The Theory and Practice of Equity-Expansive Technical Assistance: Critical Collaborative Inquiry to Drive Systemic Change

• In Event: Resurgence of Backlash to Redressing Pernicious and Persistent Inequities: Navigating Race, Class, and Systemic Equity-Driven Improvement

Abstract

The session will begin with the Great Lakes Equity Center executive director and professor of special and urban education describing a theory of equity expansive technical assistance (Thorius; 2019; Thorius, 2023). Over twenty years, she has developed and researched this approach to technical assistance partnerships with PK-12 public education agencies, centered around data collection and analysis to drive systemic change.

Recently, those engaged in equity-driven educational systemic improvement have experienced a resurgence of backlash in the form of restrictions in policy, curriculum, instruction, and materials. To rationalize this backlash, data in the form of mis/disinformation campaigns that emphasize the discomfort of dominant-identity learners and families, and simultaneously explain educational inequities as resulting from multiply-minoritized students’ compromised development, along with a lack of merit, effort, and motivation (O’Connor & Deluca Fernandez, 2006). Dominant approaches to data collection and reporting also fail to capture the intersectional experiences of youth, including unique challenges faced multiply marginalized youth, such as quantitative bias and stereotyping inherent in standardized tests that lead to the reinforcement of negative stereotypes (Au, 2022).

As a response to the current context, Kathleen King Thorius will present the Center’s theory and practice of expansive technical assistance, characterized by:
1. Shifts from top-down/expert novice knowledge transfer to a relational partnership in which the technical assistance provider is a critical friend, thought partner, and bearer of expertise—but not an expert—who supports partners in examining and disrupting inequities in the status quo.
2. Shifts from primary concerns with technical improvements in isolated policies and practices, to systemic transformation of educational policy, practices, and belief systems.
3. Process-based theorization of systemic transformation
4. Explicit engagement with historical and current socio-cultural beliefs, relationships, practices, policies, and other contextual factors related to the manifestations of (in)equities in the education system(s) of concern (Thorius, 2023).

Cutting across these features are cycles of inquiry, facilitated and mediated by the technical assistance provider in partnership with educators, students, and community members connected with education agencies. Informed by Cultural Historical Activity Theory and its notion of expansive learning (Engeström, 1987; Engeström, & Sannino, 2010) inquiry is intentionally focused on stimulating and resolving systemic contradictions (i.e., equity tensions) with partners. Inquiry cycles purposefully apply critical theories and practice-based interventions informed by research, as both primary and secondary stimuli (i.e., mediating artifacts) given the usefulness of such tools for illuminating and resolving complex systemic inequities. The author’s research (e.g., Thorius, 2023) has found that the mediating artifacts that most effectively engage partners with examination and resolution of historical and current socio-cultural beliefs, relationships, practices, policies, and other contextual factors related to manifestations of inequities in local settings are informed by critical theory and its outgrowths.

Author

• Kathleen A. King Thorius, Arizona State University