Anti-bias education is not just about curriculum and teaching. Bias impacts assessment and documentation in insidious ways. Regardless of their commitment to equity, new and experienced educators often overlook bias in assessment.
Check out some ways that Educa can help teachers review documentation and identify biases.
Learning Stories Challenge Educators to Examine Observations
Standards and checklists produce quantitative data that often hide bias. Learning stories are qualitative by nature and challenge educators to retell narratives of learning events through the eyes of a child.
Writing stories based on educational observations allows educators to review their perception of a learning event. Knowing that a story will be read by caregivers and children also helps prevent biases or generalisations in learning analysis.
Lastly, learning stories are rich with potential vs. static or summative, making the process both formative and positive.
Learn how you can write your own learning stories on Educa here.
Story Approval Provides an Opportunity for Collaboration.
The story approval system in Educa allows educators to receive feedback on their stories from administrators or peers. Peers can check an educator’s learning stories for bias and inequity in language, content, and tone.
Find out how you can set up story approval for your site right here.
Story Reports Provide Insights
The number of stories written per child can be revealing. Some children are recipients of multiple stories per month, while others have few stories written about them.
The report challenges educators to ask- “why am I writing more stories about this particular child?” Or, to put another way, “why am I observing this child more than other children?”
Learn more about the child reports available on Educa here.