About this poster

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Panel information
Panel 3. Schooling and Education

Abstract

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This poster presentation will describe how a course, “Race and Developing Child,” is used to prepare university students at a PWI to engage with racial diversity with increased knowledge, sensitivity, awareness, and self-reflection. Course modules are organized around questions that address common misconceptions about race for which there are academic readings, short videos providing first person narratives, class discussions (asynchronous online and in person), as well as essay quizzes that solicit the underlying logic associated with answers to those questions. The class addresses topics sometimes considered taboo (e.g., Why is it that only black people can use “N” word?, How White children demonstrate a racial identity earlier and more strongly in middle childhood, than BIPOC children). Class discussions draw on campus, current events involving race (e.g., BLM, Israel-Gaza conflict, social media, hate and bias incidents). The course reviews structural (e.g, social dominance, immigrant paradox), psychological, interpersonal, and identity features of child development through adolescence. This course engages students in marshalling evidence from academic literature to address these popular misconceptions so that students have a command of research ‘facts’ as well as the reasoning underlying these issues. Students are encouraged to develop awareness of individual differences associated with general tendencies of a racial group or subgroup in order to disrupt viewing racial groups as monolithic. Reviewing individual differences within these groups are completed through assignments based on nonfictional autobiography, online and in person class discussions, student interviews with others, and self and personal reflection—each application requires students to apply the conceptual frameworks from the class. The class examines identity intersectionality involving racial status (e.g., social class, gender, LGBTQ, immigration, culture, bilingualism, multiracial). Finally, students are provided support to be better able to dialogue about race issues outside of class in their personal and future professional lives. End of semester anonymous survey results—fully presented on the final poster—reveal that students rate increases in feeling comfortable sharing experiences regarding race, being able to understand their own and cross-race peers development.

Handouts including the syllabus and listing of videos, autobiographic novels, academic frameworks, readings, and discussion questions will be available to participants in the SRCD conference.

Listing of social issues and common misconceptions covered in class:
Race: What is it? Does it exist?
How to use racial terms appropriate?
Why is Hispanic considered ethnic but not racial?
What is culture? How do the world’s major cultures differ?
Are Asian Americans a monolithic group? Are they a model minority?
What is difference between BIPOC vs. PoC?
Can people of color be racist?
Why is okay for only Black people to say the “N” word?
What is wrong with being ‘color-blind’?
Why is treating all people the same a problem?
How does context influence child development?
Why don’t all immigrants assimilate into U.S. culture?
Why do immigrants have better health and do better in school?
What does decolonization mean?
Does retaining their native language help or hurt ESL children’s school performance?
What is difference between undocumented and illegal?
Why are all the Black/Latinx/ Asian/First Nation kids sitting together in the cafeteria?
Why are all the White kids sitting together in the cafeteria?
Can you be a racist and not know it?
Do boys/men of color have gender privilege?
Was Obama the 44th White president or 1st Black President?
How do multiracial/cultural children and youth develop?
Are racial differences really just social class differences?
Why is ‘Acting White’ considered negative?
Were Arab Americans and Muslims racialized in the United States after 9/11?
Does academic tracking contribute to or reduce racial differences in education?
Are microaggresions “death by a thousand cuts”?
Do Black Lives Matter?

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