and the USA. Each school engaged approximately 25 participants who partook in workshops and in-depth interviews. Results: We began with a study of SA and the topic of compassion emerged out of our qualitative data and biweekly meetings within the research team. Content analysis of the data and pedagogical discussion brought us to realize the importance of compassion in the practice of SA. Conclusions: The cultivation of compassion needs to play a significant role in a socially accountable medical educational system. Medical schools as educational institutions may operate themselves with compassion as a driving force in engaging partnership with students and communities. Social accountability without compassion is not SA; compassion humanizes institutional policy by engaging sympathy and care

Teaching compassion for social accountability: A parallaxic investigation

Background: In an arts integrated interdisciplinary study set to investigate ways to improve social accountability (SA) in medical education, our research team has established a renewed understanding of compassion in the current SA movement. Aim: This paper explores the co-evolution of compassion and SA. Methods: The study used an arts integrated approach to investigate people’s perceptions of SA in four medical schools across Australia, Canada, and the USA. Each school engaged approximately 25 participants who partook in workshops and in-depth interviews. Results: We began with a study of SA and the topic of compassion emerged out of our qualitative data and biweekly meetings within the research team. Content analysis of the data and pedagogical discussion brought us to realize the importance of compassion in the practice of SA. Conclusions: The cultivation of compassion needs to play a significant role in a socially accountable medical educational system. Medical schools as educational institutions may operate themselves with compassion as a driving force in engaging partnership with students and communities. Social accountability without compassion is not SA; compassion humanizes institutional policy by engaging sympathy and care

‘This would be scary to any other culture … but to us it’s so cute!’ The radicalism of Fourth Cinema from Tangata Whenua to Angry Inuk

Articulating the concept of a Fourth Cinema, Maori filmmaker, Barry Barclay highlighted its intrinsic radical possibilities for Indigenous documentary production. Departing from Solanas and Getino’s Third Cinema theory, Barclay argues ‘that some Indigenous film artists will be interested in shaping films that sit with confidence within the First, Second and Third cinema framework’. To take this view of documentary work by Indigenous filmmakers living in geographic territories where mainstream documentary was most influenced by John Grierson’s interventions and legacy – Canada, New Zealand and Australia – recognises their presence in documentary’s radical tradition. Fourth Cinema documentaries of seemingly unchallenging ‘exteriority’ (i.e. with ‘surface features: rituals, language, posturing, décor, the use of elders, the presence of children, attitudes to land, rituals of a spirit world) are repositioned by the concept. When viewed through the ‘right pair of [Indigenous] spectacles’, their ‘interiority’ (i.e. ‘the ancient core values’ ‘outside the national orthodoxy’) is revealed. Fourth Cinema documentaries are thus not only radical when ‘documenting injustices and claiming reparations’ (Ginsburg). They also sit firmly within documentary’s radical tradition by celebrating the Indigenous – ‘making records of the lives and knowledge of elders’ (Ginsburg) offering valuable knowledge to Indigenous and settler eyes