Indigo Cultural Center is focused on promoting equitable child-care for all children, through the recognition that culture is at the heart of all children’s development, socialization, and worldview. By recognizing that quality child care does not have the same formula for all children from all backgrounds, Indigo insists that anti-bias education and culturally responsive care is necessary to promote development, especially for minority or at-risk children, who are more likely to be in danger of academic failure. Currently, Indigo Cultural Center provides community trainings regarding culturally responsive care and anti-bias curriculum to teachers, care providers, and parents, who are interested in addressing issues of race, ethnicity, culture, bias, and diversity in their classrooms and care centers.
These trainings are grounded in the Anti-Bias Education framework developed by Louise Derman-Sparks, an educator from Pacific Oaks, CA. The trainings emphasize that children are constructing their own perceptions of their social reality as they begin to form early relationships with their peers, teachers, and environments. First, these trainings attempt to provide child care providers, administrators, and parents, with the awareness that race is a salient aspect of a child’s worldview. Secondly, they provide attendees with tools that can be used in early child-care settings in order to help children develop non-biased responses to racial differences and skills for challenging stereotypes.
However, currently these trainings are based in national data and practices in other cities and areas throughout the country. Indigo is experiencing demand from their participants for more local examples of these practices in the Phoenix area that can be used to inform practices in their own centers. Indigo hopes to respond to this demand by studying the implementation of anti-bias curriculum and culturally responsive care in the unique cultural context of the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Therefore, the purpose of this project is to identify where and how culturally responsive care is being conducted in the Valley. In order to do so, Indigo needs to identify early childhood care providers who are currently implementing anti-bias practices in their center. This local and community-based information will be able to inform the redesigning of Indigo’s community trainings, as a way to address the needs of the attendees. Additionally, this information can be used to advocate for the use of anti-bias curricula and culturally responsive care in and beyond Phoenix.
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