Open Resources for the Inclusive Curriculum (ORIC): Some Thoughts and Context

1. Open Resources for the Inclusive Curriculum (ORIC): Some Thoughts and Context Dr Sean Walton University of Wolverhampton 20th September

2. The ORIC Project • A collaborative project with the University of Salford. • The aim of the ORIC project is to create 30 credits of Open Educational Resources from existing and developing PGCerts around inclusive curriculum design, sustainable development, and digital literacy.

3. The ORIC Project Objectives • Create detailed and accessible learning and teaching resources around inclusive curriculum design covering all relevant areas (e.g. disability, race, gender, etc.). • Create detailed and accessible learning and teaching resources around education for sustainable development. • Create detailed and accessible learning and teaching resources around digital literacy.

4. Institutional Context • Over 50% BME students at the UoB. • Large proportion of international students. • Large proportion of home students. • BME students achieve (on average) 20% lower final degree score than their white peers. • BME students are six times more likely to be accused of plagiarism during their undergraduate degree and less likely to be successful in an appeal against plagiarism.

5. A Critical Pedagogic Approach • ‘Teaching in critical pedagogy involves more than learning a few pedagogical techniques and the knowledge required by the curriculum, the standards, or the textbook. Critical practitioners find it necessary to appreciate not only many bodies of knowledge but also the political structure of the school [or university], wider forms of education in the culture…alternative bodies of knowledge produced by marginalized or low-status groups, the ways power operates to construct identities and oppress particular groups, the modus operandi (MO) of the ways social regulation operates, the complex processes of racism, gender bias, class bias, cultural bias, heterosexism, religious intolerance etc., the cultural experiences of students, diverse teaching styles, educational leaders, and to students to dive into this complex domain of knowledge and knowing and social action it requires’ (Kincheloe 2008, pp 8-9).

6. The Language of Diversity • ‘Diversity is a strong and emotive term that operates as an unquestionable proposition – it is always – already known as good/desirable within western liberal discourse. This ‘goodness’ references democratising and equality concerns as well as being constituted as a ‘modern’ term. Hence, to oppose it would be to align oneself with ‘elitism’, ‘undemocraticness’, and ‘the past’…In this way [diversity] might be understood as a moral discourse – and the power of moral discourses lies in their capacity to render alternative accounts ‘unsayable’’ (Archer 2007, p 648).

7. The language of diversity cont. ‘Contemporary calls to diversify the curriculum appear unimpeachable, as evidence of an individual or institutional sensitivity to the dangers of racism and ethnocentrism. The moral and cognitive rationales behind such calls seems clear. If we broaden the curriculum to include a range of different intellectual traditions, different ways of knowing, and different racial perspectives, we will create a more inclusive higher education’ (Brookfield 2007, p 557).

8. Marcuse’s first form of repressive tolerance. • Marcuse (1965) identifies the first form of repressive tolerance as the tolerance of ‘intolerable’ ideologies and practices. • This is a form of ‘moral isolationism’ (Midgely 1981) or extreme epistemological relativism whereby all and any viewpoint is given equal consideration.

9. The first form of repressive tolerance in action • Brookfield (2007) gives the following example of this first form of repressive tolerance in action: • The call for creationism to be given equal weight in the curriculum alongside the theory of evolution with the implication that both have comparable scientific credibility. • Teaching that climate change is a contested theory. • Teaching that the idea of the bell curve as applied in the study of intelligence demonstrates that Europeans are intellectually superior to other people.

10. The problem with the first form of repressive tolerance. ‘In all three cases, the logic of diversity requires that we frame classroom discussions of these issues in terms that give equal and serious consideration to both, or multiple, sides of an argument. Marcuse’s point is that in giving equal consideration to views that reinforce the interests of White supremacy, global capitalism and religious fundamentalism, teachers end up undercutting their own intention of developing students’ powers of critical thinking’ (Brookfield 2007, p 559).

11. The second form of repressive tolerance. • The second way that repressive tolerance manifests is by marginalising the views of repressed groups while, at the same time, presenting a façade of working in the emancipatory interests of such groups. • There are parallels here with the Critical Race Theory idea of ‘contradiction-closing cases’.

12. Effects of the second form of repressive tolerance ‘When a curriculum is widened to include dissenting and radical perspectives that are considered alongside the mainstream perspective, the minority perspectives are always overshadowed by the mainstream one. This happens even if the radical perspectives are scrupulously accorded equal time and space. As long as the dominant Whitestream perspective is included as one of several possible options for study, its presence inevitably overshadows the minority ones, which will always be perceived as alternatives, as others – never as the natural centre to which students should turn (Brookfield 2007, p 559).

13. Marcuse on the second form of repressive tolerance ‘the people exposed to this impartiality are no tabula rasae, they are indoctrinated by the conditions under which they live and think and which they do not transcend. To enable them to become autonomous, to find by themselves what is true and what is false for man in the existing society, they would have to be freed from the prevailing indoctrination (which is no longer recognised as indoctrination) (Marcuse 1965, p 98-99).

14. Liberating tolerance • Liberating tolerance involves teaching only alternative perspectives.

15. Implications for ORIC • Focus is on curriculum design from only an inclusive perspective. • Discusses perspectives within education that focus on the experience of minoritised and repressed groups e.g. CRT, feminist, Marist critical pedagogues. • Creates safe space for critical engagement with concepts of diversity, inclusion, and identity and questions our understanding of our own identity, that of our learners, and the conceptual frameworks we use to understand our relationships (Cousin 2011, Foucault 1979, Lyotard 1974).

16. References • Archer, L. (2007): Diversity, equality and higher education: a critical reflection on the ab/uses of equity discourse within widening participation, Teaching in Higher Education, 12:5-6, 635-653. • Brookfield, S. (2007): Diversifying curriculum as the practice of repressive tolerance, Teaching in Higher Education, 12:5-6, 557-568. • Cousin, G. (2011) Rethinking the Concept of Western, Journal of Higher Education Research and Development, 30(5), forthcoming. • Foucault, M. (1979) The history of sexuality, Vol 1, An Introduction, London: Allen Lane. • Kincheloe, J. L. (2008) Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy, New York: Springer. • Lyotard, J. (1974) Libidinal Economy. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. • Marcuse, H. (1965) Repressive Tolerance in R. P. Wolff, B. Moore and H. Marcuse, A Critique of Pure Tolerance, Boston: Beacon Press, 81-117. • Midgley, M. (1981) On Trying Out One's New Sword on a Chance Wayfarer, in Heart and Mind, London, Methuen.