Centering a Critical Curriculum of Care During Crises
Maha Bali, PhD @bali_maha
Associate professor of practice, Center for Learning and Teaching,
American University in Cairo
Co-director, Virtually Connecting
Co-facilitator, Equity Unbound
Slides co-designed with my daughter H. Fouad
Link to these slides: https://bit.ly/olcbali
Centering a Critical Curriculum of Care During Crises
Maha Bali, PhD @bali_maha
Associate professor of practice, Center for Learning and Teaching,
American University in Cairo
Co-director, Virtually Connecting
Co-facilitator, Equity Unbound
Slides co-designed with my daughter H. Fouad
Link to these slides: https://bit.ly/olcbali
Beyond
السلام عليكم Salam Alaikum
Photo by me: flame tree visible from my window
I hope you and your loved ones are
safe and well
Image by me: sun, sky, trees
With gratitude to health care workers, for their “critical care” work during crises like these
Pause:
How are you feeling today?
Image by Ingo Jakubke from Pixabay
Poll: who is in the room?
Image by Geralt on Pixabay
Disclaimer: This is a connectivist keynote
Many of the ideas here came directly or indirectly from conversations with others
Image by TanteTati on Pixabay
Disclaimer: Working in the open can be risky
Some of the tweets building up to this keynote upset some “people” who chose to cyberbully me and others in my circles - I am thankful for my supportive network who pushed back publicly and supported me privately 💕
This keynote is not neutral
(Nor is any presentation)
Just like education is never neutral...Educational/faculty development is never neutral
Nor is any educational technology (or its creators) neutral
Quoting Lenandlar Singh (in DM):
"This tweet more than anything else just sums up what many ed tech companies do - tell education how to do education"
Let's reimagine what online (emergency/remote) learning COULD be, how it can be responsive to the needs of the time
Pause: Poll, priorities last semester
Can we center equity & wellbeing in every:
Can we keep these values front and center in every pedagogical and technical decision we make along the way?
39-Storey Treehouse book inspired this question:
Pause:
If you could un-invent ONE technology used in education, what would it be?
Three part keynote
Overview of Twitter responses
(But plz type your responses in chat)
Tweet itself is here:
https://twitter.com/Bali_Maha/status/1269012146211430403?s=19
Pause:
If you could un-invent ONE technology used in education, what would it be?
Disclaimer: trying to avoid naming particular companies, but instead focusing on underlying tech
Back in January….
Note the effects of these technologies not only on “learning” but also what kind of citizenship they are normalizing...
Surveillance and
Proctoring Technologies
Safiya Noble - Algorithms of Oppression - a must-read
Screening Surveillance films by sava saheli singh - must watch
Image by Gerald Altman from Pixabay
Spyware
Surveillance
Disproportionate impact on marginalized groups
Students as adversaries? RACIAL injustice
Ruha Benjamin @ruha9
Guns!
I didn't know about the guns!
“we need to expand what is too often a narrow definition of education technology ... one that lauds “innovation” but refuses to understand systems, structures, histories; one that champions products but overlooks practices; one that embraces “what’s new” and ignores “what’s just”....”
Audrey Watters. Guns and Ed-tech (Again)
Plagiarism Detection Tech
(Check the work of @jessifer @slamteacher @hypervisible)
Automated essay grading
Adaptive/Personalized learning
Grades!!!
Follow work of @onlinecrslady @jessifer @rissachem @mssackstein @asaobinoue & me!
Check out several podcast interviews by Arthur Chiaravalli on grading differently or ungrading here, including one with Asao, Jesse & me
Lecture capture
Interactive WhiteBoards
PowerPoint
Word Processing(!)
LMS
… and one in particular for a recent gaff..
But as Bill Fitzgerald said #allLMSsdontmatter
Proprietary textbook platforms, etc.
Underlying tech that goes against
“open web”
such as filtering (Parisa Mehran), cookies/logins (Frances Bell)
Standardized testing!
Image by Aitoff on Pixabay
So basically, people want to uninvent tools that
Pause:
Poll: During the pandemic, how often were people encouraged to use so many of these technologies so many of us in edtech wish to “uninvent”?
People also talked about our agency in using even non-neutral technologies
Which technologies rob teachers and students of their agency???
What are we looking at?
“...hammering the single company leaves us open to the next savior company that we hope and pray will do it better, respect our data & privacy, etc. without a Silicon Valley culture change” - George Station (Twitter DM, with permission)
We cannot continue to allow tech companies (led mainly by white male techies with no edu experience or knowledge) to dictate for us how/what education should be
(Inspired by Audrey Watters, Kate Bowles, Tannis Morgan and my own work on lack of humanity in comp sci curricula)
“...technological decisions will be shaped in ways that reflect existing differences, alliances, discourses and perspectives in particular institutions.”
“In STEM, we create technologies that affect every part of our society and are routinely weaponized against Black people.
Black academic and Black STEM professionals are hurting because they exist in and are attacked by institutional and systemic racism”
Institutional policies can help or hinder
“How can any institution claim to be a 21st century learning environment without investing in digitally literate leadership?” -
Anne-Marie Scott @ammienoot
(in DM, quoted with permission)
Danger of paying lip service to equity and care but not to the processes and policies that support them:
care and equity are not a fad, but an ongoing commitment
It started with Futurize Your Course.
Two former students working with me to imagine how my course would look in future 2040
(Akram & Ramez)
Key things My students came up with
RENAMED COURSE FROM DIGITAL TO SHIFTING LITERACIES!
Story of Proctoring - Swauger article
Nel Noddings emphasizes: “Caring teachers listen to [learners] and help them to acquire the knowledge and attitudes needed to achieve their goals, not those of a pre-established curriculum.” (emphasis added)
Curriculum Theory Approaches (review)
“ a central purpose of education in this period is to support students to imagine and make liveable futures on their own terms. To do this ...the colonizing, optimizing and catastrophic stories that dominate accounts of the relationship between education and the future should be replaced by a recognition of students and worlds as co-emerging.” - Keri Facer
التربية و التعليم
Beyond cognitive education and into cultivation of the human being (Bildung?)
My 8 yo told me “The coronavirus should go to school and learn its manners, to become a better person and stop harming people!”
Do our schools teach kids to be better people?
Audience choice: The Literacies Needed to Teach Online During COVID-19
Based on this article:
Bali, M. (2020, May 13). Literacies Teachers Need During Covid-19. Al-Fanar Media. Retrieved from: https://www.al-fanarmedia.org/2020/05/literacies-teachers-need-during-covid-19/
Reimagining faculty development as “fostering imagination” around central values, not just offering tools and strategies
See/join Hypothes.is annotations during the AnnotatED workshop June 12
Literacies Teachers Need
Cultural responsiveness
Equity literacy
Workload literacy
Wellbeing/care literacy
Digital literacies
Socioemotional literacy
Humanizing/ authenticity literacy
Openness literacy
Big picture literacy
Digital Skills vs Digital Literacies
Driving analogy
Technical skill of driving
Ethics and rules of driving
Infrastructure of location you're driving in
Unspoken or implicit rules or behaviors
Image from Pixabay
Home
Community of Inquiry v.2: emotional presence
Pause:
How have you been responding to socioemotional needs of your students or colleagues in these times?
For me...
“rather than connectedness, administrators and instructors (and those supporting their work) have focused on connectivity, worrying more about the technology they use than the human being they are trying to reach”
“The name of the game here is empathy….Please stop saying that you expect your students and yourself to "leave your emotions at the door" before entering the classroom. This is not a thing.”
“why is it that we can imagine growing heart cells from scratch in a lab, but not growing empathy for other human beings in our everyday lives, and even more, in our institutions?”
From empathy to agency?
Empathy: imagine how learners might be feeling, what they might be needing
Ask learners, listen to their responses
Involve learners in the design of their own learning experience...recognize power diffentials and strive towards “parity of participation” (Nancy Fraser)
Home
Open Education 1/3
“You might not need to spend hours and hours making your own high-quality instructional video, for example, but rather can amplify the work of a fellow educator and spend your time helping students answer questions/building relationships.” Kat King (annotation)
Open Education 2/3
See Hodgkinson-Williams & Trotter (2018); Bali, Cronin & Jhangiani (2020)
Open Education 3/3
Home
Home
When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, �not the flower.�
-Alexander den Heijer
Slide taken from Michelle Pacansky-Brock slide deck #HumanizeOL @brocansky
“the difference between caring for ALL your students vs caring for EVERY student.”
In his session in OLC Ideate, Carl Moore said that inclusion needs to be built in and not an afterthought… the same with care.
Angela Gunder added in the chat that “empathy is often doled out inequitably” -
this results in inequitable care.
Recognizing the affective labor on faculty & faculty developers
(and often gendered nature of this)
Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration(SAMHSA) definition of trauma: “an event, series of events, or set of circumstances that is experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful or threatening and that has lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being.”
Trauma-informed pedagogy
We are in the same STORM but not the same BOAT + some are facing other storms on top of the pandemic:
Jasmine Roberts reminds us that Black people (faculty & students) “are experiencing collective trauma on top of collective trauma (systemic racism, anti-Black violence paired with the COVID-19 pandemic).” <- and effects of pandemic (economic, health) are unevenly distributed
Principles of Trauma-Informed Approach (CDC/SAMHSA)
What pedagogical & tech decisions support these???
Actions to respond to trauma due to COVID-19
Home
Look out for this collection soon...
"... empowerment cannot happen if we refuse to be vulnerable while encouraging students to take risks… In my classrooms, I do not expect students to take any risks that I would not take, to share in any way that I would not share.”
bell hooks, Teaching to Transgress
“When I taught this term online, I found a way to fall in love with my students without seeing them. Let’s stop relying on our eyes, and start seeing people with our hearts and minds. Let’s listen to their voices and understand how they’re feeling and what they’re trying to say.”
Home
Culturally Responsive/Relevant Pedagogy
E.g. work of Gloria Ladson-Billings
Home
Big Picture Literacy
How to connect our teaching with whatever is happening in the world beyond the classroom
Home
“Equity vs Equality” flickr photo by MN Pollution Control Agency https://flickr.com/photos/mpcaphotos/31655988501 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license
“Equity vs Equality” flickr photo by MN Pollution Control Agency https://flickr.com/photos/mpcaphotos/31655988501 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license
But not everyone wants an apple...
Intentionally Equitable Hospitality: “Juggling all of the hospitality needs of multiple constituents is an ongoing, reflective process that is necessarily social justice focused.”
“This pandemic is also exacerbating long-standing inequities, which will likely compound the trauma and even retrigger past emotions experienced by students who have been and continue to be marginalized in and by society.”
Surface vs Systemic social justice
“Black Power-washing...Companies seem to think that tweeting “BLM” will wash away the fact that they derive massive wealth from the exploitation of Black labor, the promotion of white anxiety about Blackness, and the amplification of extremism and white supremacy. All of these result in direct and very real harms to Black people.”
Home
Universal Design for Learning
Trauma Impairs Our Ability to Make
Decisions, Remember, & Learn
Students may have a hard time:
• Keeping track of changes in your class
• Making decisions about learning
• Prioritizing assignment
• Engaging with classmates or subject
• Managing their time
• Not quitting
Home
Where do we go from here?
Photo by me, Cairo sunset
"Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it's faced."
James Baldwin, I Am Not Your Negro, p. 103.
“Tech companies launch technologies that ignore historians and call it revolutionary when it’s in fact very old. They ignore sociologists and call it disruption when it’s exploitation...They ignore Black scholars and call it optimization when it’s redlining. They ignore indigenous scholars and call it capitalism when it’s colonialism.” Shea Swauger (emphasis added)
For concrete examples of how to analyze edtech from a contextualized equity/social justice lens, and recognize systemic from surface reform, check out:
Beware the exceptions! “...any system of oppression must allow exceptions to validate itself as meritorious. How else will those who are oppressed by the system internalize their own oppression?”
Tressie McMillan Cottom
In the Name of Beauty, Thick & Other Essays
Advocating for systemic change and not just focusing on our own practice and classroom
Natalie Tindall, Lamar university
“Hope can be a passive gesture… But hope can also be active, as a resistive act of defiance, self-empowerment and enduring resilience even in the face of uncertainty. We impart hope -- cultivating our students’ and our ability to continue learning, to connect, to love and to dream -- of a better future for us and our fellow human beings.”
Please tweet out ONE thing you will do in future based on something you learned today.
Tag me @bali_maha #OLCInnovate
I hope you and your loved ones find ways to be hopeful and cultivate hope in these times
Photo by me, Cairo sky
Link to these slides: https://bit.ly/olcbali
Continue the conversation with me & Nate Angell: OLC Live June 17th at 3.15pm ET
https://onlinelearningconsortium.org/attend-2020/innovate/virtual-hub/olc-live/