Keith J. Watts

The need for high‐quality social connection is central to community well‐being, yet foundational constructs like belongingness may not fully capture the dynamics of empowerment, justice, and social significance. This paper advances a theoretical framework positing that a sense of mattering—the feeling of being valued and capable of adding value—is a critical conceptual tool for community psychology. We argue that mattering evolves from belongingness by incorporating a prosocial agentic dimension (i.e., adding value) that explicitly links social connection to generativity and contributive justice. Adopting an ecological perspective, we reframe the lack of mattering not as an individual deficit but as a failure of settings to provide the opportunity role structures necessary for contribution. This distinction provides a structural basis for designing community‐based interventions that move beyond inclusion to cultivate genuine significance. Ultimately, this framework repositions mattering as a mechanism for systemic change, asserting that the opportunity to contribute is a matter of social justice.

The association between frequent bullying victimization and delinquency during preadolescence, a critical period for future violence prevention, is understudied for children facing cumulative risks. Single-parent household structure and poverty are established contributors to delinquency. Guided by General Strain Theory and using secondary data from the Future of Families and Child Wellbeing Study, this study examined whether child-reported peer bullying victimization (4-item index) was associated with early delinquency, controlling for key covariates, among 1,414 children (age ≈ 9–10) living in disadvantaged, single-mother households. Findings from the path analysis revealed that as bullying victimization intensified, early delinquency increased (β = .291, p < .001). These findings suggest that school-based trauma-informed policies and practices, such as teaching immediate emotional regulation skills for victims in disadvantaged households, are crucial for mitigating the transition from victimization to delinquency, especially during preadolescence.

Immigrant women of African descent (IWAD) navigate oppression rooted in anti-Black racism, sexism, and nativism. While discrimination in health care is documented, the interpersonal barriers IWAD encounter within social and human service agencies remain underexplored. Consequently, this qualitative study aimed to explore these barriers through an intersectional lens, specifically examining how identity-based discrimination impacts interactions with service providers. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 10 first-generation IWAD and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis, findings revealed experiences frequently shaped by compounded prejudice. Key themes included: (a) navigating provider skepticism and disbelief, (b) perceptions of preferential treatment favoring others, (c) confronting compounded stereotypes, and (d) scrutiny tied to immigrant status and race. Participants perceived provider assumptions as deeply rooted in their race, gender, and nativity, highlighting the urgent need for intersectional and anti-racist practices to dismantle barriers and ensure equitable access.

As music educators around the world continue to seek inclusive professional communities that support teacher identity and belonging, understanding how these dynamics unfold within national organizations is critical. As such, the purpose of this mixed-methods study was to explore individuals’ sense of belonging to and identity within the American Orff-Schulwerk Association (AOS Association, n.d.). Ninety-three elementary music teachers completed a questionnaire measuring their strength of Orff Schulwerk teacher identity and sense of belonging to AOS Association, followed by interviews with four purposively selected participants. Quantitative data reflected a positive correlation between participants’ Orff Schulwerk identity and their perceived sense of belonging to AOS Association. However, there were notable differences across gender identities, as transgender and gender-expansive participants reported a lower sense of belonging. In addition, qualitative findings revealed how geographical and political contexts in the United States affected marginalized members’ ability to participate fully in AOS Association activities, particularly regarding conference locations. Results also indicated that AOS Association membership status significantly affected participants’ sense of belonging, with members reporting higher levels of belonging than non-members. Implications for the broader field of music education are discussed.

Social work education, a field historically entangled with assimilation policies, continues to perpetuate colonial logics that devalue and erase Indigenous knowledge systems. While calls for “inclusion” are common, integration often remains tokenistic, failing to challenge the Eurocentric, heteropatriarchal, and capitalist ideologies at the discipline’s core. This essay emerges from our participation in a 2024 Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Annual Program Meeting session focused on integrating Indigenous knowledges into social work curricula. Using a “Reflection as a Method” approach grounded in Indigenous Feminist Thought (BlackDeer, 2023), we analyze the collective praxis of a group of Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators. Our thematic reflections explore key sites of decolonial resistance: (1) shifting pedagogy from symbolic inclusion to sovereignty-affirming practices; (2) centering community-defined, land-based healing practices over institutional “best practices”; and (3) resisting extractive research logics by upholding epistemic sovereignty and relational accountability. We argue that integrating Indigenous knowledge is not only a reframing action, but a transformative, decolonial praxis of resistance and resurgence. We conclude with a call for social work education to move beyond rhetorical commitments and into material and epistemic practices that support Indigenous sovereignty and knowledge justice.

Disentangling the colonial residues that structure contemporary mental health is a central task for community psychology. Beyond postures of critique, the field requires generative, praxis‐based exemplars. This article presents a practice‐based analysis of the Ancestral Institute (AI) as a project of epistemic reconstruction: a community‐led effort to assemble a coherent psychological framework from Indigenous and diasporic foundations. Tracing AI's evolution (2022–2025), we detail a shift from decolonizing the content of mental health discourse to decolonizing the forms of knowledge exchange. This progression is mapped through AI's expansion from the Caribbean (Puerto Rico) into Central America (Belize), where community‐led governance further refined the framework. We propose Ancestral Systems Praxis (ASP) to name AI's synthesis of ritual, storytelling, and embodied practice that is oriented toward survivance, with core commitments in community psychology and psychosocial care. We also analyse the Wateke, arguing its application as participatory action research functions as both inquiry and praxis. Taken together, these features render AI an adaptable, community‐grounded approach for moving from critical diagnosis to constructive design, with implications for the evaluation of traditional healing systems, culturally anchored psychosocial treatments and policy.