Development and inter-rater reliability of the Equity Literacy Observation Protocol for secondary school teachers (ELOPSST): lessons and realisations

A teacher education programme in the U.S. moved to frame its activities around equity literacy (EL). EL involves the development of the ability to 1) recognise inequity even in its most subtle forms, 2) respond to such inequities, 3) offer some sort of redress to the inequities, and 4) cultivate and sustain equity. This article presents the process by which the faculty and staff of this teacher education programme engaged the tension of developing students’ EL, an ideological construct, and creation of the EL Observation Protocol for Secondary School Teachers (ELOPSST) that attempts to measure the EL abilities. While this work describes the formation of the ELOPSST, its testing, and the establishment and examination of inter-rater reliability, findings include clarification of EL not as an observable classroom method but as a proficiency of one’s understandings of equity.