Developing Your OER
7.4 Revising with an Equity Lens
Theresa Huff
Learning Objectives
By the end of this chapter, you will be able to
- Identify explicit and implicit biases in OER materials and original writing.
- Recognize strategies for reinforcing accountability, specificity, precision, and humanity in OER revisions.
- Identify examples of inclusive language and how it improves clarity, representation, and equity in educational content.
- Differentiate between biased and equity-focused revisions in textbook content.
Inclusive revision with an equity lens requires the creative application of empathy to the written text. This is your opportunity to put yourself in the reader’s place and imagine the text from their position. In this chapter, you learn how to spot:
- biases in OER you are remixing and in your own writing.
- opportunities to reinforce the principles of accountability, specificity, precision, and humanity.
- places to replace language with more inclusive language.
Spotting Bias in Textbooks
Particularly if you are adopting and remixing OER, you will need to review the OER for explicit and implicit bias.
Explicit bias in a textbook is easy to spot. It may involve the use of stereotypical examples or incorrect/dated terms to describe someone’s race, ethnicity, gender, economic status, and so forth. Explicit bias in textbooks can be pointed out on the page.
Implicit bias can be harder to spot in a textbook because it is based on what’s not on the page. It might be implied through tone. It might be a lack of discussion of scholars of color or an over-emphasis on “the greats” (who just happen to all be White and male). It might be found at the sentence level, with references to “men and women,” rendering invisible readers who don’t identify as either.
For more descriptions of biases found in textbooks and curricular material, explore Seven Forms of Bias in Instructional Materials from the Myra Sadker Foundation [Website].
In your own writing, bias can be subtle and difficult to recognize. Instructional editors, Stephanie Lenox and Abbey Gaterud have identified what they call “textbook mode” as one of the brightest red flags for biased writing. Textbook mode is a default style of writing that is easy for many academic writers to reproduce because they’ve spent so much of their career reading dense, dry, and demanding scholarly work. Read through the warning signs of falling into default Textbook Mode in the box below to see if your draft has fallen prey to this form of bias.
Warning Signs of Default Textbook Mode
- Trying to “get it right” rather than acknowledging complexity.
- Worrying about “dumbing down” the content rather than making the content accessible.
- Justifying a Eurocentric focus because students need to know “the basics” first.
- Expecting students to “look it up” if they don’t know something rather than explaining the context of background.
- Assuming students bring your level of enthusiasm for the topic rather than engaging them in mutual excitement.
Reinforce Equity
To approach your revision with an equity lens, look for opportunities to reinforce accountability, specificity, precision, and humanity. Use the arrows next to each of these in the H5P below to read examples of these at a macro and micro level.
Revising for Inclusive Language
Inclusive language involves an intentional effort on the part of the writer to eliminate bias, assumptions, stereotypes, and barriers to understanding. Language is a product of culture and reflects the culture’s systems of power and oppression, but language can also shape thought and promote change. Conscious and deliberate choices in the words we use can counter the ingrained biases that affect the way we think about and see the world.
The following excerpts offers examples of text before and after revision from openly licensed texts. The color-coded highlighting follows the principles accountability, specificity, precision, and humanity to applied to inclusive language. To explore these excerpts without color coding, please see the Applying-Inclusive-Language_no_color pdf.
Note: this content may include ideas and descriptions that are offensive or upsetting. The revisions attempt to address the issues from the original texts.
Example 1
Original: “On March 21, 2014, Alejandro Nieto, a Mexican male, was shot and killed by the police in San Francisco, California.”
Revision: “On March 21, 2014, Alejandro Nieto, a 28-year-old Latino man from San Francisco, California, was killed after White police officers Jason Sawyer and Richard Schiff shot him fourteen times.”
- Precision: Changing “Mexican” to “Latino” reflects the current preferred term when discussing matters of ethnicity. The addition of the police officer’s race provides an essential detail that’s part of this encounter. “Male” and “female” are best reserved for non-human animals; the simple addition of the masculine pronoun is sufficient to convey Alejandro Nieto’s gender.
- Specificity: The number of shots fired helps the reader understand the degree of violence in this police encounter.
- Humanity: Adding “28-year-old man” helps the reader understand who Nieto was.
- Accountability: Naming the police officers shows who is responsible for this action. This revision addresses a rhetorical device commonly known as the past exonerative tense, which is often used in media accounts, political writing, and police reports.
Example 2
Original: One long-standing explanation is that blacks and other people of color are biologically inferior: They are naturally less intelligent and have other innate flaws that keep them from getting a good education and otherwise doing what needs to be done to achieve the American Dream. As discussed earlier, this racist view is no longer common today. However, whites historically used this belief to justify slavery, lynching, the harsh treatment of Native Americans in the 1800s, and lesser forms of discrimination.
Revision: One long-standing explanation that has no scientific basis for why racial and ethnic inequalities exist is that Black people and other people of color are biologically inferior. This racist belief claims that some people are naturally less intelligent and capable than others. The concept of the biological inferiority of other races is a central belief of White supremacy and has been used historically to justify slavery, lynching, and systematic destruction of Indigenous peoples and their cultures.
- Accountability: Call out theories and beliefs that are racist or not supported scientifically.
- Specificity: Make sure to fill in all the details, even if you think the subject or context is clear.
- Humanity: Avoid using adjectives to describe people: “the poor,” “the homeless,” “the Blacks,” “the unvaccinated,” etc. This linguistic shortcut tends to reduce a group of people to a single characteristic.
- Precision: This revision has a more precise focus on White supremacy in order to avoid giving unintended legitimacy to the concept of biological inferiority.
Example 3
Original: In a multicultural society, one crucial question is: Are standardized tests biased against certain social classes or racial and ethnic groups? This question is much more complicated than it seems because bias, as we explored in Chapter 1, has a variety of meanings. An everyday meaning of bias often involves the fairness of using standardized test results to predict potential performance of disadvantaged students who have previously had few educational resources. For example, should Kaga, a high school student who worked hard but had limited educational opportunities because of the poor schools on his reservation and few educational resources in his home, be denied graduation from high school because of his score on one test. It was not his fault that he did not have the educational resources and if given a chance with a change his environment (e.g. by going to college) his performance may blossom. In this view, test scores reflect societal inequalities and can punish students who are less privileged and are often erroneously interpreted as a reflection of a fixed inherited capacity.
Revision: Kaga, an Anishinaabe high school student, works hard to get good grades at his under-resourced school. At home, his mom works evenings and isn’t around to help with homework. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he attended class online but had to share the family’s computer and unreliable wifi with his eighth-grade sister. Now he’s about to take a skills test to determine whether he graduates. Should a single, high-stakes test decide Kaga’s future? What do standardized tests really measure?
Recent research has shown that test scores–and even the questions they ask–reflect socioeconomic inequalities (citation). These tests and the interpretation of their results disproportionately and negatively impact students who come from low-income communities and racial or ethnic and cultural minority groups (citation). In a multicultural society, we as criminology students must ask this: How do biased standardized tests, both in the schools and in our field, impact certain social classes or racial and ethnic or cultural groups? This question is much more complicated than it seems because bias, as we explored in Chapter 1, shows up in a variety of ways.
- Humanity: You can use a people-first approach at the paragraph level by leading with a personal example that humanizes your subject.
- Precision: The focus of this section is on racial, ethnic, and cultural bias in standardized testing, yet the original doesn’t mention Kaga’s ethnicity and cultural identity at all. This is a relevant and essential detail.
- Accountability: Citing your sources and showing where ideas come from is one way of demonstrating accountability.
- Specificity: Whenever you use “we,” be specific about who is included in that group. This level of specificity helps students see themselves as part of the in-group that can instigate change. Avoid the “editorial we” when referring to general groups of people.
- Other notes: Notice how the revision breaks up this paragraph into smaller chunks for readability and begins with the specific and moves to the general, which guides students from known and familiar experiences to new information.
Example 4
Original: The fear that there would be a slave revolt was the main reason the death penalty was imposed with the belief that it would be a deterrence for Blacks who weren’t murdering whites but possibly destroying commodities or goods and also slaves who may have thought of running away or attack a white in any manner.
Revision: White enslavers feared that the people they held as slaves would revolt in order to gain freedom. Law enforcement used the threat of the death penalty to deter Black people from fighting back or destroying goods in protest.
- Accountability: Use active voice to make it clear who is doing what in each sentence. This is an important strategy for holding people accountable for their actions.
- Humanity: Especially when writing about slavery, take a people-first approach. See this resource for guidance.
- Specificity: Why did enslaved people revolt? Specificity makes sure students see the entire picture.
- Precision: The original sentence is muddy and tries to do too much. Sometimes using shorter sentences and saying less can be the key to precision.
Licenses and Attributions
“Revising with an Equity Lens” by Theresa Huff is adapted from “What Revision Is and Is Not” by Stephanie Lenox and Abbey Gaterud and “Principles for Inclusive Revision” and “Applying Inclusive Language” by Stephanie Lenox for Open Oregon Educational Resources is licensed CC BY 4.0. “Revising with an Equity Lens” is licensed under CC-BY 4.0.
