EDUCATION CURRICULUM

Education Curriculum: Relationship between Curriculum Models and How They Address Issues of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Equity, diversity, and inclusion have been three emerging issues in education that have gained quick importance in terms of providing fair educational opportunities to all students without discrimination. Information access to everyone should be guaranteed for a bright future in the country, which is only possible when every student, regardless of race, ethnicity, or disability is given learning prospects. This paper aims at exploring how the relationship between curriculum models and issues of equity, diversity, and inclusion should be elucidated. The sections would investigate the evidence from the history, curriculum models and current usage, and a thorough position on the topic.

Historical Contextualization

During Americas early days, children with disabilities were considered a shame. In 1975, the public schools were required to offer free public education to handicapped children under the All Handicapped Children Act (EHA), however, the formulation of the curriculum was left to the courts decision (Boroson, 2017). Similarly, in 1990, United Nations Education for All (EFA) movement inspired countries to make the basic right of education available for all. The national education policies and concerns of the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) generated the notion that children in poor countries should be given the basic education with the inclusion of all ethnicities fairly (Ainscow, 2016). Curriculum design and assessment formulation were to be done based on the changing dimensions of education since children from various backgrounds and learning capacities were to be provided with impartial educational potentials.

The changes in education systems instigated the government to address the equity, inclusion, and diversity concerns so that basic minimum levels of education could be made common for all children, which could later transfer to an educational value for the countrys economy once they would enter employment world. For this purpose, fairness and inclusion have been recently highlighted, especially for students with language problems (those who belong to linguistic minorities), students with disabilities, and racially discriminated minorities (Ainscow, 2016). The process of empowerment of these population segments was a pathway to achieving the education system for establishing practices for fairness.

Endeavors around the world, such as Conference on Special Needs Education in 1994, pushing schools for inclusivity and equity by UNESCO in 1994, Americans Disability Act (ADA)...…the assessment equity would be justified.

The naturalistic model also serves the same purpose, however, the platform, deliberations, and curriculum design is a step-by-step procedure approached in this model. The philosophies and ideologies of how to devise the curriculum are reasoned in the first stage, the interaction between educational stakeholders and those who would gain the benefits are discussed to reach an agreement on a shared vision, and the final stage is about the complete design of the curriculum (Armstrong, 1991). With the help of the second stage, since the stakeholders would be diverse students whose distinct needs are to be met, it would provide the groundwork for the next stage of curriculum design for observing the efficiency in decision-making in the process. Only then, equity and inclusion could be considered fair.

Conclusion

Advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the new systematic integration of educational standards have become the need of time. Moving forward to accomplish more for such students whose needs are varied in physical psychological terms, the intentional changes in curriculum are expected to produce fruitful results for the students. The basic right of equal education for all and assessing them based on their cultural…