Developing Agency for Equity‐Minded Change

Abstract

This chapter highlights the use of the Equity Scorecard with the Community College of Aurora. The Equity Scorecard is a theory‐based strategy that assists community colleges in embedding equity into their institutional norms, practices, and policies.

Sustaining change towards racial equity through cycles of inquiry

“…CHAT addresses issues of temporality in organizational development by emphasizing that change occurs in four dimensions: "the evolutionary (long-term societal or species change), mesogenetic (long activities or projects), ontogenetic (development over a person's lifetime), and microgenetic (everyday interactions)" (Lee, 2011, p. 413; see also Parsons & Bayne, 2013, p. 155). Prior studies show that many practitioners who engage in inquiry using the Equity Scorecard experience ontogenetic changes, coming to see themselves as institutional change agents and acquiring a critical consciousness around equity issues (Bishop, 2014;Felix et al, 2015). These studies show that individual change agents find it challenging to institute microgenetic changes in the multiple activity systems of an institution that must be changed in order to have an institution-wide impact.…”

“…Faculty and administrators at community colleges in California, Illinois, and Colorado have created new programs, adopted race-conscious institutional assessment practices and pedagogies, and developed new communication strategies to foster organizational change (Bensimon & Harris III, 2012;Bustillos et al, 2011;Bustillos et al, 2012;Felix, Bensimon, Hanson, Gray, & Klingsmith, 2015;Pickel & Bragg, 2015;Rueda, 2012). For example, after action research using the Equity Scorecard, the director and advisory group of an honors program at the University of Wisconsin revamped their selection criteria to reduce inequitable emphasis on the use of SAT scores in a shift to a broader array of indicators of academic potential in order to admit a more diverse group of students .…”

“…Therefore, the few examples available in this literature of institution-wide change occurring across multiple departments, offices, and functions (e.g. Bensimon, Dowd, Alford, & Trapp, 2007;Felix et al, 2015;Robinson-Armstrong, Clemons, Fissinger, & Sauceda, 2012) are particularly notable. In these studies, faculty and administrative leaders acted jointly and independently in their arenas of functional authority to carefully design interactions with colleagues to discuss data providing evidence of racial equity gaps.…”

“…In these studies, faculty and administrative leaders acted jointly and independently in their arenas of functional authority to carefully design interactions with colleagues to discuss data providing evidence of racial equity gaps. In a Colorado community college, subsequent to college-wide, "all college" forums, community college faculty in multiple departments learned how to do peer classroom observations and coach each other about equity-minded pedagogies (Felix et al, 2015), and a California community college that engaged in multiple action research projects over five years completely revamped its academic advising and support services to provide great transfer access to institutions in the University of California system (Bensimon, Dowd, Alford, & Trapp, 2007).…”

“…Subsequent inquiry activities at each university, including inquiry using observational, documentary, and interview data collected by evidence team members, were guided by an action research facilitator and data-use coach who was a professional staff member of USC's Center for Urban Education. (The design of the Equity Scorecard protocols is extensively documented elsewhere; for more information, see e.g., Bensimon, 2012;Bensimon & Hanson, 2012;Bensimon & Harris III, 2012;Dowd, Bishop, et al, 2012;Felix et al, 2015;Witham et al, 2015).…”