Guide to equitable education

Enacting Educational Equity
Jeremiah J. Sims, Ph.D.
College of San Mateo
Spring 2017

Introduction
This guide is not intended to be viewed as the how-to manual insofar as realizing educational equity is concerned. That said, it is intended to be used as a loose template for critically-committed educators that are looking for entry points into both the conversations that center educational equity as well as the practices (i.e., the pedagogy) that work towards realizing educational equity. For those of you that are already practicing many or even all of the principles covered in this guide, it may help you better codify the work that you’re doing so that it’s replicable irrespective of who is in your class. For those of you for whom these conversations with the concomitant pedagogical practices are new, then, this guide should function to make you aware of how your thought processes and ideological assumptions inform your pedagogy.
The initial step, by and large, is to realize that teaching and learning, as currently conceived, is working backwards. Students are expected to learn proscribed material irrespective of whether it is of any interest to them and/or in any way connected to their real lives precisely because it is part of the agreed upon breadth requirements for scholastic advancement. However, this top-down, unilateral educational paradigm often lends itself to the problematic and potentially inequitable banking (Freire, 1997) and/or absorption (Lynn & Eylon, 2012) model of education. To combat this, learning—not content—must be the focal point (Schank, 2012). This guide seeks to underscore the importance of developing pedagogy that focuses on learning, and not the obverse. Because, learning should guide teaching—not vice versa (Schank, 2012).

What is educational equity?
Educational equity is predicated on the creation of a positive, nutritive educational space where all students are empowered, encouraged, and equipped to succeed academically precisely because they have been afforded rigorous, contextualized educational opportunities that allow them to work towards the realization of their full academic and human potential (Sims, Forthcoming). Educational equity, to be far-reaching and long-lasting, must be arrived at thoughtfully and systemically. It must be preceded by positive shifts in cultural understanding at the institutional level and by the adoption of equitable pedagogical practices.

Operationalizing Pedagogy
Pedagogy describes pragmatic considerations around teaching and learning and seeks to more accurately define and delineate both by situating them within and without an educators’ socio-political understanding, philosophical bent, and ideological predispositions (Sims, Forthcoming). Pedagogy also helps us understand the needs that our teaching and instruction based practices are responding to. Laurillard’s (2002) definition of teaching is especially helpful here. Laurillard defines teaching thusly:
Teaching is interactive and iterative, and the learning process [is] a dynamic set of relational activities by teachers and learners that cycles between theory and practice. In the complex reality of a learning environment, the practice of teaching and learning occurs between the instructor (which could be a book, a website, or a person) and learner and among the learners themselves, and it embodies the different pedagogical approaches of didactics, social constructivism, constructionism, and collaboration (Mellow, Woolis, & Laurillard, 2011).
So, if Mello et al.'s definition is truly descriptive of what teaching should look like, then, we must pay close attention to the dynamism that she invokes in her definition. There cannot simply be one way to teach every student. Teaching must be dynamic. And, according to Mellow (2013) this is especially true in community college settings where the institutional and student-based challenges are more pronounced than even our much-maligned inner-city K12 schools and in our community colleges were disproportionate placement in Basic Skills non-transfer courses for students of color is near epidemic level (Sims, Hotep & James, Forthcoming).

Freeing students from the pedagogy of the oppressed
According to Freire (1997), the pedagogy of the oppressed disallows intellectual discourse between the student and teacher, teacher and student, in favor of a monologue, or worse, dictation. Furthermore, Freire contends that the pedagogy of the oppressed functions to maintain the hegemony that exists in each oppressive society. He writes: “If people, as historical beings necessarily engaged with other people in a movement of inquiry, did not control that movement, it would be (and is) a violation of their humanity (1997: 66).”; he goes on to say, albeit, in much more pointed words, “Any situation in which some individuals prevent others from engaging in the process of inquiry is one of violence…to alienate human beings from their own decision-making is to change them into objects (Freire 1997: 66).”