ONLINE ADJUNCT FACULTY TIP #34 - The Accidental Risk of Ethnocentric Coursework

Per Wikipedia, Ethnocentrism is the tendency to believe that one's ethnic or cultural group is centrally important, and that all other groups are measured in relation to one's own.

As a college faculty member, I challenge you to locate your critical perspective spectacles - you know, the pair that was on your desk earlier in your career and now pushed to the far back of the bottom drawer. I doubt we make a conscious decision to create and evolve ethnocentric coursework, yet, are we really making attempts to infuse worldly perspectives into what we teach our students? Is ethnocentric our default setting?

Three years ago, I created a course titled, "Inclusion of Students with Special Needs" - a popular course with numerous "local" examples of best practices in inclusion. After the 10th offering, I opted for a "total overhaul" of the content. Surprisingly, true scrutiny of the offering revealed exclusive, but unintended, ethnocentric design. Students learned inclusion from a Wisconsin lens. To counter this narrow path, I re-tooled the course to include a full unit on global inclusive practices. I allocated much time to literature searches and first-hand discussions with persons beyond my geographic comfort zone.

I recently completed offering this "revised" course - and found that it fostered increased critical perspective discussions from students. The world isn't Wisconsin. I am in the process of reviewing all of my offerings through a critical perspective looking glass.