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- FAQ - From Students
- Student Questions and Authors' Responses
- Questions from Instructors and Authors' Responses
1. What is the meaning of educational equity?
2. What criteria could an educator utilize to analyze the degree of equity between two classrooms in the same school district?
3. In the article "On the Teaching and Personal Construction of Educational Equity" referred to in question # one above, the Davidmans say that a phrase in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contributed to the Supreme Courtís reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson in their first Brown v. Board of Education decision. What is the phrase they refer to?
4. You point out in your essay "On the Teaching and Personal Construction of Educational Equity" that several multicultural theorists (i.e. Christine Bennett and Carl Grant) have made a strong distinction between educational equality and educational equity. Why do you disagree with these theorists?
Student Questions and Authors' Responses
1. What is the meaning of educational equity?
In their essay " On the Teaching and Personal Construction of Educational Equity," (MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION, Spring, 1998, Vol. 5, No. 3, p.18-22). Patricia and Leonard Davidman state that " equity is strongly related to fairness and educational fairness is sometimes but not always synonymous with educational equality." (p. 19)
2. What criteria could an educator utilize to analyze the degree of equity between two classrooms in the same school district?
In the same essay referred to above, the authors identify six criteria; the criteria are:
a. the allocation of financial, physical, and human resources in each classroom;
b. the amount of time per week each class has to learn specific topics like mathematics and art;
c. the content of the curricula addressed in each classroom;
d. the appropriateness of the pedagogy employed in each classroom;
e. the specific learning inputs and outcomes for both individuals and specific groups (girls, low-SES students, African Americans, second language learners, students with IEPs); and
f. the morale of the learners in each class.
3. In the article "On the Teaching and Personal Construction of Educational Equity" referred to in question # one above, the Davidmans say that a phrase in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution contributed to the Supreme Courtís reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson in their first Brown v. Board of Education decision. What is the phrase they refer to?
The phrase is "No state shall...deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
4. You point out in your essay "On the Teaching and Personal Construction of Educational Equity" that several multicultural theorists (i.e. Christine Bennett and Carl Grant) have made a strong distinction between educational equality and educational equity. Why do you disagree with these theorists?
To begin with, we donít totally disagree with the idea that educational equality and educational equity are terms which often convey different meanings or aim at different conditions. But, we think it is more accurate to present the two terms as overlapping concepts, concepts which will occasionally mean the same thing. In the article referred to we point out that "...the concept of educational equity encompasses educational equality, and that educational equity can be achieved by creating educational equality. Thus, the two concepts will sometimes be the same thing--the condition of equality will be the condition of equity."
In addition, in the essay we make the point that the condition of inequality will sometimes be interpreted to satisfy the requirements of equity, and we support this claim by referring to a 1997 article by J. Naughton in the April 11, 1997 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education (p.A 39-40). The article is titled "Women in Division One Sports Programs: The Glass is Half Empty and Half Full." In our article we quote Naughton who wrote that colleges that lack substantial proportionality can be found in compliance with Title IX if they are "...continually expanding the athletic opportunities to the under-represented gender, or...meeting the athletic interests and abilities of its student body." For our purposes, the key point is that the criterion for determining if sex discrimination is present in a universityís athletic program is not equality of female participation. A program can be judged equitable even if male and female participation in unequal.
Questions from Instructors and Authors' Responses
1. Professor Davidman, next semester in my multicultural education course, I will be using your text for the first time. Do you have any suggestions on how I might best utilize your text?
Dear Professor Flores (pseudonym), I am going to send you a few preliminary and general ideas about the use of the text Teaching with a Multicultural Perspective (TWAMCP/2nd Edition). If you tell me more about the population you teach, and the relationship of the multicultural education (MCE) course you teach to the program of which it is a part, I will get more specific. Please note that at my campus the text is used in a variety of courses. For example, it is used in several different courses in our elementary education program, at the beginning, middle, and end of the elementary education sequence. In addition, it is used in one required course in our secondary education program, and one required course in our graduate program. The ideas listed below stem mainly from my experience in using the text in the latter two courses. While these courses have different and diverse objectives, in each of them I try to give the pre-service credential candidates and the graduate students a specific sense of (1) the different ways in which MCE is currently conceptualized and operationalized; (2) the diverse voices that have defined and are defining the emerging field and discipline of MCE; and (3) the various strategies that MCE practitioners can employ to create their version of MCE at the classroom, school, and district level of operation. With these objectives in mind, in one or both of the above-mentioned courses, I:
a) have my students read and discuss the content of chapter one and two early in the quarterÖtypically weeks one through three (keep in mind that I am working in a ten-week quarter system);
b) divide each chapter into at least two parts (i.e. pages 1-35 for session three and pages 36-65 for session four);
c) have the students answer at least two discussion questions for each reading assignment in chapter one and two, and for each assignment I assign one question and have the students choose one or two they are interested in answering. Students are also encouraged to create and answer their own questions. Parenthetically, for the first half of chapter one I assign question #7 (page 62), and for the second half I assign question #9 (page 63). In addition, I strongly encourage students to respond to question # 21 (page 65). With the latter, we wish to emphasize that teaching is inevitably a moral endeavor. This is a theme we develop in a deeper way in the upcoming third edition where we add a new profile on John Goodlad, discuss his work with the National Network for Educational Renewal (NNER), and juxtapose the goals of MCE and the goals of the NNER and its Agenda for Education in a Democracy;
d) show a 40-minute video entitled Multicultural Education (produced and disseminated by ASCD) which provides a fairly middle-of-the-road conception of MCE, and allows students to hear from teachers and principals who are implementing various forms of MCE. Parenthetically, I follow up on this video with Ethnic Notions (see page 247 and 253 in text) and Ida B. Wells: A Passion for Justice (PBS/The American Experience). I link the content of the latter two videos to Elliot Eisnerís concept of the null curriculum, that is, the curriculum which is not taught because 1) the content is too controversial for the surrounding community, and/or 2) the content makes teacher and students too uncomfortable, and/or 3) the teacher is simply unaware of the content. The content of these videos allow me to point out that, typically, as a curriculum is multiculturalized new content will be taught, and this content will allow teachers and students to expand their knowledge regarding selected pertinent cultural and ethnic groups. In this case the selected group is African Americans;
e) assign the students to help out in a classroom where the teacher is employing specific equity-oriented teaching strategies such as ëspecially designed academic instruction in Englishí (SDAIE). These assignments reinforce and extend the list of strategies enumerated at the end of chapter two (page 116-120) and allows the students to make use of the observation form in appendix three;
f) have the students complete and share their ethnic and cultural self-disclosure inventories (page 282-283) by the second week of the quarter. I use these self-disclosures to create a set of cooperative learning discussion groups, each with five to six students in a group. Using their self-disclosure, I try to weave as much diversity (ethnic, cultural, and philosophical) as possible into each group, and I let the students know that I am doing this. These groups, which are called seminar groups in the graduate class, remain intact throughout the quarter, and during most sessions we move back and forth from whole-class discussions to small-group discussions, and we often break down into dyads and triads within the small discussion groups. Please note that within a semester-long course I would be tempted to restructure the discussion groups so that around week nine each group got some new members. Parenthetically, prior to having students fill out the self-disclosure I have them (1) read and discuss the definitions in appendix #7, and (2) read an article I wrote in the Spring, 1995 issue of the magazine Multicultural Education entitled "Multicultural Education: A Movement in Search of Meaning and Positive Connections." Permission to reprint that article for class use can be received by contacting Professor Patricia Davidman via e-mail at (pdavidma@calpoly.edu). Her fax number is 805-756-5682.
g) encourage students to select articles, chapters, and texts which deal with gender equity as they make choices regarding their reaction and term papers. In the upcoming third edition, in the chapter two sections which deal with ëPlanning a Curriculum of Inclusioní and ëPlanning a Curriculum of Empowerment,í we add new content which explicitly connects gender equity content and strategies to MCE; and,
h) encourage my students, in their reaction and term papers, to seek out and report on competing conceptions of, as well as new ideas about, MCE. To support this endeavor, I provide copies of other MCE texts, back issues of Multicultural Education and Multicultural Perspectives, and the names and URLs of various websites. In addition, I provide them with a course pack of 40 MCE-related articles that they can download free from databases like Expanded Academic Index and Academic Search Elite, databases which my university library makes available to students and faculty.
Last updated: February 1, 2000