Vol. 2 No. 1 (2024)

Open Access

Article

Article ID: 1534

Swings and slippery slopes: Reflecting on processes of higher education curriculum in the space of globalization and a pandemic

by Rob Townsend, Gerald Doyle, Sharon Sperling

Environment and Public Health Research, Vol.2, No.1, 2024; 46 Views, 15 PDF Downloads

The Asia-Pacific is the most expansive region for social services and health care, ranging from New Zealand in the south to the border of the Russian Federation in the north. Professional education in human services, social work, and allied health is rapidly expanding in this region and globally as the power and influence around these professions ‘swings’ between different countries in the region. The globalization of social and health care issues is challenging professional higher education and accreditation processes to adjust to producing education graduates who are global professionals, multi-lingual, culturally responsive, and able to work in diverse community contexts and within the ‘slippery slopes’ of social and economic change. This article explores the development of a new social work curriculum and course for an international higher education provider that was implemented in 2022 and aims to meet the challenges of intercultural learning and skills development in the new plural-lingual and fragmented global contexts. The ethnographic study reveals that education organizations and educators can advocate for and develop globalized, internationalized social work and social care curricula in this unsteady context when supported to do so by regulatory authorities.

Open Access

Article

Article ID: 1525

Joking relationships and humor among the Yorùbá of southwestern Nigeria in the twenty-first century

by Enoch Olujide Gbadegesin

Environment and Public Health Research, Vol.2, No.1, 2024; 0 Views, 0 PDF Downloads

I argue that compromises are reached, and interpersonal relationships are negotiated and maintained among the Yorùbá people through joking relationships. I raise questions on how and when joking relationships can lead to interpersonal, interethnic or intra-ethnic conflict, inclusion or exclusion and the socio-cultural and legal consequences that these could generate. I use the hermeneutic and phenomenological methods to determine the impact of joking relationships on the violent crises that have characterized the twenty-first century Nigerian society. I conclude that whereas joking relationships are still socially acceptable Yoruba patterns of behaviour which have served the people well, the freedom that this practice enjoyed in the ancient times may now be coming under social and legal pressure in the socially and religiously sensitive modern Yorùbá and pan-Nigerian societies. However, the vacuum that may be created if joking relationship were to disappear may be filled by socially dysfunctional outcomes including depression and suicide.