Introduction

Throughout the Syllabus Challenge, we have reflected on anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives, the way power and privilege can manifest in our syllabi, our teaching philosophies, and institutional statements included in our syllabi. Today’s Syllabus Challenge content asks us to consider how we might integrate anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives in our learning objectives and course materials. Integrating these perspectives will allow us to center diverse sources of knowledge as core components of educational psychology. Specifically, you will be asked to engage with the three learning goals listed below by looking through potential course resources and brainstorming how they might be incorporated into your curriculum. 

Learning Goals

1. Examine course learning objectives and analyze to what extent they ask students to engage critically with educational psychology content. 
2. Explore how you might be able to use the curriculum in your syllabus to support students’ developmental trajectories learning about anti-colonial and anti-racist content. 
3. Review your list of course topics and required materials (e.g., readings, videos, podcasts) and reflect on how much they support an anti-colonial educational psychology. 

Deconstruct

Part 1: Critical Engagement with Educational Psychology 

Estimated Time: 20-30 minutes

When students engage with their syllabus for the first time, they may infer course values through the objectives and make assumptions based on the curriculum outline about which topics are central to the course and broader field. With this in mind, we can be intentional about the messages we send through our course materials. For example, courses (and textbooks) sometimes inadvertently reflect colonized perspectives by relegating historically marginalized groups to their own content day or chapter (Gorski & Goodman, 2015). However, “when we focus on that group and that group and that group and what we need to know about vague, often stereotypical notions of their ‘cultures,’ we actually replicate a colonizing ideology” (Gorski & Goodman, 2015, p. 5). To address this challenge, one strategy can be to weave anti-colonial and anti-racist perspectives throughout our courses. 

There are great articles that can scaffold our own and our students’ critical engagement with educational psychology content. The first learning activity for the Syllabus Challenge today asks you to engage with three articles related to the history of educational psychology, race, and research methods. For this activity, you do not have to fully read these articles right now (unless of course you would like to!). 

Learning Activity: Please locate the following three readings, read through the abstracts, and brainstorm how they might fit into your course. If your institution has access to the full articles, you are also encouraged to skim through sections of the articles that stand out to you. Questions to consider as you engage with the materials include: 

1. To what extent are these concepts and topics already integrated into your courses? 
2. In looking at your syllabi, where might these concepts and topics fit? 
3. Connecting back to Day 1, how might your own and your students’ social identities intersect with these concepts and topics? 

Topic	Reference
History of Educational Psychology	Strunk, K. K., & Andrzejewski, C. E. (2023). Racisms of commission and omission in educational psychology: A historical analysis and systematic review. Educational Psychologist, 58(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2022.2152031
Race	DeCuir-Gunby, J., T., & Schutz, P. A. (2014). Researching race within educational psychology contexts. Educational Psychologist, 49(4), 244-260. https://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2014.957828
Research Methods	Matthews, J. S., & López, F. (2020). Race-reimaging educational psychology research: Investigating constructs through the lens of race and culture [Editorial]. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2020.101878

Part 2: Developmental Trajectories in Learning about Critical Content

Estimated Time: 10-20 minutes

Thanks for engaging with those three articles! This next section asks you to consider how your students might experience learning about critical course content. We teach students from a variety of backgrounds, and students enter our classrooms with a range of experiences learning about topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Some may have extensive experience with anti-colonial and/or anti-racist perspectives. For other students, this may be their first time learning about topics like the ones listed in the section above. The next activity asks you to consider where your students are in the learning process and how your course materials might support students’ development of key competencies. 

Learning Activity: Please locate the article listed below, read through the abstract, and skim sections of the article that stand out to you. Like the last activity, no need to read the article fully right now (although, we of course encourage you to revisit the article in full at a later time!). Here are some questions to consider as you engage with the article:

1. Byrd (2021) argues that there are three core competencies in Stage 1 of students’ developmental cycles in learning about identity, diversity, and equity. These include awareness of social identities, awareness of structural inequality, and knowledge of identity-general characteristics of inequality. Based on your experience at your current institution, do students have sufficient opportunities to build Stage 1 competencies through their coursework? 
2. In Stage 2, there are two cycles of students’ understanding: (1) knowledge of group characteristics, history, and mechanisms of oppression, and (2) cycles of agency, action, and reflection. How can you build in content and activities that support the development of students’ Stage 2 competencies?
3. Byrd (2021) describes multiple forms of student resistance, including denial, minimization, overwhelm, and avoidance (among others). What forms of resistance have you encountered previously, or what are some forms that you might potentially encounter? 
4. Given that we are continuously growing as educators, what are some steps you might take for yourself as you work to support students’ engagement with critical content? 

Topic	Reference
Students’ Learning about DEI	Byrd, C. M. (2021). Cycles of development in learning about identities, diversity, and equity. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 29(1), 43-52. https://doi.org/10.1037/cdp0000389

Further Resources

There are many amazing educational psychologists who have contributed materials in a variety of formats. Below are examples of APA Division 15 podcasts, practice briefs, and policy briefs that might be relevant to your courses. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list. Feel free to explore further at https://apadiv15.org/. 

Optional Learning Activity: Take a moment to look through these resources and consider how they might be incorporated into activities, discussions, or assignments. 

Resource Type	Links
Podcasts	What is the role of race in educational psychology? A review of research in Educational Psychologist Critical culturalized comprehension: Exploring culture as learners thinking about texts
Policy Briefs	Racial Disproportionality in School Discipline Experts in Educational Psychology File Amicus in Support of Challengers to Florida H.B. 7
Practice Briefs	Healthy Identity Development Includes Ethnicity and Race Motivating Diverse Learners Using Culturally Relevant & Responsive Education

Reflect

Estimated Time: 15-25 minutes

In the Padlet for today, please respond to the following three questions. 

1. Teaching is a process! We can always reflect upon and grow our teaching practice no matter how many times we have taught a course. Based on your current syllabus, how would you evaluate your learning objectives and list of required course materials from an anti-colonial and/or anti-racist perspective? 
2. What are some changes to your learning objectives and/or course materials that you might like to make the next time you teach your course in order to support students’ developmental trajectories learning about anti-colonial and anti-racist content?
3. One of the great things about having a shared teaching community is that we can always support and learn from each other. Are there specific course materials that you have used in your classes that you would recommend to others that help to support an anti-colonial and anti-racist educational psychology? 

Rebuild

We know that everyone is approaching the Syllabus Challenge with different amounts of time to spend on the relevant tasks each day. Because of this, the time estimate varies for this last section. You might spend 5 minutes jotting down ideas. If you have more time, you might begin developing your ideas. The goal is simply to begin drafting learning objectives and course materials.

Brainstorm three changes that you could make to your course: 

1. Draft one learning objective that supports working towards an anti-colonial educational psychology.
2. Identify which resource(s) from the list provided above might be relevant to your curriculum.
3. List one topic area in your curriculum that you could consider revising to incorporate more anti-colonial or anti-racist perspectives. Brainstorm how that course revision might also be used as a way to support students’ developmental trajectories learning about anti-colonial and anti-racist content. 

References 

Gorski, P. C., & Goodman, R. D. (2015). Introduction: Toward a decolonized multicultural counseling and psychology. In R. D. Goodman & P. C. Gorski (Eds.), Decolonizing “multicultural” counseling through social justice. International and Cultural Psychology.