Open Resources for the Inclusive
Curriculum (ORIC): Some Thoughts and
Context
Dr Sean Walton
University of Wolverhampton
20th September
The ORIC Project
• A collaborative project with the University of
Salford.
• The aim of the ORIC project is to create 30
credits of Open Educational Resources from
existing and developing PGCerts around
inclusive curriculum design, sustainable
development, and digital literacy.
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The ORIC Project Objectives
• Create detailed and accessible learning and teaching
resources around inclusive curriculum design covering all
relevant areas (e.g. disability, race, gender, etc.).
• Create detailed and accessible learning and teaching
resources around education for sustainable development.
• Create detailed and accessible learning and teaching
resources around digital literacy.
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Institutional Context
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Over 50% BME students at the UoB.
Large proportion of international students.
Large proportion of home students.
BME students achieve (on average) 20% lower final
degree score than their white peers.
• BME students are six times more likely to be accused of
plagiarism during their undergraduate degree and less
likely to be successful in an appeal against plagiarism.
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A Critical Pedagogic Approach
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‘Teaching in critical pedagogy involves more than learning a few pedagogical
techniques and the knowledge required by the curriculum, the standards, or
the textbook. Critical practitioners find it necessary to appreciate not only
many bodies of knowledge but also the political structure of the school [or
university], wider forms of education in the culture…alternative bodies of
knowledge produced by marginalized or low-status groups, the ways power
operates to construct identities and oppress particular groups, the modus
operandi (MO) of the ways social regulation operates, the complex
processes of racism, gender bias, class bias, cultural bias, heterosexism,
religious intolerance etc., the cultural experiences of students, diverse
teaching styles, educational leaders, and to students to dive into this
complex domain of knowledge and knowing and social action it requires’
(Kincheloe 2008, pp 8-9).
The Language of Diversity
• ‘Diversity is a strong and emotive term that operates as an
unquestionable proposition – it is always – already known as
good/desirable within western liberal discourse. This ‘goodness’
references democratising and equality concerns as well as being
constituted as a ‘modern’ term. Hence, to oppose it would be to align
oneself with ‘elitism’, ‘undemocraticness’, and ‘the past’…In this way
[diversity] might be understood as a moral discourse – and the power
of moral discourses lies in their capacity to render alternative
accounts ‘unsayable’’ (Archer 2007, p 648).
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The language of diversity cont.
‘Contemporary calls to diversify the curriculum appear
unimpeachable, as evidence of an individual or institutional
sensitivity to the dangers of racism and ethnocentrism. The
moral and cognitive rationales behind such calls seems
clear. If we broaden the curriculum to include a range of
different intellectual traditions, different ways of knowing,
and different racial perspectives, we will create a more
inclusive higher education’ (Brookfield 2007, p 557).
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Marcuse’s first form of repressive tolerance.
• Marcuse (1965) identifies the first form of repressive
tolerance as the tolerance of ‘intolerable’ ideologies and
practices.
• This is a form of ‘moral isolationism’ (Midgely 1981) or
extreme epistemological relativism whereby all and any
viewpoint is given equal consideration.
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The first form of repressive tolerance in
action
• Brookfield (2007) gives the following example of this first form of
repressive tolerance in action:
• The call for creationism to be given equal weight in the curriculum
alongside the theory of evolution with the implication that both have
comparable scientific credibility.
• Teaching that climate change is a contested theory.
• Teaching that the idea of the bell curve as applied in the study of
intelligence demonstrates that Europeans are intellectually superior
to other people.
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The problem with the first form of
repressive tolerance.
‘In all three cases, the logic of diversity requires that we
frame classroom discussions of these issues in terms that
give equal and serious consideration to both, or multiple,
sides of an argument. Marcuse’s point is that in giving equal
consideration to views that reinforce the interests of White
supremacy, global capitalism and religious fundamentalism,
teachers end up undercutting their own intention of
developing students’ powers of critical thinking’ (Brookfield
2007, p 559).
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The second form of repressive tolerance.
• The second way that repressive tolerance manifests is by
marginalising the views of repressed groups while, at the
same time, presenting a façade of working in the
emancipatory interests of such groups.
• There are parallels here with the Critical Race Theory
idea of ‘contradiction-closing cases’.
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Effects of the second form of repressive
tolerance
‘When a curriculum is widened to include dissenting and radical
perspectives that are considered alongside the mainstream perspective,
the minority perspectives are always overshadowed by the mainstream
one. This happens even if the radical perspectives are scrupulously
accorded equal time and space. As long as the dominant Whitestream
perspective is included as one of several possible options for study, its
presence inevitably overshadows the minority ones, which will always
be perceived as alternatives, as others – never as the natural centre to
which students should turn (Brookfield 2007, p 559).
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Marcuse on the second form of repressive
tolerance
‘the people exposed to this impartiality are no tabula rasae,
they are indoctrinated by the conditions under which they
live and think and which they do not transcend. To enable
them to become autonomous, to find by themselves what is
true and what is false for man in the existing society, they
would have to be freed from the prevailing indoctrination
(which is no longer recognised as indoctrination) (Marcuse
1965, p 98-99).
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Liberating tolerance
• Liberating tolerance involves
teaching only alternative
perspectives.
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Implications for ORIC
• Focus is on curriculum design from only an inclusive perspective.
• Discusses perspectives within education that focus on the
experience of minoritised and repressed groups e.g. CRT, feminist,
Marist critical pedagogues.
• Creates safe space for critical engagement with concepts of
diversity, inclusion, and identity and questions our understanding of
our own identity, that of our learners, and the conceptual frameworks
we use to understand our relationships (Cousin 2011, Foucault 1979,
Lyotard 1974).
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References
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Archer, L. (2007): Diversity, equality and higher education: a critical reflection on the ab/uses of
equity discourse within widening participation, Teaching in Higher Education, 12:5-6, 635-653.
Brookfield, S. (2007): Diversifying curriculum as the practice of repressive tolerance, Teaching in
Higher Education, 12:5-6, 557-568.
Cousin, G. (2011) Rethinking the Concept of Western, Journal of Higher Education Research and
Development, 30(5), forthcoming.
Foucault, M. (1979) The history of sexuality, Vol 1, An Introduction, London: Allen Lane.
Kincheloe, J. L. (2008) Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy, New York: Springer.
Lyotard, J. (1974) Libidinal Economy. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Marcuse, H. (1965) Repressive Tolerance in R. P. Wolff, B. Moore and H. Marcuse, A Critique of
Pure Tolerance, Boston: Beacon Press, 81-117.
Midgley, M. (1981) On Trying Out One's New Sword on a Chance Wayfarer, in Heart and Mind,
London, Methuen.