4 Framework: Values and Definitions

Values

The DOERS3 Equity Work Group holds the following values as guides in the development of the Blueprint:

• Learner-centered OER promotes equity, inclusion, and accessibility, captured in one member’s reminder that “we are teaching students—not content.”
• Recognizing inequities and working to redress them requires taking responsibility and action that is personal and professional, as well as individual and institutional.
• Equity and quality should be understood as constituent components of one another—inclusive, capacious, and interdependent. Efforts to make access, participation, and completion equitable without assurance of quality are a hollow promise.
• In higher education, achieving equity results in increased student success in terms of access, participation, persistence, completion, and entry into the workforce.

Definition

The DOERS3 Equity Work Group proposes the following definitions of equity, which has been developed by members and builds on their work and that of others, and equity-mindedness, which has been developed by Estela Mara Bensimon.

EQUITY

Life chances and choices are limited by many kinds of inequality, including social, income, racial, ethnic, gender, and ability. Equity is a corrective process that demands fairness for marginalized and minoritized populations by reducing gaps in opportunity and achievement through systematic efforts.

In higher education, equity is measurable and must be attended to across multiple touchpoints along the student success continuum, including: access to, participation in, persistence through, and completion of quality educational programs across student populations, disaggregated by race/ethnicity, income, gender, ability, first-generation and geography, among other characteristics.

EQUITY-MINDEDNESS

“The term ‘Equity-Mindedness’ refers to the perspective or mode of thinking exhibited by practitioners who call attention to patterns of inequity in student outcomes. These practitioners are willing to take personal and institutional responsibility for the success of their students, and critically reassess their own practices. It also requires that practitioners are race-conscious and aware of the social and historical context of exclusionary practices in American Higher Education.” (Bensimon at the Center for Urban Education at the University of Southern California)

The DOERS3 Equity Work Group encourages all who engage with the Blueprint and the Equity Through OER Rubric to reflect on and determine definitions that are most appropriate and relevant to their own educational contexts. Likewise, they should reflect on and identify their context-specific student and practitioner populations of opportunity.