Call for book chapters: Culturally responsive teaching and learning online through theory, with design, and by practice
by Mary Rice
Announcing a call for book chapter proposals and a forthcoming special issue highlighting criticality, cultural responsiveness, and social justice in online teaching and learning.
As online education continues to grow, we need curriculum and training that prepares teachers for online course design and delivery. This is true at both the K-12 and higher education levels. One major challenge accompanying the growth in online education is that many teacher educators and K-12 teachers find themselves under pressure and underprepared to teach online courses. Moreover, online teaching at the K-12 level is often something that teachers discover after their initial certification. These brave educators opt to try this out and usually endure a steep learning curve leading to eventual competence or attrition, rather than planning for a fulfilling career teaching online at the outset.
It is a good sign that there is increasing commitment by many teachers and schools with online programs to meet the needs of diverse learners. Such commitment is evidenced by new research grappling with how to conceptualize diversity online, how to apply design frameworks for online design, and how to organize stakeholders to build common understandings for united advocacy on these issues. The research community meeting at the DLAC conference this year is hosting a summit focused on students with disabilities and other special populations on February 23, 2020 in Austin. There is no doubt that there will be many lively presentations on these issues as well. These growing commitments live inside of our desire to expand our capacity for valuing diversity, in all of its forms. We seek to broaden the conversation about online learning as it pertains to research, practice, and even policy. We do so by making online teaching and learning accessible, relevant, and supportive of multiple intersectional identities.
Some attempts by scholars to shift conversations in the field of online education towards understandings about social diversity are met with claims that innovations like personalization through learner control and attention to neurodiversity will automatically address these concerns both now and in the future without having to confront racism, classism, gender bias, and other forms of oppression. Certainly, there is nothing inherently discriminatory in these orientations; in fact, many of these were developed to promote inclusion. Even so, applying additional critical frameworks to the design and teaching process provides a sociocultural view that is badly needed to truly make online learning a safe, educative, accessible space for all. We would like to know more about how colleagues in the field conceptualize critical orientations alongside popular curriculum orientations and frameworks when designing their courses.
We are editing a volume for Routledge (Taylor & Francis) that provides an additional, extended venue for scholars, researchers, instructional designers, and classroom teachers to engage with critical theories that inform teaching and learning in online environments. We invite manuscripts that address a wide variety of online teaching and learning issues including those that arise in higher education and K-12 settings. We are soliciting chapters that represent a broader theoretical landscape than is typical in online learning research and which demonstrate the breadth and depth of theoretical lenses that have been historically underrepresented. This includes, but is not limited to culturally responsive teaching, critical race theory, critical pedagogies, disability studies, feminisms, and LGBTQIA+ studies. This volume is expected to be published in early 2022. We seek chapter proposals that apply these theories to design theories and principles, provide practical examples of teaching and learning that embraces these theories, or that address trends in online learning and teacher education such as heutagogy, microcredentials, or social media use.
If you’re interested, please submit a chapter proposal of 1,000 words to (xwoodley@nmsu.edu) by March 15, 2020. Chapters must address some aspect of critical theories’ application to culturally responsive online teaching and learning as they apply to teacher preparation and professional development in either design or practice. Final chapters will be 5,000-6,000 words—exclusive of tables, figures, and references.
No literature reviews.
No metanalyses.
Anticipated Timeline
March 15, 2020 — Chapter proposals due
May 15, 2020 — Notifications for chapter outlines
September 15, 2020 — Chapter drafts due
January 15, 2021 — Feedback sent to authors
March 15, 2021 — Final drafts due
August 15, 2021 — Submission of a complete manuscript to Routledge
Routledge Volume Editors
Xeturah Woodley (xwoodley@nmsu.edu)
Mary Rice (maryrice@unm.edu)
Also of interest might be a special issue of Distance Education that we developed that will be released in late 2020. Editors of this special issue include Mary Rice (University of New Mexico), Patrick Lowenthal (Boise State University), and Xeturah Woodley (New Mexico State University).
About the Author
Dr. Mary Rice is an Assistant Professor of Literacy at the University of New Mexico.