A Mini-Conference to Envision the New Multiculturalism in K-12 Education: A response to the FAIR Education Act April 18-19, 2013 You are invited to attend. Please RSVP by April 11 To RSVP to the FAIR Education Act Mini-Conference CLICK HERE This mini-co

Event Date: 

Thursday, April 18, 2013 - 12:00am to Friday, April 19, 2013 - 12:00am

A Mini-Conference to Envision the New Multiculturalism in K-12 Education: A response to the FAIR Education Act

April 18-19, 2013
You are invited to attend.
Please RSVP by April 11
To RSVP to the FAIR Education Act Mini-Conference CLICK HERE

This mini-conference is the Department of Black Studies’ response to the recent passage of the Fair, Accurate, Inclusive and Respectful (FAIR) Education Act (or SB 48). This mini-conference results from conversations among the faculties of the Black Studies, Chicana and Chicano Studies, Feminist Studies, and Asian American Studies Departments and the Gevirtz Graduate School of Education at UCSB, as well as work with community groups and teachers in Santa Barbara, as to how to bring together educators at all levels of instruction in California with administrators, policy makers, teachers, and students to think critically and productively about where we are in the process of implementing the FAIR Education Act and where we need to go to be successful in the future.

What we found hopeful about the bill was its broad inclusiveness, to wit, as it is written: ?This bill would require instruction in social sciences to also include a study of the role and contributions of Native Americans, African Americans, Mexican Americans, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, European Americans, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Americans, and other ethnic and cultural groups, to the development of California and the United States.?

We see this act as issuing a deeper challenge to create not only a new K-12 curriculum, but also to launch a new research program at UCSB to explore a relational approach to sexual and gender, racial, and disabilities studies in America. We believe the moment is right for a move beyond identity politics and diversity frameworks to develop a new epistemologies and methodologies for studying the outsider-insider dynamic in knowledge formation and dissemination in California education. SB 48 signals that moment when it will be increasingly difficult if not impossible to teach all of the histories of those who are marginalized and oppressed in America as separate histories even as their uniqueness if understood and respected. What we see working with teachers to transform the K-12 curriculum as an opportunity for graduate students and faculty at UCSB to develop a new model of what it means to be educated by developing research at the interstices of knowledges and using them to create entirely new and more interesting modules of transcultural education than have existed before. Given that UCSB is rightly acknowledged for its pioneering embrace of interdisciplinarity, this project of interdisciplinary knowledge formation is a perfect opportunity to begin develop a new ?beyond diversity? model of education for the 21st century for the K-16 student in California.

This mini-conference provides opportunities for the collaboration of University Faculty, Teachers, Teacher Educators, Administrators, Community Members, and Graduate Students to co-construct and theorize a new curriculum that foregrounds the humanities as well as the social sciences as critical to a new vision of the shared community of education in California.

Specifically, the collaborative workshops that will take place as part of this symposium will allow participants to:

  • contextualize the curriculum within current research of historical epistemology, 21st century culturally proficient pedagogical practices, and academic literacy development
  • theorize about a new relationship of UC humanities to K-12 education in California, that the humanities at institutions like UCSB can come to be seen as laboratories of knowledge production that redefines the relationship of the university and the state
  • evaluate contributions made by individuals within the co-construction process and the evolution of curriculum revisions prior to workshop implementations
  • provide teacher educators with a co-constructed model to utilize in their classrooms
  • provide resources and primary source documents to utilize when developing future lesson plans

Co-sponsored by the following UCSB units and Santa Barbara Non-Profits:

The College of Letters & Science
The Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Diversity, Equity and Academic Policy
The Office of Equal Opportunity and Sexual Harassment/Title IX Compliance
The Center for New Racial Studies
The Department of Chicana/o Studies
The Department of Feminist Studies
The Gevirtz Graduate School of Education
The Multicultural Center
The Fund for Santa Barbara
Teachers for the Study of Educational Institutions

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