SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) Project on Inclusive Curriculum

SEED Project Overview

SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) was established in 1986 by Peggy McIntosh at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College in the United States. It is codirected by Brenda Flyswithhawks, Santa Rosa Junior College, California, [Page 1927]and Emily Style, Westfield High School, New Jersey. The project prepares K–12 teachers as well as college teachers and parents to lead monthly yearlong seminars in their school communities on how to make curricula, teaching methods, and school climates more gender fair, multicultural, and inclusive of students from all backgrounds.

A weeklong, residential, summer SEED New Leaders' Workshop, cocreated and co-facilitated by a multicultural staff of 14, prepares educators and parents to lead or colead SEED seminars in their own school buildings or homes, enrolling 10 to 20 colleagues for the year on a voluntary basis. SEED seminars have been led in 33 U.S. states and 14 other nations. A SEED seminar may be led in any language.

A key idea behind the SEED Project is that both professional and personal faculty development, supported over time, are needed if schools are to enable students and teachers to develop a balance of self-esteem and respect for the cultural realities of others—in the United States and in other parts of the world. When teachers are put at the center of their own processes of growth and development, they can more successfully put students' growth and development at the center of their educational efforts. What the SEED codirectors name “faculty-centered faculty development” parallels student-centered learning.

The SEED Project works to fill the gap in teacher education that has been created by a lack of attention to systemic power dimensions in education. Some people have been more privileged than others have within the history of education. Most schools of education have not made systemic oppression and privilege a topic of study. The SEED Project asserts that without systemic understanding of gender, race, class, and other interlocking societal systems that affect education, educators who try to meet the needs of all students will lack coherence, cultural competence, and pedagogical flexibility. SEED seminars support teachers and administrators in raising their awareness of systemic barriers to equitable education and of how to bring down those barriers. Some examples of systemic inequity in education are curriculum materials created entirely by White people, or literature focused on the lives of males, stereotyping of certain kinds of children, or teaching methods that further entitle the most assertive young people or that privilege argumentation as the key academic skill.

History and Assumptions

SEED started in 1986 as an experiment to see whether teachers might be the leaders of their own professional development. McIntosh had already led six monthly yearlong faculty development seminars for college teachers, funded by the Andrew V. Mellon Foundation, at the Wellesley Centers for Women. The seminars addressed the question of how materials on women could be brought into the liberal arts disciplines and what changes this would bring about in the framing assumptions of each academic field. McIntosh had also led four monthly yearlong seminars for K–12 teachers on diversifying school curricula and teaching methods, funded by the Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge Foundation and enrolling 20 teachers each year from public and private schools in 11 states. Style co-led the final New Jersey–based Dodge seminar.

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