Research
Highlights
Three-year MAP IT collaboration culminates in research and publications
Jeanne
L. Higbee, Ph.D.
Three years ago this spring, the General College (GC) Multicultural
Concerns Committee (MCC) began to explore the possibility of adapting
for postsecondary education James Banks and colleagues’ Diversity
Within Unity: Essential Principles for Teaching and Learning in a
Multicultural Society. Banks is an internationally-known theorist
in the field of multicultural education.
In addition to its 12 essential principles, Diversity Within Unity includes an instrument to assess educational climate in K-12 institutions.
MCC formed a subcommittee, the Multicultural Awareness Project for
Institutional Transformation (MAP IT) to create an assessment tool
for use with faculty and staff, and piloted that instrument in GC
in February 2002.
In May 2002 CRDEUL invited James Banks to GC as a visiting scholar.
Banks reviewed the summary statistics from the MAP IT pilot study
and praised the subcommittee on its endeavors, urging the group to
proceed with its plans to develop a parallel instrument to assess
student perspectives.
During this process, the committee also realized that it would be
necessary to adapt Diversity Within Unity’s essential principles
to a higher education setting. The subcommittee’s “10
Guiding Principles” have since been widely disseminated at
professional meetings and through a column in Research and Teaching
in Developmental Education titled “The Multicultural Mission
of Developmental Education: A Starting Point.” Meanwhile, Banks
agreed to be interviewed by Pat Bruch, Dana Lundell, and me; the
conversation was so rich that it yielded two separate articles, one
for CRDEUL’s monograph, Multiculturalism in Developmental
Education,
and another that is forthcoming spring 2004 as a column in Research
and Teaching in Developmental Education.
One of the criticisms of the original MAP IT instrument was that
there were a number of items that did not apply to all faculty and
staff members, resulting in too many responses of “don’t
know” or “not applicable.” During the summer of
2002 MAP IT subcommittee members toiled at resolving this difficulty
by developing three separate assessment tools for administrators,
faculty and instructional staff, and professionals who provide student
support services such as academic advising.
In fall 2002 Michael Dotson, dean of counseling and advising for
Minneapolis Community and Technical College (MCTC), collaborated
with me in creating the fourth questionnaire to be used with students.
In winter 2003, graduate research assistant Kwabena Siaka joined
the MAP IT team, and plans began for administering the MAP IT Student
Questionnaire both in GC as a pilot and at MCTC in spring 2003.
While this work was underway, the original MAP IT team was busy developing
manuscripts on the process, quantitative, and qualitative results
of the GC pilot study of faculty and staff. The first of those articles
was published in the CRDEUL monograph, and the others are currently
under review by professional journals. The MAP IT report was published
in time to disseminate it to all participants in the fall conferences
of the Minnesota Association for Developmental Education (MNADE)
and the College Reading and Learning Association (CRLA).
After almost three years, MAP IT is entering its final stages. In
January, Pat Bruch, Kwabena Siaka, and I will initiate an online
administration of the finalized student form in composition classes,
thus ensuring a high response rate from a large cohort of GC students.
Later in the spring, various MAP IT subcommittee members will make
presentations and disseminate the MAP IT report at a wide variety
of national meetings.
Back to Center Points Contents
|
Jeanne
Higbee
CRDEUL senior adviser for research
Download MAP
IT report
Download Diversity Within Unity, by Banks, Cookson, Gay, Hawley,
Jordan, Irvine, Nieto, Ward, Schofield, and Stephan,
University
of Washington’s Center for Multicultural Education |
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