Social Work Students’ Attitudes Towards Indigenous People: An Empirical Study in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Although social work students in Taiwan generally tend to have positive attitudes towards the Taiwanese Indigenous peoples, a considerable proportion of these students have undecided or unfavourable attitudes. A total of 1,919 first- to fourth-year social work students from 24 social work-related departments across Taiwan completed a purpose-designed questionnaire incorporating Indigenous-related education, contact, consciousness, and demographic items. A regression analysis of the survey results reveals robust evidence that ethnic identity, having Indigenous friends, empathy towards Indigenous people and one’s position on the political spectrum affect attitudes. However, multicultural education, including Indigenous-related courses and ethnicity-related courses in college, and collective guilt are not significant factors influencing the attitudes of social work students in Taiwan. These findings have implications for social work educators in countries that provide social work services to Indigenous people.

IMPLICATIONS

• Teaching activities should be designed to increase social work students’ opportunities to make friends with Indigenous people, emphasise core social work tenets in the classroom and develop students’ empathy towards Indigenous people.

• Conducting future research to investigate the factors that influence social work students’ attitudes towards Indigenous people in other countries may be fruitful given the unique interaction histories between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples.

尽管台湾的社工学生对台湾原住民一般持正面态度，但也有相当一部分态度或游移或负面。台湾24个与社工相关的院系共1919位一年级至四年级社工学生完成了专门设计的问卷，问卷包含了原住民教育、接触、意识、人口方面的内容。对调查结果的回归分析充分证明了，民族认同、有否有少数族裔朋友、对原住民的同情心、个人在政治光谱中的位置等等影响了受访者的态度。不过，多文化教育包括大学中与原住民及族属相关的课程、集体负疚感之类，倒并非是影响台湾社工学生的显著因素。这些发现对于为原住民提供社工服务的国家的社工教育者或有参考价值。

KEYWORDS:

• Indigenous Peoples
• Multicultural Education
• Social Work
• Taiwan
• Contact Theory

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Taiwanese Ministry of Science and Technology: [Grant Number MOST 105-2410-H-320-007-SSS].