Cultivating social justice and anti-racism across the curriculum: A school of communication case study

ABSTRACT

The curriculum review and transformation project reported in this paper represents an intentional and collaborative effort of faculty and administrators in one academic department to implement meaningful changes in undergraduate curricula. Supported by two internal grants from the university, this three-year project included all faculty and administrators of the department. A systematic comparison was conducted between course syllabi content before and after the curriculum content intervention. Results identify changes in syllabi, course learning objectives, units/topics covered, and readings/course materials. Discussion provides implications for curriculum revision and suggestions for best practices to integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion across curricula.

Notes

1 States to restrict education on racism: AL, AK, AZ, AR, CO, FL, GA, ID, IN, IA, KS, KY, LA, ME, MI, MS, MO, MT, NE, NH, NM, NY, NC, ND, OH, OK, PA, RI, SC, SD, TN, TX, VA, VI, WA, WV, and WI.

2 In decolonial and anti-racist engagement, this study uses a lowercase “w” when referring to white individuals and capitalizes Black when referring to Black individuals to combat historical writing conventions that perpetuate white supremacy (see Bauder, 2020; Lanham & Liu, 2019).

3 The native peoples of lands university 1 now occupies.

4 The native peoples of lands university 2 now occupies.

5 Although there are many diversity-like acronyms such as DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging), JEDI (justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion), IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and access), or DEIAA (diversity, equity, inclusion, access, and anti-racism), we chose to focus on DEI in our literature review, which is a more recognizable acronym.

6 The research team (the three authors of this study) only included calculations from hours spent on the research project. Thus, hours were logged starting at phase II. We did not include faculty time spent on syllabus revisions, as extending calculations to faculty could vary and are thus not included. GRA hours were extracted from submitted employer timesheet history.

7 See “Curriculum Design and Student Outcomes” in our literature review.

8 Not all syllabi were uniform when detailed readings were concerned. Some syllabi were not detailed enough to conduct the textual analyses (e.g. explicitly stating the titles or chapters and/or assignments). For example, syllabus #14 contained unclear post-intervention assignments or activities based on the syllabus text. Therefore, the qualitative analysis stated, “Need detailed chapter readings for in-depth chapter titles (i.e., Chapter 2 “Culture,” or Chapter 4 “Workplace” etc.)” to assess each syllabus better. Our qualitative analyses augmented our coded analyses by stating what was missing and why it was needed.

Additional information

Funding

This project was funded by the Faculty-Led Curricular Redesign for Student Achievement in the CSU, sponsored by the Teagle Foundation, the College Futures Foundation, the CSU Chancellor’s Office, the SDSU Office for Curriculum, Assessment, and Accreditation, and the San Diego State University Research Foundation.