Module 1: Equity Disparities in Higher Education
Deeper Dive
Optional Texts: aligned content
Hammond, Culturally Responsive Teaching & the Brain: Introduction
As you read about the motivation for Hammond to write this book, for whom she wrote it, and how she intends for it to be used, begin considering how you can use this community to get the most out of the text. This would be a good time to explore the structure of the Action Plan and how the text and plan may work together to inform your teaching.
Hogan and Sathy, Inclusive Teaching Strategies: Preface and Chapter 1
Hogan and Sathy tell the story of what brought them to delve into inclusive teaching in their own classrooms and what motivated them to share their stories. Chapter 1 explains how their overwhelm at the immensity of the inequitable outcomes they saw for students became a pivotal moment when their mindset shifted from deficit to asset thinking. By employing data, evidence-based practices, and inclusive design principles, they began to see significant improvements in equity in their own learning environments, in ways that were consistent with the work of many other educators dedicated to equity in education.
Readings
Marlon James, To survive in America as a Black man, make yourself small
Marlon James is an internationally renowned author and a faculty member at Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. When police officers shot and killed Philando Castile in the Twin Cities area, less than four years prior to George Floyd‘s murder, James published this op ed in response. It eloquently speaks to the cumulative stress inextricably tied to being Black in America—a reality that BIPOC students carry with them into the classroom.
Emily Style, Curriculum_As_Window_and_Mirror
Considered a germinal text in culturally responsive teaching literature, Style’s essay articulates the importance of curriculum offering relevance to students’ cultures and identities in order for them to learn effectively. You can read more about the history of this essay in the Women Change Worlds blog from the Wellesley Centers for Women: On the 30th Anniversary of Emily Style’s “Curriculum as Window and Mirror”
Jay Williams and Alison Bergblom Johnson, Out from the Shadows of Minneapolis: Power, Pride, and Perseverance at a Northern Community College
Minneapolis College, the most selected higher education destination of students from all Minneapolis Public High Schools, is located downtown, nestled between the hustle of Hennepin Avenue and the green spaces of Loring Park. As a part of the Minnesota State system of colleges and universities, Minneapolis College most serves those students who are least likely to go to college. With three-quarters of the student body composed of those underrepresented in higher education, the hallways are filled with recent immigrants, those seeking to learn English, members of communities with the highest unemployment and incarceration rates in the state, veterans, those of low socioeconomic status, seekers of diversity, and those who wish to serve them. Collected here are their stories, stories of overcoming, coming up, perseverance, pride, and power in the face of depressed opportunity and systemic oppression.
Iris Marion Young, Equality of Whom? Social Groups and Judgments of Injustices
Studies both political and philosophical challenges to theories and practices which assess inequality in terms of social groups. Identification of structural inequalities; Challenges to group-conscious measures of equality; Discussion of inequality and moral judgment; Influence of groups and judgments of injustice; Implications for social policy.
Media and Other Resources
Stereotype Threat: A Conversation with Claude Steele (8 minutes)