Capretta, T., Bachman, H. F., & Zhang, J. (2025). Centering dignitary safety in curriculum challenges: A heuristic for school administrators. Theory Into Practice, 64(2), 125-138. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2025.2453354
Abstract
Debates about what and how K-12 schools should teach young people are ongoing and may cause unrest in school communities. Regularly, school administrators face challenges to the school curriculum from students, families, and communities. Beyond legal considerations, administrators need tools to navigate relationships with the school community and maintain a safe and positive school climate for students to learn. This article proposes a heuristic based on dignitary safety–the sense of being a community member with equal standing, full rights to participation, and free from the threat of humiliation, for school administrators to evaluate the validity of curriculum challenges efficiently and consistently. We define key actors in curriculum challenges and present an illustrative case to animate our heuristic. By discussing its conceptual foundations and applying it to real scenarios, we demonstrate how administrators can utilize this heuristic in addressing curriculum challenges.