Module 5, Activity #2: Centering Student Experiences and Diverse Perspectives Discussion

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Learning Objectives

Contemplate intellectual humility in your own practice. (i.e., recognize your own intellectual or experiential limitations).
Identify instructional approaches that are inclusive, culturally relevant, and develop student agency.
Develop introductory and framing learning experiences that link academic content to students' lived experience and openly share learning behaviors.
Modify existing assessments to explore opportunities to co-create or student source academic content with respect for intellectual property, include roadmaps for conceptual and academic language, authentic connections to students background, student choice, and/or multiple means of representation.

Assignment Overview

“Conditional hospitality dictates that it is the oppressed who must risk their position in advocating for change and that the burden of extra work falls to those whose professional identities do not conform to the majority” (Andrews, 2008, 186). “Those who have experienced oppression are not fatalistic victims, but nor should they solely bear that burden of creating space for themselves within the dominant culture” (Andrews, 2008, 191).

As educators, we have a responsibility to use our positions of power to actively provide opportunities for our students to contribute their own knowledge, skills, and experiences to the curriculum to strive toward Lambert’s notion of Representational Justice. That being said, we should never put students in a position where they feel obligated – that the only way they can contribute their knowledge/voice is on the condition that they participate in OEP. We know how important student agency is! We also know that even if we “mean well,” we can’t expect that all students will want to publicly contribute their own voices or participate in public-facing dialogue. There are many, many reasons students will not feel comfortable, particularly among our more frequently marginalized students. Creating the pathways in a collaborative and respectful manner means baking in student agency.

The faculty readings and associated activity will provide an opportunity to infuse Lambert’s Framework for Social Justice in Open Education into a renewable assessment.

The librarians’ readings and associated activity will provide an opportunity to develop some bite-sized prompts intended to challenge students to critically evaluate the kinds of information they’re consuming and using with respect to diverse citations.

Guidelines

For Instructors

In his 1991 essay “I Won’t Learn From YouLinks to an external site.,” author Herbert Kohl shares that “To agree to learn from a stranger who does not respect your integrity causes a major loss of self. The only alternative is to not-learn and reject the stranger’s world.” As educators, we should be mindful that in the case of OER, the stranger’s world could be the eurocentric textbooks we assign that rarely encapsulate or reflect the lived experiences of Black and Brown students and other historically underserved and marginalized populations in the United States (Gumb, 2020). If our students don’t see themselves reflected in the materials we’re using (even if they’re OER!), Kohl is arguing that we risk them disengaging. An OEP such as crafting renewable assessments can create new opportunities that actively invite our students into the scholarly conversation, allowing them to help rectify the inequities historically woven into the fabric of postsecondary learning materials by contributing their own voices and experiences.

Read “I Won’t Learn From YouLinks to an external site.” by Herbert Kohl (1991). With Kohl’s essay in mind, consider the following sample formative assessment question pulled from OpenStax’s Introduction to Sociology 2e:

Rodney and Elise are U.S. students studying abroad in Italy. When they are introduced to their host families, the families kiss them on both cheeks. When Rodney’s host brother introduces himself and kisses Rodney on both cheeks, Rodney pulls back in surprise. Where he is from, unless they are romantically involved, men do not kiss one another. This is an example of:
- culture shock (correct)
- imperialism
- ethnocentrism
- xenocentrism
Read (or review) Lambert’s FrameworkLinks to an external site., and pay specific attention to her proposed revised definition of Open Education on page 239 as well as the definitions in Table 1: Three Principles of Social Justice Applied to Open Education on page 228.
If you were to adopt this open educational practice into your own class, which of Lambert’s 3 R’s would you be using if you revised the questions on their behalf? If you invited your students to do so on their own behalf? What are the implications for each? How would you address licensing these questions so that they could be used in subsequent semesters and even beyond the confines of your own classroom?
Post your contribution to this week's discussion forum by selecting Reply below. Please feel free to make a video or provide a reflection other than in text if you would prefer to do so.

For Librarians

Read “White Academia: Do BetterLinks to an external site.” by Jasmine Roberts-Crews. In this article, Roberts-Crews challenges us to consider the voices we’re centering in our classrooms and the overrepresentation and saturation of white western examples. As information professionals, it’s important that we not only “[encourage] students to be cognizant of the voices that are privileged and not privileged in both academic research and in other types of information and media…” (Downey, 2016, 114), but that we also empower them to explore their agency in contributing their own voices and experiences (Representational Justice). As Roberts-Crews powerfully puts it: “Your Black students and other students of color need to actually see themselves reflected in class content. This leads to more engaging learning. It also helps broaden the education of your White students.” As librarians, we rarely have control over the content of a faculty member’s class, but we do have the power to challenge and assist our students in intentionally seeking credible sources and perspectives from the margins.
Read “Inclusive Citation: How Diverse Are Your References?Links to an external site.” by Maha Bali. Bali's piece on inclusive citation also challenges us to examine our references for diversity – do we have any? Are we actively seeking out diverse perspectives and scholarship? Because academic librarians will typically only have a “one-shot” (50-80 minute) session with our students, “...the most we can hope is to plant seeds so that students will begin to think about the ideas [we present to them]. We will likely not be there when something we’ve presented or talked about in a library session comes alive for them” (Downey, 2016, 115).
Read “The Racial Politics of CitationLinks to an external site.” by Victor Ray.
Think about what kinds of “seeds” you will “plant” to help your students see the value in sharing their own intellectual contributions to break down barriers of information privilege and increase diversity and representation in the literature. Develop 1-2 “seeds” or prompts intended to get students thinking more critically about the information creation and retrieval process through a lens of oppression and inequities in academic scholarship.
Post your contribution in this week's group discussion forum by selecting Reply below. Please feel free to make a video or provide a reflection other than in text if you would prefer to do so.

Materials, Technology, and Technical Support

References:

Bali, M. (2020, May 8). Inclusive Citation: How Diverse Are Your References? Reflecting Allowed.

https://blog.mahabali.me/writing/inclusive-citation-how-diverse-are-your-references/Links to an external site. This blog is licensed under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International LicenseLinks to an external site..

Kohl, H. (1992). Milkweed Editions. I Won't Learn from You! Thoughts on the Role of Assent in Learning. Rethinking Schools.

https://rethinkingschools.org/articles/i-wont-learn-from-you/Links to an external site.Links to an external site.

Lambert, S. Journal of Learning for Development - JL4D, Vol 5. Changing our (Dis)course: A distinctive social justice aligned definition of open education. 225-244. Links to an external site.

https://jl4d.org/index.php/ejl4d/article/view/290/333 Links to an external site.This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 International LicenseLinks to an external site..

Ray, V. (2018, April 27). The Racial Politics of Citation. Inside Higher Ed. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2018/04/27/racial-exclusions-scholarly-Links to an external site.

citations-opinionLinks to an external site.

Roberts-Crews, J. (2020, June 9). White Academia: Do Better. Diversity Conversations - School of Forest, Fisheries, & Geomatics Sciences, University of Florida.

https://ffgs.ifas.ufl.edu/diversity/white-academia-do-better/Links to an external site.

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