Advocacy Learning by Doing: Human Trafficking Course for Graduate Clinical Psychology Students

ABSTRACT

The scientist-practitioner-advocate model encourages informed engagement with social justice issues. Human trafficking stands out as such an issue, where psychological science and practice make a difference on multiple levels, including prevention and raising awareness. This article discusses a human trafficking graduate course in psychology as an example of learning by doing, featuring an activity with high school students based on interactive rotation. Emphasis on diversity among high school students paves the way for solidarity and appreciation for interdependence, which go hand in hand with multicultural competency also reflected in humility. Psychologists-in-training draw parallels between rapport in clinical practice and advocacy settings, recognizing the importance of allowing sufficient time for preparation and subsequent reflection. This helps students consider personal values and belief systems, and their compatibility with raising human trafficking awareness. As a result of teaching a course on this topic and conducting the learning by doing activity, three action steps are proposed to train scientists-practitioners-advocates: Research, Rotate, and Reflect.

KEYWORDS:

• Advocacy
• human trafficking
• scientist-practitioner-advocate
• social justice
• values

Notes

¹ Youth awareness about human trafficking is crucial toward prevention and in potentially shaping future public knowledge about exploitation. A systematic review of the literature on this topic by Rizo et al. (2019) concluded that high schools constitute one of key venues for raising awareness about commercial sexual exploitation of children and human trafficking. The authors pointed out that youth spend a significant amount of time at schools, which also constitute a place of recruitment by traffickers (Anderson et al., 2014).