Mission Statement:
Vision
The CCSJ in SACP has come together through shared values that centre on Indigenous and other non-western ways of knowing, the voices and experiences of underrepresented communities, anti-racism, anti-sexism, anti-homophobia, anti-transphobia, anti-ableism, anti-ageism, anti-oppression, diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice, human rights, and intersectionality. Our vision is to see a SACP program that is collectively working towards a more equitable and just climate, which will in turn help inform culturally responsive, socially just, and decolonized school psychology teaching, clinical training, research, service, and community engagement.
Values
The approach of the CCSJ is informed by an inclusive, critical understanding of social justice. To us, focusing on social justice means that we purposefully intend to decolonize various multiple aspects of our profession.
In this way, social justice can be understood as a professional commitment, an action-oriented process, and a desired goal. The process entails investigating, and dismantling inequities related to age, race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual / affectional orientation, language, (dis)ability, religion, spirituality, Indigenous ancestry, nationality, status in country, social class, accessibility, physicality, and their intersections. This action-oriented process requires critical, reflective, ongoing, community-driven multidisciplinary research, which addresses issues of inequity, power, privilege, and oppression, and includes traditional and indigenous ways of knowing, with the aim of challenging unjust policies and systems. We reject the assumption that white, western intellectual traditions are universal or superior, and instead intend to diversify our perspectives on psychology to include multiple ways of knowing. As such, the goal of our social justice efforts is the full and equitable engagement of all groups within society in the ways that they prefer and define for themselves.
We believe social justice efforts can be demonstrated in several ways, including a focus on
(a) specific topics of study that have not traditionally been prioritized in the field of school psychology (e.g., ableism, ageism, heterosexism, racism, sexism, weightism, etc.); (b) research approaches that prioritize the voices and experiences of underrepresented communities (e.g., Indigenous ways of knowing, critical race theory, feminist epistemologies, etc.); (c) work and advocacy with specific groups who typically have reduced access to care and services (e.g., vulnerable youth, newcomers, individuals from social classes that have been marginalized, etc.); (d) scholarly work that contributes to social and systemic change (e.g., discriminatory practices, organizational guidelines, government policies, etc.); to name but a few examples.
* This mission statement was co-created by Kalchos, Nelson, Kassan, Ghani, Wong, and Schanding on April 25th, 2022. It was influenced the following sources: Canadian Psychological Association 2018; Fouad & Prince, García-Vázquez et. al 2020; 2011; Gone, 2008; Kassan, 2016, 2017; Kennedy & Arthur, 2014; Lewis, Ratts, Paladino, & Toporek, 2011; Sinacore & Ginsberg, 2015; Stewart, 2014. It was also influenced by the social justice mission statement developed by the Counselling Psychology program at the University of Calgary in September 2017 and by the decolonization statement developed by the Gender & Women’s Studies program at the University of Portland in 2020.
CCSJ Members
