Chapter 7: Assessing Curricular Bias: Student Resistance and the Transformative Classroom

The objective of this chapter is to examine the potential impact of introducing the Midwest and Plains Equity Assistance Center’s (MAP Center) tool, Assessing Bias in Standards and Curricular Materials, as a possible stimulant to a classroom. We believe that engaging students in developing critical literacy that interrogates historical narrative, mediated by this tool, will have the ability to authentically democratize education by probing into the presentation of, or absence of, multiple narratives within a curriculum rooted in a Eurocentric epistemology. We assert that the ability to incite student resistance could progress a democratic education beyond mere participation, toward activism and future civic engagement. This may occur as educators and students co-construct the meaning of a curriculum by examining the ways in which their own contexts are historically situated, as well as contribute their narratives to the development of multiple perspectives within the classroom. In this way, educators can operationalize student resistance to a hegemonic curriculum rooted in whiteness by centering marginalized voices.