Effectively Teaching African American Social Welfare Historical Developments

Authors

Wilma Peebles-Wilkins, Boston University

Abstract

A select group of African American and other educators continue to develop literature on African American social welfare. As this literature increases and is subjected to scholarly exchange and debate, educators are beginning to raise questions about effective teaching strategies for integrating the content into the curriculum and effectively delivering the content through classroom lectures and discussions. In addition to concerns about the content being "heard", black educators are concerned that African Americans not always be depicted historically as helpless individuals who were the "white man's burden" and are also concerned about the broad characterization of African American Social Welfare as mutual aid. This article attempts to address some of these issues and recognizes that the African American integration issue is part of a broader educational concern about diversity. Teaching about diversity is both a content and process concern. However, the emphasis here is on process as related to an academic mechanism for acknowledging diversity through curriculum choices as opposed to other classroom related process concerns such as managing tensions and disagreements among students over issues of diversity. While this content integration focus addresses the African American population, the framework can be adapted as appropriate to other racial and ethnic groups and the integrating concepts and principles should be viewed as transferable knowledge.

Recommended Citation

Peebles-Wilkins, Wilma (1994) "Effectively Teaching African American Social Welfare Historical Developments," The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare: Vol. 21: Iss. 1, Article 12.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15453/0191-5096.2114
Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/jssw/vol21/iss1/12