Historically Marginalized Groups in OER & Traditional Intro to US Textbooks

• In Event: Poster Session: Political Science Education; Information Technology and Politics & Politics Literature, and Film
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Political Science Education

Abstract

The Introduction to American Government course, and thus the Intro to American Government textbook, is a nearly universal experience for students in American colleges and universities, but the content of these textbooks is seldom systematically evaluated. Do these ubiquitous texts accurately reflect the diversity of perspectives and populations in the US, or do they simply reinforce the pale, male, and stale point of view? More specifically, how are historically marginalized groups covered in Introduction to US Government textbooks, if at all, and do Open Educational Resources (OER) textbooks do a better or worse job of representing historically marginalized groups than traditionally published textbooks? This project expands on previous scholars’ work examining individual historically marginalized groups (Ashley and Jarratt-Ziemski 1999, Novkov and Gossett 2007, Wallace and Allen 2008, Monforti and McGlinn 2010, Takeda 2015, Cassese et al 2014, and Oliva 2012) by combining index-search methods with digital content analysis and including two OER textbooks for comparison against popular traditionally-published textbooks.

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Author

• Shawna M. Brandle, Kingsborough Community College - CUNY