Equitable for whom? Centering the Community in Curriculum Creation
Promoting equity and social justice within a school can be a liberating agenda for all involved. However, it can also be challenging to gain support without the right staff. Several theorists argue that incorporating social justice and equity agendas in schools can be made much easier when school leaders hire educators who understand these issues already. Even with forward-thinking hiring practices, there will undoubtedly still be a need for school leaders to foster spaces that develop awareness of social justice issues. This can be accomplished through teacher, student, or community-led awareness campaigns, or by discussing school data that exposes equity issues. Stakeholders can then democratically establish systems to promote equity and social justice.
Perhaps the most central system to promote equity and social justice in schools is curriculum design. It is not uncommon for schools to use a curriculum that is somewhat detached from the cultural experiences of school communities. Moreover, these types of curricula often favor test-preparation over cultural responsiveness, and have not been created democratically to embody the vision of the school community. School leaders can counter these curricula by empowering their teachers to develop a culturally responsive curriculum with community input and feedback. After critiquing various curricular models, it has become apparent that well-developed curricular frameworks are essential when creating a strong curriculum that reflects the school’s vision. A curricular framework may include various components, but I feel that the necessary components are the following: an essential question, length of study, unit objectives, connections to the common core state standards, community competencies (as defined by school stakeholders), authentic/real-world applications, materials, differentiation (special education, remediation, extensions, etc.), and assessments. While this is not meant to be an exhaustive list, it does highlight a sustainable process that can remind teachers to incorporate the vision of the community into their curriculum.
Of course, no single process is intended to be the magic fix to a school’s issues because communities and cultures are always evolving. Since schools are communities, it is necessary for curriculum and instruction to evolve as well. It is also necessary for educators to evaluate the effectiveness of curricular and instructional practices. There are several methods of evaluation that can be used to reflect on one’s practice. One method is a four-step collaborative inquiry process that includes prediction, data visualization, objective observation, and inferring. Researcher Mike Rother identifies another process from the Japanese word kata which refers to an organizational culture that is in a constant state of measuring and improving practices. Finally, there is a more widely-used four-step cycle of improvement known as plan, do, study, act (PDSA) cycles. Whichever of the specific evaluation methods is used, it is important to remember to democratize the evaluation process by allowing stakeholders to contribute to its formation and by carrying it in ways that value colleague, student, and community feedback.
School leaders have the great responsibility of bringing together diverse viewpoints and facilitating unifying visions of social justice and equity. Within an era of culturally conscious students there is significant pressure to abandon collaborative curriculum and instruction-making processes in favor of curricula that are developed for multiple communities without engaging any one specific community in its creation. However, these practices can de-intellectualize the teaching profession and disrespect the school community. It is therefore the responsibility of the school leader to foster a space in which students’ cultures are valued appropriately against the test-based commoditization of the American education system. By democratizing decision-making processes, a school leader establishes systems of checks and balances that ensure local, state, and federal policies do not overshadow cultural values. When a school leader becomes the servant of their school community, they truly become a leader.
