Seeing, Supporting, and Doing "It": Educators' Broad Conceptions of "Equity" Today

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 4
  In Roundtable Session: How Do Teacher Approach Equity? Analyzing Educators Understanding of Social Justice

Abstract

This paper reports findings from a professional development series utilizing an “equity” oriented book for race-related educator development, in a suburban-rural Pennsylvania community in the 2018-19 school year. We explore how educators (all of whom were white) described “equity” as “it” -- an umbrella concept that seemed all-encompassing and largely undefined. While the book itself offered an explicit (and broad) definition of equity and focused largely on race, data from professional development sessions, surveys, and focus groups showed educators’ repetition of the term “it” as a placeholder for “equity” work, demonstrating that “equity” meant, to teachers, everything from explicit antiracism work to any work to improve teaching or schooling in any way.

Authors

• Mica Pollock, University of California - San Diego

• Andrew Matschiner, University of California - San Diego