The Culture of Power Online: Cultural Responsiveness and Relevance in Vendor-Developed Online Courses

• In Event: How Policy Failures Fuel the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Abstract

Objectives. Even before the pandemic, online courses had emerged as a popular mode of curriculum used in alternative schools for “drop-outs”, credit recovery programs, and virtual charter schools. With the expansion of online instruction in K-12 education, how and what is taught in a single course has the potential to affect the learning of thousands of students. Our mixed method study applies a critical lens to examine the extent to which four widely used online high school courses are culturally relevant and responsive. We use this instructional setting to examine the policies and practices of curriculum vendors in online courses targeting educationally disenfranchised youth that both runs parallel to and feeds into carceral systems.

Theoretical framework. We relied on the work of Ladson-Billings (1995, 2014) and Paris (2012) to define the goals, tenets, and practices of CRP. Critical studies (Apple, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995; McLaren, 2015) also provided a guide to understanding how elements of courses create or disrupt spaces of inequity. These frameworks helped us make sense of the ways in which the official knowledge contained in school curricula is a subjective collection of truths from the perspective of dominant social groups designed to support and provide legitimacy to the status quo (Apple, 2018; Ladson-Billings, 1995).

Methods and data sources. Data for this paper was collected in a large, urban Midwestern district that contracts with one of the largest online course vendors in the country. We developed and coded each lesson in the most frequently enrolled in course in each of the four core subject area using the Online Curricular Responsiveness and Relevance Protocol. We coded in Dedoose all narrative descriptions, developing thematic codes through interactive, inductive coding and discussion guided by our theoretical framework. We supplemented and corroborated these findings with descriptive statistics of rating scale items collected using the same protocol.

Findings and significance. Many systemic and institutional structures contribute to the School-to Prison Pipeline. In this chapter we described how one aspect of schooling, online credit recovery courses, intersects with the dynamics of the School-to-Prison Pipeline. First, online credit recovery courses are often rhetorically figured as alternative, educational pathways for struggling students with asynchronous platforms such as the one studied used with students in or recently out of the juvenile justice system. Second, the online formats studied (both the instructional approach and the content itself) can be dehumanizing for students and often involves a teacher-student relationship that is more about monitoring than true engagement and co-constructed learning. These are both patterns indicative of the types of learning environments that facilitate carceral dynamics in schools. Through this research, we highlight how for-profit outsourced online curriculum - that disproportionality serves students from minoritized, low income backgrounds - perpetuates the culture of power. Substantial revision of existing online credit recovery programs are necessary to disrupt existing systemic inequities present in educational institutions and their contribution to the School-to-Prison Pipeline.

Authors

• Jennifer Suzanne Darling-Aduana, Georgia State University

• Annalee G. Good, University of Wisconsin - Madison

• Kathy Villalón, University of Wisconsin - Madison