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Instructional practices that attend to students’ cultural motivations and strengths can play an important role in mitigating educational inequities. However, educators increasingly experience backlash for efforts to address educational inequities, raising moral questions about how educators should engage students. Through a national study, we explored how educators’ likelihood of implementing culturally responsive practices (CRPs) (i.e., practices focused on affirming students’ cultural backgrounds) varied according to educators’ individual moral frameworks (i.e., multicultural and colorblind diversity ideologies) and the contextual moral frameworks they encountered among their administrators (i.e., support for educational equity work) and local communities (i.e., DEI sentiment). When their communities were permissive of DEI, teachers who strongly endorsed multiculturalism implemented CRPs frequently, regardless of their administrators’ support for equity work. In DEI-opposed communities, however, pro-multiculturalism educators only implemented CRPs frequently when their administrators supported equity work. In contrast, regardless of community-level DEI sentiment, CRP implementation among educators with weaker endorsement of multiculturalism depended upon administrators’ support for equity work. Results suggest that educators with less well-defined individual moral frameworks about diversity rely upon contextual frameworks to determine their practices, while those with more codified moral frameworks rely upon contextual frameworks primarily when their individual moral frameworks conflict with their community’s.
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Strengthen the case for DEI
Three years ago, addressing racial justice in the United States moved firmly into the mainstream. Following the murder of George Floyd, the ongoing struggle for social justice was again laid bare, and pledges to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) began sprouting everywhere. Now, the pendulum is swinging back on these commitments. A backlash against DEI initiatives is rising across all sectors, especially at the state level. Last year’s decision by the US Supreme Court to strike down the consideration of students’ racial status in college admissions has emboldened many who oppose any advancement of DEI. Although there has been specific attention to higher education, other sectors have also been attacked. The retreat includes recent anti-DEI legislation that would affect structures, programs, practices, and curricula that aim to support success for all, including persons who have been historically excluded from or marginalized within science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine (STEMM). Before this backlash worsens, DEI advocates, the scientific community, universities, and federal agencies need to collectively call out the dangers of setting aside DEI and come up with robust ways to demonstrate its value to society.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1841687
- PAR ID:
- 10511078
- Publisher / Repository:
- AAAS
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Science
- Volume:
- 383
- Issue:
- 6690
- ISSN:
- 0036-8075
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 1395 to 1395
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adp4397
