More than accessibility, more than Universal Design for Learning, how do you integrate social justice into your approach as an instructional designer or curriculum developer?
I'm thinking about integration into your approach to all content design, not just content related social justice.
For example, do you provoke your content experts ("SMEs") or wait for them to bring up social justice ideas? Do you even think about the relationship of social justice to your role as an instructional designer or curriculum developer?
Thank you for your thoughts!
It's a good point to consider during the curriculum design. Starting from the larger perspective, inclusion of subjects such as history, philosophy and cultural electives make a good ground for the social justice topics even in computer science curriculum. On the other gand even within the CS classes one can touch the subject in the context of projects and problem-based learning. You can propose valuable problems to the students based on the issues of the socium-individual relationships. Additionaly some of the credits within the projects students can assign themselves, based on the contribution each of the students did for the whole project of the team, thus forming concept of the social feedback for the contribution of the individual to his local group. I hope that was helpful. You are welcome to join our experiments with CS students, just send me a message should you find it interesting.
I think that's where the third UDL principle comes in. Multiple means of engagement is too often interpreted very dryly as just differentiating instruction (and too often neuro-cognitive diversity is the only angle targeted). As one reflect on access as a classroom practitioner, I think the 'multiple means of engagement' can increasingly offer overlap with Critical Theory and Critical Pedagogy. I normally have my MEd class use the principle of UDL on 'engagement' to redesign their delivery content and format - with strictly and solely students are diverse but not in terms of neuro functioning in mind: students who feel racialized, students who identify as LGBTQ, Indigenous students, linguistic minorities, immigrant students. Just to get them out of this narrow view. It's usually painful to start with but by the end of a three hour sessions these teachers are comfortable using that UDL principle to integrate Critical Pedagogy. I think UDL does work well to rethink accessibility in terms of social justice, but what we need is more practitioners out there interpreting this widely rather than narrowly, and more UDL advocates integrating Critical Pedagogy and using its abundant literature for UDL purposes. In practice, I am a strong believer that design thinking concretely helps in this dimension: as per your question, even the way you integrate social justice themes must be designed with UX in mind or else the students will feel it is 'dropped on them' rather than originate from their own concerns and identities. There was an interesting CAST conference this summer on UDL and social justice which unfortunately I was not able to attend , but this must have been discussed. We had a Canadian conference on UDL here at UPEI this spring and the links and overlaps between Critical Pedagogy and UDL were discussed abundantly, with many participants expressing concerns over the sad trend of UDL principles being seen as checklists rather than genuine tools for social justice. Many feel design thinking can and must open wider questions on social justice and genuine wide scope inclusion. So I think there is hope here and a generation of UDL advocates emerging that is increasingly interested and focused on this.
I believe that social justice is inherently included in well thought out instructional design. The ultimate goal of instructional design, regardless of topic, is to invoke an emotional response which results in some sort of a call to action.
Most of the time, in workplaces undergoing transformational change, instructional design is about drawing out authenticity. In other words, we need all of you to show up at work, not just your 'work' face. This encourages learners to evaluate content, new technologies, and new processes in order to apply them in novel ways. Ultimately the instructional design is not about the content, but it's about how learners interact with the content, which then evolves, and becomes so much more relevant to so many more people.
In the college setting, teaching a course on research strategies, ultimately, it's not as much about understanding plagiarism, citing sources, and applying MLA standards, it's about recognizing that you have a unique voice to contribute to an ongoing academic discussion, regardless of what level you are currently at in your education. People tend to be most passionate about social justice issues, so when encouraged to tap into topics they are most passionate about, they naturally gravitate toward social issues.
A simple direction you could take is adding critical thinking objectives in to your courses. I would also strive to have cues that push the boundaries of acceptable thought and challenge the norms in terms of how we think about social justices issues in regard to the subject matter that is at hand in the course. For instance, instead of focusing on what a technology does focus (or sub focus) on how the technology affects the users and is there a difference in how the learners will interpret, access or utilize that technology. This creates more discussion and should ultimately bring about more awareness for both learning objectives.
In building on Kareem's suggestion, one learning activity that works really well that can be included in the instructional design for developing critical thinking skills is the asynchronous debate. I have used it successfully in my teaching and my work was chosen from among hundreds of submissions worldwide to be included in award winning author's current text - Teaching Naked Techniques. I have included links to resources that elaborate more on these debates that I hope will be helpful for you.
Conference Paper Debating: A Dynamic Teaching Strategy for Motivating Student...
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-1119136113.html#
Best regards,
Debra
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Psychology
- Mental Processes
- Learning