Decolonizing and Transforming Curriculum by Centering Families: Their Language, Culture, and Stories

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 1:15 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Transformations Across Curriculum, Language, and Culture (Table 16)

Abstract

This participatory action research analyzed salient components of an inquiry-based, representational, early childhood (Birth-8) curriculum aimed at fostering language and literacy, anti-racism, and critical consciousness, and social-emotional learning. The curriculum was co-created alongside children, families, preservice and inservice teachers, teacher educators, and educational researchers and is being used by 14 local early-care and learning programs/family-home care providers, and integrated across hundreds of programs in the southeast. It is free to anyone through an open-access language and literacy digital platform with over 240,000 members. This inquiry represents a small component of ongoing research and iterative development of these resources as we work to make them more agentive, and democratizing, and to foster critical consciousness through authentic partnerships with families and community.

Authors

• Teresa R. Fisher-Ari, Rollins Center for Language and Literacy

• Douglas Bell, Kennesaw State University

• Maggie Deaton, Atlanta Speech School

• Diana Bacon, Atlanta Speech School

• Andrea Bowers, Atlanta Speech School