Glossary
A Glossary of Terms for Equity
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ASSET-BASED PERSPECTIVE is a transformational perspective that recognizes and values the rich cultural practices embedded in all communities. Asset-based teaching is a strengths based approach that leverages students’ knowledge, experiences, skills, values, and perspectives as assets for learning. Asset-based educators see cultural differences as assets, create caring learning communities in which social, cultural, and linguistic diversities are valued, use the cultural knowledges of diverse cultures, families, and communities to guide curriculum development, classroom climates, instructional strategies, and relationships with students, and challenge racial, linguistic, and cultural stereotypes, prejudices, racism, and other forms of intolerance, injustice, and oppression.
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CULTURE The New York State Education Department understands culture as the multiple components of one’s identity, including but not limited to: race, economic background, gender, language, sexual orientation, nationality, religion, and ability. Culture far transcends practices such as cuisines, art, music, and celebrations to also include ways of thinking, values, and forms of expression. These ways and forms are in constant flux, renegotiation, and evolution. Schools then become a meeting point for cultures, containing children and adults who bring with them multiple facets of their identity, along with unique experiences and perspectives.
CULTURALLY RESPONSIVE-SUSTAINING (CR-S) FRAMEWORK The CR-S Framework creates student-centered learning environments that affirm racial, linguistic, and cultural identities; prepare students for rigor and independent learning; develop students’ abilities to connect across lines of difference; elevate historically marginalized voices; and empower students as agents of positive social change. Culturally responsive-sustaining (CR-S) education is grounded in a cultural view of learning and human development in which multiple expressions of diversity are recognized and regarded as assets for teaching and learning. The New York State Education Department (NYSED) Framework.
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DEFICIT-BASED PERSPECTIVE implies that students are flawed or deficient and that the role of the school is to fix the student. Deficit-based teaching seeks to teach to students’ weaknesses instead of teaching to their strengths. It views students as needed to be fixed or remediated, and often attributes their school failures to perceived deficits that lie within the student, their family, community or culture.
DIVERSITY is a reality created by individuals and groups from a broad spectrum of demographic and philosophical differences. These differences can exist along dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, language heritage, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, age, physical abilities, religious beliefs, political beliefs, or other ideologies. It is the exploration of these differences in a safe, positive, and nurturing environment. It is about understanding each other and moving beyond simple tolerance to embracing and celebrating the rich dimensions of difference contained within everyone. Finally, we acknowledge that categories of difference are not always fixed but can be fluid, and we respect individual rights to self-identification, as no one culture is intrinsically superior to another.
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EQUITY is the state, quality, or ideal of being just, impartial, and fair. The concept of equity is synonymous with fairness and justice. To be achieved and sustained, equity needs to be thought of as a structural and systemic concept, and not as idealistic. Equity is a robust system and dynamic process that reinforces and replicates equitable ideas, power, resources, strategies, conditions, habits, and outcomes.
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GENDER implies a non-binary association of characteristics within the broad spectrum between masculinities and femininities. In New York State, gender is identified by the student. In the case of very young transgender students not yet able to advocate for themselves, gender may be identified by the parent or guardian.
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INCLUSIVE more than simply diversity and numerical representation, being inclusive involves authentic and empowered participation and a true sense of belonging. In an inclusive school, the social and instructional space is designed such that all students have access to the curriculum and there are many opportunities for students to be successful.
INSTITUTIONAL RACISM is racial inequity baked into our institutions, connoting a system of power that produces racial disparities in domains such as law, health, employment, education, and so on. It can take the form of unfair policies and practices, discriminatory treatment and inequitable opportunities and outcomes. A school system that concentrates people of color in the most overcrowded and under-resourced schools with the least qualified teachers, compared to the educational opportunities of more advantaged students, is an example of institutional racism.
INTERNALIZED RACISM describes the private racial beliefs held by and within individuals. The way we absorb social messages about race and adopt them as personal beliefs, biases, and prejudices are all within the realm of internalized racism. For people of color, internalized oppression can involve believing in negative messages about oneself or one’s racial group. For Whites, internalized privilege can involve feeling a sense of superiority and entitlement or holding negative beliefs about people of color.
INTERPERSONAL RACISM is how our private beliefs about race become public when we interact with others. When we act upon our prejudices or unconscious bias — whether intentionally, visibly, verbally — we engage in interpersonal racism. Interpersonal racism also can be willful and overt, taking the form of bigotry, hate speech or racial violence.
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Literate Programming is a philosophy from computer science that says that programs are meant to be read by people, not just computers. This means we must make code more human readable, and people can use code as a way to communicate (Knuth, 1984).
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MICROAGGRESSIONS are the everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, which communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership. In many cases, these hidden messages may invalidate the group identity or experiential reality of targeted persons, demean them on a personal or group level, communicate the perception that they are lesser human beings, suggest they do not belong with the majority group, threaten and intimidate, or relegate them to inferior status and treatment.
MULTILINGUAL LEARNER S (MLs) are students who, by reason of foreign birth or ancestry, speak or understand languages other than English, speak or understand little or no English, require support in order to become proficient in English, and are identified pursuant to Section 154.3 of New York State’s Commissioner’s Regulations.
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PLURALISM is a socially constructed system in which members of an identity group maintain participation in this group even as they belong to a larger cultural group. Educational pluralism is when students can leverage aspects of their cultural background as assets for learning and sustain those assets throughout their schooling. They are not required to minimize their unique cultural strengths in order to experience social and academic success or acceptance because no one culture is not valued as standard or dominant.
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RACE is a socially constructed system of categorizing humans largely based on observable physical features (phenotypes) such as skin color and ancestry. There is no scientific basis for or discernible distinction between racial categories. The ideology of race has become embedded in our identities, institutions, and culture and is used as a basis for discrimination and domination.
RACIAL JUSTICE is the systematic fair treatment of people of all races that results in equitable opportunities and outcomes for everyone. All people are able to achieve their full potential in life, regardless of race, ethnicity or the community in which they live. Racial justice — or racial equity —goes beyond “anti-racism.” It’s not just about what we are against, but also what we are for. A CR-S education framework should move us from a reactive posture to a more powerful, proactive and even preventative approach.
RACISM The concept of RACISM is widely thought of as simply personal prejudice, but, in fact, it is a complex system of racial hierarchies and inequities. At the micro level of racism, or individual level, are internalized and interpersonal systems of engrained bias. At the macro level of racism, we focus beyond individuals to the broader dynamics, including symbolic, ideological, institutional, and structural systems of racial hierarchies and inequities.
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SOCIOCULTURAL RESPONSIVENESS involves the active sensitivity to what all students need to be successful academically, psychologically, emotionally, and socially. Such responsiveness recognizes that all students are different and must be uniquely responded to, challenged and stimulated, and strategies must be adapted to meet the needs of individual and groups of students.
SOCIOECONOMIC STATUS is the social standing or class of an individual or group. It is often measured as a combination of education, income, and occupation. Examinations of socioeconomic status often reveal inequities in access to resources, as well as issues related to privilege, power, and control. In New York State, a student’s socioeconomic status is determined by family participation in economic assistance programs, such as the Free or Reduced Price Lunch Programs; Social Security Insurance (SSI); Food Stamps; Foster Care; Refugee Assistance (cash or medical assistance); Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); Home Energy Assistance Program (HEAP); Safety Net Assistance (SNA); Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA); or Family Assistance: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). If one student in a family is identified as low income, all students from that household or economic unit may be identified as low income.
SOCIO-POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS involves an awareness to both the social and political factors at play in the workings of complex societal systems. This consciousness is necessary for navigating complex systems based on a unity of thought and performance, reflective practice and deliberative action, skills that are meaningful and necessary for participation in expanding global economies and democracies.
STRUCTURAL RACISM (or structural racialization) is the operation of racial bias across institutions and society. It describes the cumulative and compounding effects of an array of factors that systematically privilege one group over another. Since the word “racism” often is understood as a conscious belief, “racialization” may be a better way to describe a process that does not require intentionality. Race equity expert John A. Powell writes: “’Racialization’ connotes a process rather than a static event. It underscores the fluid and dynamic nature of race… ‘Structural racialization’ is a set of processes that may generate disparities or depress life outcomes without any racist actors.”
SYNCRETIC COMPUTATIONAL LITERACIES are when students and teachers mash together language and practices from different domains to participate in conversations about, with, and through code and computing. We represent those domains as overlapping circles including: students’ communities, school subjects, and different communities in the world where CS is used (eg: artists, activists, scientists, tech industry).
SYSTEMATIC EQUITY is a complex combination of interrelated elements designed to create, support and sustain social justice. It is a robust system and dynamic process that reinforces and replicates equitable ideas, power, resources, strategies, conditions, habits, and outcomes.
SYSTEMIC RACIALIZATION describes a dynamic system that produces and replicates racial ideologies, identities, and inequities. Systemic racialization is the deeply-institutionalized pattern of discrimination that cuts across major political, economic and social organizations in a society. Public attention to racism is generally focused on the symptoms (such as a racist slur by an individual) rather than the system of racial inequality. Like two sides of the same coin, racial privilege describes race-based advantages and preferential treatment based on skin color, while racial oppression refers to race-based disadvantages, discrimination and exploitation based on skin color
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TRANSLANGUAGING PEDAGOGY is when teachers take up a stance that centers how bi/multilingual students communicate, when they design their units and classroom environment to intentionally leverage students’ diverse language practices for learning, when they make in the-moment shifts to adapt their practice to students’ dynamic language abilities (García et al., 2017).
