ITF-707 Social Justice & Equity Topics for Early Intervention Providers

Course Overview

This course explores the concepts of race, gender, ability, culture, and intersecting identities shape our thoughts as they pertain to the study of early intervention justice and equity for Deaf and Hard of Hearing children and their families. We will make use of social, cognitive, and developmental theories to explore what it means to be providers in a multicultural society. We will evaluate the construct of race, how babies, young children and adults come to make sense of race, and what utility it has for early intervention providers. We will examine how culture shapes our values, worldviews, and the ways we communicate with one another. We will define and examine implicit and explicit bias, how stereotypes affect behavior, and how privilege and discrimination shape the lived experiences of members of society as those experiences directly affect the families in our field. We will also examine the intersection of multiple social identities with an orientation towards providing equitable services with limited barriers. This course has a heavy emphasis on adults to think about the parents and caregivers with whom early intervention providers work, making way for a family-centered approach. Students of this course will take a reflective journey to reveal and begin to process their internal biases.