ECE1111 - Diverse Children and Family Relations

Competencies

1. Examine teaching and environmental strategies that promote a child's and family's sense of belonging and family connectedness.
2. Analyze and relate the importance of familial, cultural and societal context to our understanding of children's development and behavior.
3. Assess one's culture, personal values and bias to be sensitive to differences in family structures and social and cultural backgrounds.
4. Explore theories of families and dynamics, including roles and relationships within and between families and communities.
5. Explore how to support families in assessing educational options and making decisions related to child development and parenting.
6. Research family-oriented services within local communities to better link families with resources based on priorities and concerns.
7. Examine and recognize that students bring assets for learning based on their individual experiences, abilities, talents, prior learning, peer and social group interactions, language, culture, family and community values, and that approaching their work with students with this asset-based mindset affirms the validity of students' backgrounds and identities.
8. Examine and understand multiple theories of identity formation and know how to help students develop positive social identities based on their membership in multiple groups in society.
9. Understand how alignment with a student's cultural background is necessary to make meaningful connections that enable the construction of knowledge and acquisition of skills, how culture influences cognitive processes, and how these processes can be stimulated in a cultural frame.
10. Understand the diverse impacts of individual and systemic trauma, such as experiencing homelessness, foster care, incarceration, migration, medical fragility, racism, and micro and macro aggression on learning and development, and know how to support students using culturally responsive strategies and resources to address these impacts.
11. Understand how prejudice, discrimination and racism operate at the interpersonal, intergroup and institutional level.
12. Explore one's own intersecting social identities and how they impact daily experiences as an educator; assess how biases, perceptions and academic training may affect teaching practice and perpetuate oppressive systems, and how tools can be utilized to mitigate behavior to disrupt oppressive systems.
13. Understand the importance of engaging in culturally affirming, reciprocal communication with families about student development, learning and performance.
14. Recognize the responsibility to question normative school knowledge, conventional teaching and other professional practices, and beliefs and assumptions about diverse students, families and communities that adversely impact learning.
15. Understand multiple theories of race and ethnicity, including but not limited to racial formation, processes of racialization, and intersectionality; understand the definitions of and differences between prejudice, discrimination, bias and racism; understand how ethnocentrism, deficit-based teaching and white supremacy undermine pedagogical equity.
16. Understand that knowledge creations, ways of knowing, and teaching are social and cultural practices shaped by race and ethnicity, often resulting in racially disparate advantages and disadvantages; understand the histories and social struggles of historically defined racialized groups, including but not limited to Indigenous people, Black Americans, Latinx Americans and Asian Americans.
17. Understand the cultural content, world view, concepts and perspectives of Minnesota-based American Indian Tribal Nations and communities, including Indigenous histories and languages.
18. Understand the impact of the intersection of race and ethnicity with other forms of difference, including class, gender, sexuality, religion, national origin, immigration status, language, ability and age.