Creating an Equity and Care Ecosystem in Education
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Maha Bali, PhD @bali_maha
Center for Learning & Teaching, American University in Cairo,
Virtually Connecting & Equity Unbound
Kent State University, October 2021
Background image: Red Sea!
السلام عليكم
How are you feeling?
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Photo by Alireza Zohoor Parvaz on Unsplash
Agenda
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Chatterfall
Please
respond in the chat
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Elijah Hiett on Unsplash
What's an important thing you learned or achieved in the past year?
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Image from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/sunset-rope-swing-girl-silhouette-5737120/
For me - to be useful to others, esp via community-building resources
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Image from Pixabay: https://pixabay.com/photos/people-jumping-happiness-happy-fun-821624/
If you were to create a documentary or book about your biggest challenges in 2020, what would it be called?
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Image from: https://giphy.com/gifs/cat-book-1TgECF0mNVirC
What is something that has helped you survive or brought you joy the past few months?
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Kintsugi (Japanese art)
What was broken or damaged during the pandemic? How can we repair or heal it into something more beautiful?
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Image by @riho_k on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/photos/JuDPjcutors
Equity and Care Need to Flourish within an Ecosystem
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“Teachers who care, who serve their students, are usually at odds with the environments wherein we teach”
bell hooks, 2003,
Teaching in Community, p. 91
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I'll talk about multiple dimensions, layers, levels, intersections and divergence and convergence
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Broad conclusions about
equity and care:
(Bali & Zamora, forthcoming)
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Equity is multidimensional (Fraser, 2005); oppression is multidimensional (Collins, 2002)
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Oppression occurs at multiple levels (4 I’s of oppression), therefore action on equity needs to occur on multiple levels (Gorski)
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Care is not monolithic; care can be harmful
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Caines, A., & Richard, S. (2020). ‘DigCiz Weaponization of Care’ OER20 Blog. https://oer20.oerconf.org/news/2020/02/digciz-weaponization-of-care-by-autumm-caines-and-sundi-richard/#gref
David, E. J. R., & Derthick, A. O. (2018). The Psychology of Oppression. Springer. New York: NY.
Dowie-Chin, T. & Schroeder, S. (2020). Critical, calculated, neoliberal: differing conceptions of care in higher education, Teaching in Higher Education, DOI: 10.1080/13562517.2020.1749588
Eales L, & Peers D. (2020). Care haunts, hurts, heals: The promiscuous poetics of queer crip Mad care. Journal of Lesbian Studies. Jul 1:1-19. doi: 10.1080/10894160.2020.1778849. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 32609080.
Carers can be exploited and require care themselves
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There is power in relationships involving care
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Equity and care work are incomplete if the recipients of the effort are not themselves empowered to participate fully
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Roumy cheese analogy
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Original by Ian McKay is about how no “one” mode of preventing spread of infection can protect you against the COVID-19 virus, but multiple together can help “fill the holes” more effectively
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Original by Ian McKay from Wikimedia Commons CC-BY 4.0 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Swiss_cheese_ver3.0.svg#/media/File:Swiss_cheese_ver3.0.svg
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Diverse Causes of Inequity, Need for Care:
E.g. Racism, xenophobia, coloniality, epistemic injustice
Black peppercorn represent how some actions meant to promote justice for one group can be harmful for another group
Roumy Cheese Analogy for Caring, Equitable Education
Maha Bali & Leigh-AnnecPerryman CC-BY-SA
Adapted from
Supporting identity & handling bias
Adopting transformative/liberatory pedagogies
decolonising curricula
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
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Diverse Causes of Inequity, Need for Care:
E.g. Racism, classism, heteropatriarchy, ableism, neuronormativity, xenophobia, etc. Can be large (systemic) or small (individual) & intersectional
Black peppercorn represent how some actions meant to promote justice for one group can be harmful for another group
Roumy Cheese Analogy for Caring, Equitable Education
Maha Bali CC-BY-SA
Adapted from
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy
Universal Design for Learning
Self-mapped Learning Pathways
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality
Learner Agency
Trauma-informed Pedagogy
Institutional Policies (P/F, proctoring)
Building community in class
Other practices?
How Do We Center/Embody Care?
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Levels of Care & Intentional Equity: in class
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Course philosophy, design, planning
Habitual practices in class
Respond in Situations
Personal/Private
How do you show it at each level?
Care with Parity of Participation (Fraser)
"In the caring approach, we would prefer to advise: do unto others as they would have done unto them." (Noddings)
I say: “Do unto students as THEY would have done unto THEM)
Noddings, N. (2012). The language of care ethics. Knowledge Quest, 40(5), 52.
Bali, M. (2020). https://www.timeshighereducation.com/campus/do-unto-students-they-would-have-done-them
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Levels of Care & Intentional Equity: systemic
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Advocate for caring, equitable policies institutionally
Support others, form allyships
Speak up in situations
Personal/Private
How do you embody it at each level?
Equity/Care matrix: Bali & Zamora (2020)Bali & Zamora (forthcoming)
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What is EQUITY without CARE and what is CARE without EQUITY?
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No Care
Care
Equity
Inequity
JUSTICE?
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality?
PARITY OF PARTICIPATION (Nancy Fraser)
Democratic care (Tronto)
TOKENISM?
DIVERSITY THEATER?
SYSTEMIC?
LIP SERVICE?
Performative? (Sara Ahmed)
SYSTEMIC INJUSTICE
SELECTIVE & AFFECTIVE LABOR?
AMELIORATIVE?
PARTIAL?
Care without Equity:
Caring for others and burning oneself out
(Faculty developers, moms, medical professionals,....)
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Care without Equity...
“To do my job well, I invest fully in people. Because I invest fully in people, the university doesn’t—it doesn’t have to. Because the university doesn’t, I invest fully in people. And on and on and on.” - Brenna Clarke Gray, p. 52
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Care without Equity:
An institution offers “wellbeing” workshops for employees but does nothing to modify work schedules and practices that are creating the stress in the first place
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Care for teachers
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Equity without Care
“Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
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Equity without Care: Can you think of examples of equitable policies that can only be utilized by a few?
Care is not an unqualified “good”
When can care be harmful?
(share in chat)
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Care with Parity of Participation
Parity of Participation
Fraser, N. 2005. Reframing justice in a globalizing world. New Left Review, 36, Nov/Dec. Available from: https://newleftreview-org
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Democratic Care (Tronto, 2015 Who Cares?)
“democratic care requires switching perspectives and not just thinking about what we want. We need also to look at care from the standpoint of care-receivers, who will have different ideas about what kind of care they want or need to receive… In a “caring-with” democracy, we can set a goal of structuring institutions and practices so that each person’s individual preferences can be honored.” (Tronto, 2015, p. 34, emphasis in bold added)
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How could an institution support or hinder equitable care/compassion by design?
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Institutions can hinder care/equity
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TRIZ: If your goal was to promote an inequitable, uncaring environment, what might you do?
(Share in chat)
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Teachers who care about equity and want to avoid online exam proctoring, but accreditation requires students to take invigilated exams to qualify for something.
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Community building activities that would center care going forward
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Dimensions of Community-
building centered on care and equity
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“the notion that one model of care will work for everyone is absurd...humans vary in their abilities to give and receive care”
(White & Tronto, 2004, p. 450).
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Teachers and students vary in their abilities to give and receive care ONLINE! They vary in how they experienced the pandemic and their ability to handle trauma of the pandemic. Context matters!
Values Underpinning the Design
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Building community going forward...
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Regularly use warm-up activities https://onehe.org/equity-unbound/warm-up-activities/
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After a year and a half of uncertainty and lack of control over our lives… How much learner agency can we nurture in our classes?
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Take Stock Using Ecocycle planning
A Liberating Structure www.liberatingstructures.com
Influenced by complexity science and agriculture
Work of Hurst, D. K., & Zimmerman, B. J. (1994). From life cycle to ecocycle: a new perspective on the growth, maturity, destruction, and renewal of complex systems. Journal of Management Inquiry, 3(4), 339-354.
P.S. to watch a video of us Ecocycling one element of Community Building Resources with Nancy White, see:
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Template adapted from: https://app.mural.co/t/seattleliberatingstructuresi4601/m/seattleliberatingstructuresi4601/1601578665506/ad4b2f41bed07cdf2537654b6221077bde20cf4f
Ecocycle Planning
GESTATION
SOWING
BIRTH
TENDING
MATURITY
HARVESTING
CREATIVE DESTRUCTION
PLOWING
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Ingredients for Sustainable Change from: http://www.teaglefoundation.org/Teagle/media/GlobalMediaLibrary/documents/resources/IngredientsForSustainableChange.pdf?ext=.pdf
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Cont’d
Ingredients for Sustainable Change from: http://www.teaglefoundation.org/Teagle/media/GlobalMediaLibrary/documents/resources/IngredientsForSustainableChange.pdf?ext=.pdf
Consider replacing
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“We need to change the norms of our profession, to centre each other, to celebrate health, to eschew overwork and grind, because if we don’t learn grace, if we don’t reverse course now,nothing will save the academy. If we can’t find a way now to build space for each other, for different kinds of scholars, for different kinds of conversations, we never will” - Brenna Clarke Gray, p. 54
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Thank You!
Slides: https://bit.ly/KentBali
Email: bali@aucegypt.edu
Twitter: @bali_maha
Feedback: http://bit.ly/balikeynotes
(Some graphics by my daughter, H. Fouad)
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