Presentation
The Efficacy of Developing a Culturally Responsive Curriculum: DEI Course Review and Enhancement
American Occupational Therapy Association
(2022)
Abstract
In today's changing social and cultural climate, OT/OTA students continue the tradition of ensuring cultural competency and client-centered care. It has always been the goal of occupational therapy as a profession to ensure equitable access to and provision of quality services to diverse social populations to enhance overall occupational performance. The educators in the OTA Online program at St. Catherine University, in response to the civil unrest in the university's home city of Minneapolis, formed a programmatic diversity, equity, and inclusion task force. The main charge of this task force was to conduct a curriculum content review to ensure students receive educational materials that are welcoming, comfortable for all, and reflective of all populations. The task force quickly realized that there was not an existing instrument that could be utilized for a uniform and concise process. Through intense collaboration and assessment of programmatic needs, service delivery areas, and student performance, a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion review and faculty training was created. Careful consideration was made to ensure that student service learning, fieldwork, and aspects of assistive technology were included to represent the specific needs of the visual, audio, kinesthetic, and combination learner. Upon reviewing the results of the IRB approved surveys completed prior to and directly after the DEI review faculty training , it was evident that the tool and training was beneficial to faculty confidence and competence at revising and adding DEI enriched content to curriculum. This course is designed to teach others to utilize the review and faculty training within their curriculum to ensure that both current and future OT/OTA programs have a platform to begin the conversation regarding DEI content, as well as a starting point to initiate individual programmatic assessment.
Keywords
- Diversity,
- Course Development,
- Curriculum,
- Revision
Disciplines
Publication Date
Summer June 2, 2022
Citation Information
Taisha Trotman and Katherine Toon. "The Efficacy of Developing a Culturally Responsive Curriculum: DEI Course Review and Enhancement" American Occupational Therapy Association (2022) Available at: http://works.bepress.com/taisha-trotman/7/