Dimension 3: Culturally Sustaining
Evaluating OER against the Counter-Hegemony criterion
Culturally Sustaining
OER challenge historic methods of legitimising academia and recognise and celebrate each learner’s culture, inviting learners to engage with a topic through the richness of their own lens.
The Equity Rubric for OER Evaluation gives a resource a high rating for Counter-Hegemony if it “challenges the hegemonic ‘white gaze’ through which academic performance has been historically legitimised.”
The Rubric suggests looking for “content combining knowledge about learning, learners, families, and communities with the ability to see information, ideas, and details from the perspectives of others.”
Key Examples and Suggestions
Chapter 3: Indigenizing Your Classroom: A Practice in Inclusive Pedagogy in Teaching in the University
Qualla Ketchum
This chapter explores culturally responsive pedagogy as well as the benefits, to all students, of including Indigenous knowledges and voices in the curriculum.
Note: This text was created in the US through a lens of the knowledge and experience of a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.
Access: Indigenizing Your Classroom
Open at the Margins: Critical Perspectives on Open Education
Maha Bali, Catherine Cronin, Laura Czerniewicz, Robin DeRosa, and Rajiv Jhangiani (eds)
An authentic communication of open education concepts from multiple perspectives, edited by leaders of the open education field. As the editors beautifully put it, this book is “an attempt at critical pluriversalism”.
The text brings together a wide collection of articles, lectures, blog posts, and other works from a diversity of authors. Topics cover a broad range: decolonising the curriculum, barriers to working in Open, queering Open, areas where Open falls short, and many other reflections.
Access: Open at the Margins
‘Hegemonic masculinity’ entry in Democracy in Difference
Carolyn D’Cruz
This entry explores the term ‘hegemonic masculinity’ as well as the broader term ‘hegemony’, providing several examples and counter-examples. D’Cruz clearly defines ‘hegemony’ in the following excerpt from page 178:
“Hegemony refers not just to domination but an ideological structure that gains the consent of those who are subordinate in such a system.
When an ideology (where patterns of making sense of the world appear as ‘natural’, as if separate from historical context, power and knowledge) becomes dominant, and people give consent to conform to processes of normalisation, we call that process hegemonic.
In other words, hegemony is not a coercive exertion of power; people are not forced to align their interests with dominant ways of thinking. Rather, people willingly submit to prevailing ideologies tied to blocs of power.”
Access: Democracy in Difference
Learning Resource: Critically Appraising for Antiracism Tool
Ramona Naicker
Dedicated to identifying racial bias in published research, the Critically Appraising for Antiracism Tool guides users through key questions for consideration with brief explanations and rationale.
Naicker’s website goes into further detail about the two main categories of concern: underrepresentation and interpretation. The site offers a simplified breakdown of these key concepts as well as curated readings.
Learning Resource: Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI): Your instructional “way of seeing” in High Quality Online Courses
University of Waterloo, Queen’s University, University of Toronto and Conestoga College
This chapter provides a warm and disambiguated path into understanding the lens through which one teaches. Useful reflective questions guide the reader through unpacking their teaching practices and links to further resources provide curated rabbit holes to wander down.
Download this page (pdf)
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