An Educators Introduction to this Open Educational Resource (OER)
What is this Open Educational Resource (OER)?
This Open Educational Resource (OER) examines how the normalization of the nuclear family opposes diverse family structures and creates harm by denying other unique ways of living. By exploring intersections of family, race, and forms of oppression, our resource encourages critical thinking on concepts of normality and what it means to belong.
Who is the Target Audience?
This guide supports educators seeking to use this OER to provide education to the target audience of high school students within Alberta. The central theme explored is how social practices which enforce ideas of "normal families" creates harm in society. The OER will explore how marginalized groups in Alberta were targeted to control “abnormality,” —including forced sterilization, instutionalization, as well as the residential school’s system, discrimination, and homophobia towards queer and trans communities.
The OER provides an opportunity for students to become aware of these legacies and contemporary inequalities that continue to operate within Alberta and wider Canadian society. Educators should anticipate that many of students will be members of “normal” or nuclear families and may be resistant to the critiques presented. Therefore, the OER is intended to prime students to reflect critically about their own experience and encouraging students to students to explore the uncomfortable concepts without judgement.
How to use the OER
This Open Educational Resource is two-fold. It contains printable pop-up displays, and a robust Educators Guide which outlines our research in depth proving the full scope to educator and facilitators.
The pop-up display supports a tactile learning experience that communicates our central themes through sight, touch, and discovery. The pop-up display is designed to be set-up on a table—like ones found in a high school library, counselor's office, cafeteria, or classroom. Each pop-up can be downloaded and printed on a standard office printer, then cut and folded from a single sheet of 8.5 x 11 cardstock. By using standard materials, such as these, we can ensure a wider use of the OER as users are not required to purchase new materials to produce it.
As you interact with the content through the teaching guide it is written to provide higher-level content for educators. This content is intended to be able to easily be incorporated into to the Alberta Curriculum for Social Studies 10,20 and 30. This resource includes a glossary of key terms relevant to the topic which Alberta high school students may need to be made familiar with to understand these topics.
At the end of each section questions have been provided tying the section contents to the curricular topics of Perspectives on Globalization (Social 10), Perspectives on Nationalism (Social 20) and Perspectives on Ideology (Social 30). These questions are intended to be used flexibly for either facilitating group discussions or for learners to independently reflect on.
At the end of this guide a short quiz has been provided for students to check their learning. To accommodate different learning needs, both a printable version and a link to a digital format have been provided.