The BC Aboriginal Child Care Society (BCACCS) invite participation in their current Equity Literacy Survey, intended as a building block for creating curriculum to support equity-informed curriculum and training materials.

As part of the An Indigenous Approach to Equity Literacy in Early Learning and Child Care (ELCC) project, the BC Aboriginal Child Care Society (BCACCS) is exploring, developing, and testing innovative resources for Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators and early learners (0 to 8 years) that will meet the need for anti-racist and social justice pedagogies in ELCC, especially as they relate to cultural inequities and systemic racism faced by Indigenous children in BC.

The Equity Literacy Survey https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/NRWQZS9 is a foundational component of this work. It will provide BCACCS with important information on family and educator experiences of racism in ELCC spaces and classrooms. The information provided by you through this survey will support BCACCS in creating curriculum that will empower educators with the skills and resources to critically reflect on and build a teaching practice in early learning and elementary school settings, ensuring that ELCC spaces and classrooms honour Indigenous children’s, families’, and communities’ history, human rights, culture, identity, and place within Indigenous Nations and schools.

No personally identifiable information is recorded. BCCACCS follows guidelines and processes to safeguard data holdings. All BCACCS employees have taken an oath to protect your information, and only approved individuals can access the data. All responses will remain anonymous. Aggregated data may be used to share population-level information to fulfill reporting requirements of funding agreements between BCACCS and our funders.

Equity literacy is an approach to addressing racism in ELCC spaces and classrooms that involves moving from cultural competence or diversity awareness to transformative teaching practices rooted in social justice. Such practices strive to dismantle the structures, ideas, and policies that reinforce racial and other inequities, by preparing educators to recognize and address even the subtlest forms of bias, inequity, and oppression related to race, class, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, (dis)ability, language, religion, immigration status, and other factors.

The Equity Literacy Institute has identified five key areas which they see as primary in professional development related to equity, diversity and inclusion for educators.

1. Ability to recognize even the subtlest biases, inequities, and oppressive ideologies 

Equity literate educators:

• notice subtle bias in learning materials and classroom interactions;

• are curious about ways school policies and practices disadvantage some students in unintentional (or intentional) ways; and

• reject deficit ideology, or the view that outcome disparities (in test scores or graduation rates, for example) are caused by the cultures or mindsets of students of color, students experiencing poverty, or other students from marginalized communities.

2. Ability to respond to biases, inequities, and oppressive ideologies in the immediate term

Equity literate educators:

• develop the facilitation skills and content knowledge needed to intervene effectively when biases or inequities arise in a classroom or school;

• cultivate in students the ability to analyze bias and inequity in classroom materials, classroom interactions, and school policies and practices; and

• foster conversations with colleagues about equity concerns in their schools.

3. Ability to redress biases, inequities, and oppressive ideologies in the long term by addressing their root causes

Equity literate educators:

• proactively advocate against inequitable practices and policies and advocate for equitable practices and policies, rather than responding only when individual instances of bias or inequity arise;

• recognize and address the root causes of educational outcome and experiences disparities rather than addressing only the symptoms of these disparities; and

• understand how biases and inequities operating in classrooms, schools, and other organizations are connected to larger societal conditions.

4. Ability to actively cultivate equitable, anti-oppressive ideologies and institutional cultures

Equity literacy educators: 

• instinctively apply an equity lens to every policy, pedagogy, practice, program, and process decision;

• prioritize the interests and needs of the students and families whose interests and needs historically have not been prioritized; and

• understand that equity is a baseline commitment that should inform everything, not a program, strategy, or event to layer on top of all of the other programs, strategies, or events.

5. Ability to sustain bias-free, equitable, and anti-oppressive classrooms, schools, ideologies, and institutional cultures

Equity literate educators:

• understand that equity progress often elicits concerns and complaints from people who are accustomed to a disproportionate share of access and opportunity, and are able to recognize these concerns and complaints as an indication of progress, not as a reason to roll back progress; 

• know how to communicate with certainty and confidence a commitment to equity even in the face of these concerns and complaints; and 

• are cautious of the constant barrage of popular programs and strategies that often pose as “equity” but have little to do with equity and stay committed to embracing a long-term transformative approach based on evidence for what makes an institution like theirs more equitable and just.