ABR Curriculum Review & Research
Our latest project in focus.
Project Overview
In 2020, we were fortunate to receive a grant from the Ontario Trillium Foundation’s Youth Opportunities Fund for a joint project between LAMP Community Health Centre, CARE and Toronto Metropolitan University’s School of Child and Youth Care. The 2-year, $495 000 grant allowed us to build the groundwork for a larger project looking into the ways in which anti-Black racism is taught, disrupted, and upheld in CYC pre-service education.
In Phase I of the project, the research team, in consultation with a steering committee of Black CYC educations, alumni and practitioners and with input generated from a series of Black youth roundtables, developed and implemented a mixed-methods study of TMU’s undergraduate and graduate program — including Black students experiences, faculty/instructor pedagogy and barriers to meaningful and sustained change. Phase I also included a review of both programs’ curriculum against eight (8) project-developed learning outcomes related to anti-Black racism and Afrocentric/Black ways of knowing.
Phase II (currently underway) involves the planning and implementation of a small pilot to test anti-racist curriculum revisions and instructional development for five undergrad courses in the Winter semester of 2023.
Project Outputs
One of the goals of the project was to generate some resources that would support curriculum and pedagogical development of faculty and instructors teaching in CYC and related disciplines. Some of those resources are available now on this website in the Resource Library. We will continue to add to the library as the project continues.
Another goal of the project was to develop the methodology for a comprehensive ABR curriculum review for CYC programs across the province. We plan to use the information gathered and research tools developed during our groundwork to scale up the project to provide more in-depth curriculum and instructional development at TMU and to partner with other CYC programs for a similar review. Please email us for more information on the next phase of the project and/or if your CYC program is interested.
We will be hosting The Black Care Conference: Knowledge Exchange in January 2023 — an event that will bring together educators, practitioners and community members of all ages — so we can share our research findings, resources and upcoming plans and hear about the work being done by other organization/collectives.
Our Partners & Funders
The work for this project is made possible by the following partners and funders. Thank you for supporting our mission and helping us to bring this project to life.
