Speakers explain importance of equity literacy framework

“What are the knowledge and skills I need to become a threat to the existence of inequity in my spheres of influence? Do I have the will to be that threat?”

Those were the questions that Drs. Paul Gorski and Katy Swalwell wanted attendees of the College of Education’s Diversity Speaker Series to think about after leaving the East Carolina Heart Institute on February 3.

Gorski and Swalwell discussed their equity literacy framework for creating socially just schools.

“When you get to this question of where this idea of equity literacy came from, part of it was from a lot of misunderstandings that were driving what people thought of as equity work,” Gorski said. “Part of the culture of education is the tendency to identify a problem and start throwing practical solutions at the problem without understanding it.”

Both Swalwell and Gorski shared experiences they had working with schools that led them to realizing they needed a different way to talk about equity.

One of Gorski’s experiences was with school administrators that said they needed to celebrate diversity and have more multicultural events while students were voicing their feelings of invisibility and experiences of racism.

“The problem here isn’t the lack of good intentions but really the problem is lack of literacy around equity and justice,” Gorski said. “There’s this sort of culture that celebrates everyone’s good intentions and I think at some point, that blocks equity work because people think through just having good intentions, racism is going to go away.”

He explained that teachers should question the intentions behind actions. “You can’t keep saying you have good intentions if you’re not actually seeing the impact, seeing the change happening,” he said.

Swalwell agreed and added that teachers work hard and shouldn’t pour their time and energy into things that won’t leave the impact they want to have.

“It’s about shifting your energies so the hard work you’re putting into it is actually disrupting these systems of oppression and inequity and not reproducing and replicating them,” she said.

They emphasized that truly understanding the problems and situations is key to equity literacy and how it’s not a checklist of things you can do for your school to be equitable.

“It’s about shifting our understanding of how these forces are operating, how schools are participating in that, having an awareness of that and being able to intervene,” Swalwell said. “You can only intervene once you have a realistic understanding of what these things are that are happening.”

According to Gorski and Swalwell, an equity literacy framework means that people must be actively anti-oppressive (anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-classist, anti-transphobic, etc.) rather than “celebrating diversity,” “considering culture” or “being kind.”

“The only thing that disrupts oppression are things that are explicitly anti-oppressive,” Swalwell said.

Oftentimes, Gorski said, people will say that they’re “down with equity” but they’re using skewed frameworks. He and Swalwell offered two examples of these frameworks: deficit ideology and grit ideology.

In deficit ideology, people believe that educational disparities are the result of “deficiencies” in marginalized students and refuse to acknowledge the evidence of barriers, inequities, biases and stereotypes that influence educational disparities.

In grit ideology, you acknowledge that some groups of students experience inordinate amounts of barriers but instead of removing these barriers, efforts are made to help students become more resilient to overcome the barriers.

As a counterpoint to these, Swalwell and Gorski believe in using a structural ideology where people understand that educational outcome disparities are the result of gaps in access and opportunity.

“What we wanted to do was cultivate what we called a structural ideology,” Gorski said. “Identify the challenges and barriers; remove the challenges and barriers. What are the inequities, the biases, the oppressions that people experience outside of school and they experience in school? How do we eliminate or at least address those, be responsive to those and what are the inequities that we are reproducing in schools? How do we identify those policies and practices and remove them?”

They spoke about four abilities that people should cultivate for equity literacy, which were recognize, respond, redress, and cultivate and sustain.

People should recognize what is going on in their environment and what are the problems. They should have the knowledge and skills to respond in the moment to an incident. Being able to redress or remedy a problem in the moment is important. People and institutions should also strive to cultivate and sustain structures and systems that normalize equity support.

There are several principles that educators can utilize to ensure progress toward equity. A few of these principles are:

• Direct Confrontation: Being able to directly confront inequity by recognizing, naming, understanding and eliminating it.
• Redistribution: Initiatives should redistribute access and opportunity.
• Prioritization: Reimagine policy and practice in ways that prioritize the interests of students who are marginalized.
• #FixInjusticeNotKids: Initiatives should not focus on “fixing” students or families. Instead they should work on fixing the conditions that cause marginalization.
• Access to What?: Educators need to consider outcomes, processes and inputs when working toward deep equity as well as think about what they’re asking students, teachers and families to invest in and if that is rooted in equity.

While doing this work, Gorski and Swalwell warned listeners about equity detours.

“Detours are those things that schools and districts and individuals put resources into in the name of equity that actually get us off track,” Gorski said.

A few of these detours are:

• Pacing for Privilege: Equity work is paced in such a way that prioritizes the comfort of privileged people over progress.
• Deficit Ideology: There is a focus on fixing the culture, mindset or grittiness of marginalized people rather than fixing the conditions that caused them to become marginalized.
• Celebrating Diversity: Individuals or groups will mistake or reward celebrations of diversity as signs of progress toward equity

Moving forward, they outlined a few steps for listeners to implement in their everyday lives. These steps included:

• Develop your awareness…forever.
• Analyze everything for bias and expect inequity to be embedded in everything.
• Continue to monitor and reflect.
• Have open communication with stakeholders on terms that encourage their participation and center their leadership.
• Support ongoing staff professional development.
• Those in leadership roles should lift up those who point out issues rather than sideline or punish equity work.

Paul Gorski earned his PhD in Educational Evaluation at the University of Virginia and was a teacher educator for 15 years. He has founded the Equity Literacy Institute and EdChange and has 20 years of experience helping educators strengthen their equity efforts.

Katy Swalwell earned her PhD in Curriculum & Instruction from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after teaching for several years. She currently is an associate professor at Iowa State University. Her work as a consultant has led her develop workshops, facilitate professional development and conduct school equity audits.

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