Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
What: The capacity for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion prepares learners to engage in an intentional and continuous process of learning culturally affirming ways of being, interacting, and behaving that result in equitable living outcomes in both global and local communities. EDI encourages the development of empathy, respect, and understanding around differences and the tools to help bridge those differences. EDI prioritizes the critical awareness of historical and contemporary structural inequity and its causes; encourages the development of empathy, respect, and skills for communicating across differences (including but not limited to race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender, gender identity or expression, disability, body size, age, sexuality, social class, religion, linguistic background, and nationality); and develops tools in service of a diverse, equitable, and inclusive society.
Why: EDI enables students to work collaboratively, effectively, equitably, and respectfully with diverse groups. Students may better understand systemic oppression and advocate for a more equitable world by developing global and intercultural fluency.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Capacity
Identify the intersectional positions occupied by themselves and other people.
- Recognize social positions defined by race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, gender identity and expression, sexuality, ability, class, nationality, and others, and their effect on identities.
- Recognize and apply key concepts underlying EDI, including diversity, equality vs. equity, inclusion, bias, stereotype, privilege, oppression, intersectionality, and anti-racism.
- Empathize with people who occupy different intersectional positions from their own.
- Recognize the intersectional impacts of multiple systems of oppression (e.g., racism, ethnocentrism, settler colonialism, sexism, cissexism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, and others) in shaping societal, group, and individual experiences of privilege and oppression.
Decode and interrogate representations of identity, culture, and other social categories.
- Understand how evidence has been used to legitimize and resist inequity and how such evidence is created, collected, and deployed via political, cultural, and social practices.
- Identify examples of bias, stereotypes, prejudice, privilege, omission, and erasure.
- Recognize systemic patterns of oppression (e.g., racism, ethnocentrism, settler colonialism, sexism, cissexism, heterosexism, ableism, classism, and others).
Recognize how systems of power shape society, and how to reinvent society to promote a more equitable world.
- Create and execute strategies that help to redress oppression and create opportunity across the boundaries of intersectional positions.
- Recognize how systems of privilege/power impact one’s personal experiences.
- Recognize how systems of privilege/power shape one’s perceptions of the world and others.
- Reimagine systems of oppression to create opportunities for marginalized groups.