Addressing Issues of Equity Diversity and Inclusion

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 America’s 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 court’s 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 country’s 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) in 1990, Education Amendments Act with Title IX in 1972 for co-education and voicing out against gender exclusion, World Forum on Education in 2015 guided towards the construction of framework that would reflect struggles towards addressing the issues related to diversity, inclusion, and equity (Ainscow, 2016; Boroson, 2017). 

Position on the Topic

According to the Taba model, the curriculum should be devised after considering the numerous steps such as needs diagnosis, objectives for which the curriculum is to be created, content selection, organizing the content, prioritizing the learning experiences, and determining what and how to evaluate (Aydun et al., 2017). These steps would bring an improvement in addressing equity, diversity, and inclusion issues so that embracing of unbiasedness required for comprehensive representation of students with physical disabilities, ethnic minorities or language complications, etc. should be certified. 

Similar to this, the Tyler model provides a foundation for devising a curriculum that would be feasible for diverse students, their inclusion, and equity in terms of student learning and assessment opportunities. After understanding the philosophy of educational goals and psychological needs of the students, the significant part of the curriculum should be comprehensible for the pupils for successful imparting of education to get goals accomplished. Determining the school’s aims and objectives, defining educational experiences that would be pertinent to the purpose, organizing the experiences, and evaluating the process are some crucial steps in applying scientifically the curriculum development criteria (Cruickshank, 2018). 

Oliva model is the one that particularly identifies the fact that the needs of students are not the same, which is certainly applicable to diverse students in terms of ethnicity and language issues. An equitable curriculum development would be possible with the application of the Oliva model that has 12 components: determining the vision and mission of the institution, analyzing the community needs where the school is present, the purpose of curriculum (generally and specifically), designing the curriculum, outlining the learning outcomes and its relevant strategy, assessment techniques to be utilized within, implementation, and evaluation (Daud, Ahmad & Johari, 2012). 

The book ‘Understand by Design’, written by Jay McTighe and Grant Wiggins suggests the backward model should be adopted to base the curriculum design on the student needs, in which diversity, inclusion, and equity could be managed effectively (McTighe & Wiggins, 2012). The three stages involved are determining the anticipated results, gaining hands-on acceptable evidence, and preparing the learning experiences along with the classroom instructions. Teaching for understanding is the emphasis of the book’s content so that once the students with different capabilities would be given the right tools, the assessment equity would be justified.