Designing for Justice: Socially Conscious Instructional Design for Student Success

• In Event: Tales of Two Institutions: Social Justice Teaching Confronts Contradictions of “Student Success” in Higher Education

Abstract

“The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.” --Carter G. Woodson

Overview: The funding model for many public higher education institutions across the country has changed from being enrollment based to performance based. The enrollment model provided incentives for access and but did not support student retention and completion (Performance-based funding for Higher Education, 2015). The performance-based model has had many universities scurrying to develop programs to not only recruit but also to retain students. Universities are now being measured on how many degrees are conferred, student progression and the success of low-income and adult learners (Report to Governor Deal, 2012). One university has garnered profound success retaining and graduating students. Several innovative and effective programs have been launched that have commendably graduated the largest number of minority students in the country and earned the university national notoriety. However, there is a question yet to be answered, as Woodson asked in 1933, what are they learning and is it advantageous to their communities?

Purpose: The presentation will discuss how students investigated and evaluated their own learning and knowledge acquisition at the institution in a course on Social Justice and Student success. It will also discuss course design decisions that facilitated this process.

Perspective, Method and Data Sources: Using Bell’s (Griffin, Bell, & Adams, 2016) social justice education pedagogy as a lens, a content analysis of artifacts in an interdisciplinary course about social justice and student success for undergraduate and graduate students will be presented.

Scientific Significance: The significance of this research lies in its in depth and holistic view of learner needs. The course planning tool developed from this study could benefit course developers and social justice researchers.

Results: The findings of this study indicate that the course design promoted a social justice pedagogy and could be used as a framework for future socially conscious course design.

Author

• Valora M Richardson, Georgia State University