Influence Faculty Members' Thinking to Promote Social Justice and Equity

Introduction

In this chapter, you will find a discussion of an intervention that faculty and staff created to build capacity and efficacy within the educator preparation program designed to effectively reduce institutional and interpersonal barriers for marginalized students seeking a degree in education. The researchers entered into the intervention hoping to:

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  Disrupt the deficit ideologies and paradigms and provide participants with strategies to redress interpersonal and institutional barriers that are damaging to equity.

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  Introduce Atmosphere for Conversations for Racial Equity (ACRE), a model designed to interrogate the typical approaches to diversity training and professional development in higher education that rely on pre-packaged cursory ideas about diversity, inclusion, and equity.

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  Explore the depth and intricacy of equity implementation instead of focusing on perfunctory practices that often do not center on the needs or feelings of minoritized individuals.

Envision a public education system where all students feel valued and engaged in learning relevant to their futures and the future of our society. Imagine that educators in this system and policymakers guiding this system have a deep understanding of how structural factors and personal biases negatively impact certain groups of students disproportionately and that they have the skills and commitments to disrupt these inequitable trends. To build a system aligned with this vision starts with equity-minded educators willing to implement equity pedagogy. Educators with a deep commitment to continuous learning, personal growth, institutional transformation, and a relentless focus on eliminating the inequitable status quo.

The College of Education (COE) at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA) received a grant from a local foundation to work with the Disruptive Educational Equity Project (DEEP) to develop the Atmosphere for Conversations for Racial Equity (ACRE) framework. This chapter discusses the experiences and perceptions of the COE leadership cohort based on their participation in DEEP’s development sessions as they created the ACRE framework.

The aim of ACRE is to provide a framework for infusing racial equity and social justice in higher education spaces by reframing the conversation on racial equity, diversity, and inclusion; evaluating current curriculum and policies; and rethinking institutional commitment to equity and systemic change. The ACRE framework dramatically reimagined how the college centers racial equity, beginning with how the COE could embrace diversity, create belonging, and commit to dismantling racism.