Category: Week 8 – Inclusive Pedagogy

Once upon a time, a long time ago, Claude Steiner wrote a little story called A Warm Fuzzy Tale. It tells about how when people were born they were given small, soft fuzzy bags and anytime they would reach into this bag they could pull out a Warm Fuzzy. The small fuzzy was about the size of a child’s hand and would instantly grow a little larger when you would remove it from the bag. When given away, the little fuzzy would snuggle up to the person and give them a good feeling all over. Warm Fuzzies were given freely and were in abundance; but one day a bad (yet enterprising) witch stirred up jealousy and envy in the people causing them to become stingy with giving away their Warm Fuzzies. Eventually the witch even started giving out bags, similar to the fuzzy bags for free, but these bags contained Cold Pricklies. Eventually people started to give the Cold Pricklies away rather than the Warm Fuzzies. Even the children, observing the adults, began to change their behaviors on giving Warm Fuzzies or Cold Pricklies. The situation became quite complicated as people began doing all kinds of things for Warm Fuzzies. You can read the whole short tale here.

But what do the warm fuzzies and cold pricklies have to do with inclusive pedagogy?  Well, I believe we have experienced, at some time in our lives, feeling all “warm and fuzzy” (which is where this expression originates) when people treat us kind and with dignity. Just as I believe we have all felt “cold and prickly” when we are treated poorly or unjustly.  Surely we all want to experience the warm and fuzzy feeling most of the time, if not all of the time, like in the start of the story.

Our society has become much like the unhappy land described in the latter part of the story. A place where we are stingy with our warm fuzzies, feel guilty over sharing our warm fuzzies, and feel distrustful if someone is trying to give us a warm fuzzy because we are not all to sure it isn’t a cold prickly. It has even spilled into the lives of our children who watch the adults intently on how to treat others.

So, as an educator I have a choice to make, do I want to remain in a state of unsure and unease because I live in fear of getting a cold prickly? Have my classroom be a place of cold learning and fear of sharing one’s self freely and fully? Or do I want to be like the new character introduced near the end of the story, the Hip Woman who generously shares her Warm Fuzzies and encourages others to give them away as if there was indeed an endless supply?

I hope my classroom will be one which makes everyone feel welcome and provides a safe space for the freedom to be their true authentic self. I hope to operate with a heart drenched in  a strengths-based, relational-cultural theory and a focus of working towards a relational competency which can navigate relationships to promote the well-being of my self and others. I would like to create an environment where any student would feel welcome enough to discuss their thoughts, ideas, and feelings with at least me, if not the class as a whole.

I know that I can not change others; that is beyond my scope of control. I do know that change starts with one decision, one choice. Many of minds need a whole paradigm shift when the word inclusivity is mentioned. It is not about suppressing one to allow another to excel, rather it is about making room so we all can excel. Inclusivity is not a habit that needs to be changed, but rather a desire that needs to be fulfilled.

My wish now is for you to freely share a warm fuzzy with someone today!

I found this weeks readings… interesting. I did especially enjoy Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens’s “From Safe Places to Brave Spaces”

Full disclosure, I am a white male – so some of the reading put me a bit on the defensive side emotionally. For instance, at some point in Arao’s and Clemen’s essay, violence is equated to a masculine quality and white participation in a safe space was somehow the same as the ultimate expression of white privilege. I thought their overall point of emphasizing the abrasive nature of social justice debate was valuable and agree that ‘Brave Spaces’ offer more opportunity for authentic and transformative learning than do ‘Safe Spaces.’

But – and I’m sure this is a matter of my privilege – are the problems as big as their being made out to be?

I think one of my problems is that I don’t particularly care about people’s feelings in an intellectual debate. People don’t have a right to feel a particular way – even safe. That is not to say they do not have a right to actual safety.  But they don’t have a right to not be criticized or have their ideas criticized.  They can certainly feel offended.  But I still don’t have to care.  How can I reasonably be expected to know ahead of time if someone will conflate an intellectual challenge or moral criticism with danger?

Another personal challenge I have in identifying with the content of the essay is that I am an engineer. A persons gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, etc. are factors far from the realm of technical expertise and ability to apply science to problems so its not something I am often faced with thinking about.

At some level, I think we make these things into bigger issues than they are when we discuss them in such a tip-toed manner. Yes, we want our classes to run placidly and for all students to feel welcome but at what point does it become pandering to oversensitive students? Should dietary lifestyles be discussed as well – vegetarians are the minority and may feel that offended by subliminal references to a bloody diet. My point is there are literally an infinite number of categories in which students may feel they don’t identify with the dominant cultural norm and that is largely something they will need to deal with on their own or in a setting dedicated to discussing those kinds of issues – not every classroom.

The Hidden Brain reading was interesting as well.  It reminded me of Thinking, Fast and Slow – which I read last year.  Its a bit dry but a really fascinating depiction and exploration of cognitive mechanics and the human psyche.  I ordered the Hidden Brain on Amazon.  If you like those type of psychology books I would definitely recommend Thinking, Fast and Slow (Kahneman).

I have female friends in STEM fields who were told, some at a very young age, that “girls aren’t good at math.”  Some said that adults expressed surprise at their abilities in math and science, because that was strange for girls.  Even my husband remembers being aware as a child that girls weren’t supposed to be good at math.  In the readings from “Whistling Vivaldi” by Claude Steele, the gap between women’s and men’s success in math is mentioned many times.

Honestly, this is all very strange to me.  I was a girl who loved math, now grown into a female engineer, and I don’t remember a single time before high school when anyone told me anything negative about girls and math.  I remember being encouraged to enjoy math by many female teachers (I don’t think I had a male teacher until seventh grade).  I remember being called a “little engineer” by my parents at a very young age (normally in exasperation when I did something that made perfect sense to me, but apparently didn’t to the rest of the world).  I remember being the fourth grade “fast math” champion and being inordinately proud of a skill that, I realize now, is really not very useful.  I remember doing a report on Grace Hopper (the inventor of the first computer compiler) in sixth grade and being more impressed by the fact that she was a Navy admiral than the fact that she was a female computer scientist (my father was in the Navy).

I realize that my childhood was out of the norm in this way.  I honestly don’t know why I didn’t hear about this incredibly pervasive stereotype.  In light of the studies Steele discusses, I do wonder if or how this has affected my academic performance.  Did anyone else have a similar experience?

The issues of diversity and social justice are connected to so many things I care about in life that I’ve found it difficult to narrow the topic down to what can fit in a single blog post.  First, as a liberal, I value everyone’s right to be treated equally and want to correct any real injustices that we identify to create a fair playing field for all.  I don’t value diversity for diversity’s sake, but I do value it in the contexts that it has benefits for society and in promoting equality.  Second, I’m a member of the skeptic/atheist communities (the 2 overlap considerably) and social justice activism has created a schism in our movement during the past 2 years.  Free speech and rigorous debate have long been valued in the community, but so has social justice, specifically the injustices caused by religions and religious communities, but also just general liberal values as we are mostly Humanists.  We have historically criticized injustices within religious communities, striving to counter ideas, not attack individuals.  Most on the Left saw this as important work, especially when we were challenging conservative Christianity in our own country on issues like homosexuality, sexism, and their theocratic tendencies. But about 2 years ago, Islam suddenly became off-limits and anyone criticizing Islam or Muslim norms was now labeled an Islamaphobe.  What happened?  It is probably a confluence of several trends, including the rise of victimhood culture, but I think the logic is that Muslims are an oppressed group therefore we cannot criticize their ideas, which is paternalistic and feeds in to the bigotry of low expectations.  Never mind that women, homosexuals, and apostates in many Islamic societies are among the most oppressed people, any criticism of Islam or Islamist regimes only fuels bigotry towards Muslims so they get a free pass.  Social justice is also causing a schism around the issue of feminism within the atheist/skeptic community with everyone agreeing on the goal of gender equality but with a subset engaging in what I think is misguided and dishonest social justice activism.

Again, I’m all for social justice–it’s the tactics of activists that I think are counterproductive.  In a democratic society or on a college campus, there is a tension between freedom of speech and physical and emotional safety.  In our democracy, freedom of speech is more or less absolute.  We allow speech as long as it does not lead directly to violence, defamation, or harassment.  On a college campus, we value freedom of speech, but we also get to decide who gets a platform to promote their ideas on campus.  There is obviously a line of acceptability of ideas below which we would not want to give someone a platform to speak.  For example, we wouldn’t invite a child rapist to come explain their position.  But this line is subjective.  How do we negotiate this?  Ideally, we do so as a community.  Since there is a wide range of opinions on a college campus, I think we want to set a bar that allows the opinions of the majority of residents to have the right for their views to be given a platform.  We may not agree with these views, but college is supposed to be a place where we are exposed to ideas that challenge us, perhaps make us uncomfortable, even angry.  We then should counter ideas we don’t agree with with better ideas.  This is how you change minds and expose yourself to other positions so that you can change your mind if you happen to be wrong about something.  Or if you’re not comfortable hearing challenging ideas, you don’t show up.

College student justice activists largely are not doing this.  They are deeming only ideas firmly within their social justice agenda worthy of being given a platform and de-platforming (192 in 2013), physically blocking, and disrupting the events of speakers they don’t agree with.  Dissent is silenced by using labels like bigot, sexist, and homophobe, things liberals really don’t want to be labeled, at the drop of a hat.  Even social justice activists aren’t safe–one misstep and you’re labeled and deplatformed.  This is the opposite of a safe space!

So I’m curious if there is a link between social justice education and the sorry state of social justice activism.  Arao and Clemens define a safe space to be ‘an environment in which everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, ridicule, or denial of experience’’.  This sounds like a very reasonable way to conduct the classroom, but I’m interested in some of the specifics.  I’ve never been in a classroom with formal safe space guidelines so I have a few questions.

1.  What counts as an attack or ridicule?  I would argue this should be limited to a personal attack e.g. a racial or sexist slur.  But social justice advocates have a more broad definition of an attack including the criticism of certain types of ideas, such as one’s religion and cultural practices (if you’re a minority, this is fair game if you’re not), tenets of feminist, gender, or race theory, and the law, to name a few.  It is true that criticizing one’s firmly held beliefs can often feel like a personal attack but in a democratic society, we need to draw a firm line between attacking people and criticizing their ideas and people need to get used to having their ideas criticized and being able to handle it.  So, I think it is a problem to lump the criticism of ideas in with personal attacks.  Is this occurring in the classroom or is it mission creep after they leave the classroom?  Arao and Clemens define an attack as an instance of extreme disrespect.  People often feel extremely disrespected when you question their firmly held beliefs.  But I’m glad to see that they recognize this distinction in their brave space concept.

2.  What counts as a denial of experience?  Obviously, we shouldn’t deny that something someone claimed they experienced never happened.  We can personally be skeptical of it if it sounds extremely implausible, but we should give them the benefit of the doubt.  But can we recognize their experience and then argue that it is not relevant to the question at hand?  I hope so.

OK, I guess I only had 2 questions.  I want to end by talking about perhaps the most important type of diversity on college campus that is currently being largely ignored–viewpoint diversity.  The faculty at American college campuses are overwhelmingly liberal and roughly 96% of the faculty in the social sciences are liberal.  Not only does this situation likely lead to biased research in the social sciences, a largely liberal administration and faculty are more likely to give in to unreasonable student demands such as systematically no platforming conservatives.  Yes, I am a liberal suggesting that we increase the number of conservative faculty on campus–that’s how bad I think the current climate is.  I think it will make for better rounded students more able to cope with the real world once they leave campus.  However, I’m not optimistic this will happen.

Update:  Here is a great video from Maajid Nawaz.  “No idea is above scrutiny, no people are below dignity”.

The issue of inclusiveness is an extremely important one. Diversity within the classroom and society is a reality, and as educators it is our job to education all of our students. Obviously, we cannot eliminate every struggle that our students have that make it difficult for them to learn. However, Claude M. Steele in Whistling Vivaldi makes a strong case that there are many things we can do to reduce one type of struggle: stereotype threat, which many of our students may suffer from.It is interesting and convenient that many of the things he mentions as being effective against stereotype threat are good teaching practices in general, such as having “positive relationships with students,” and “child-centered teaching.” I also found it very helpful to hear about some of the ways our TA’s and professor for Contemporary Pedagogy reach out to students to assure them that their class will be an inclusive space.

In addition to how we interact with students and manage our classrooms, we can also emphasize inclusiveness through our course material itself, at last in some disciplines. Steele mentions including class material that reflects the experiences of different identity groups as a possible remedy to stereotype threat. This may not be very relevant in some classes, but I am in a social science field (applied economics) and I can see how economic theory may turn some students off due to its rigidity and lack of multiple viewpoints. Economic theory has a tendency to emphasize rational decision making, efficiency, and individual actions over all else. For a student who has experienced discrimination or comes from a low-income family background or simply sees the many ways in which our lives are dominated by factors outside of our own personal actions, it may be difficult to reconcile his or her experiences with this view of the world.

In reality, the field of economics is evolving and a lot of economic research examines discrimination, inequality, and other issues that all types of students may find interesting and relevant. But, students rarely learn any of this until upper-level undergraduate courses, at least. I think it would be better for earlier students of economics to hear criticisms of theory, varied applications of economic tools, and ways social institutions can be included in economic models to make them more realistic and relevant to all students’ lives. They should also be exposed to research and theories by people of different genders, race, religion, etc. Currently the only names anyone hears in at least the first five semesters of econ are of dead British guys.

I believe that this is important for several reasons. Many students take one or two econ courses as freshmen. Many of these students will hate economics based on these classes, or see its many faults without seeing its usefulness. By teaching in a more inclusive way and opening up discussions to differing viewpoints and criticisms, more students will take an interest in economics. This could lead to greater diversity within the field, which would mean better and broader research and theories because they would reflect a greater range of experiences and interests. It would also broaden the minds of even the students that never take another econ class.

This brings us back to many other themes we have explored in this class and that I have explored in my blog. Emphasizing inclusiveness in our classroom is not only morally the right thing to do (in my opinion), it gives our students a better education and helps address the question “What is the purpose of education?”  Is the purpose of school to teach you to do well in the workplace? Well, workplaces are becoming more diverse so students need to be able to work with diverse groups of people. Is the purpose of school to enrich your life? Well, exposure to more perspectives offers better opportunities for this. Is the purpose of school to teach the future generation how to fix the world’s problems?  It seems to me that,  in order to fix the world’s problems, we need everyone on board. As teachers, it’s part of our job to make that happen.  It does our students, and our society, a disservice to include only a few voices in our classroom.

I believe that cultural activities should be added in the syllabuses of undergraduate courses. As an international student, I was impressed to observe several cultures and diversities during my Ph.D. at Virginia Tech. Graduate School at Virginia Tech consists of the students from several nationalities, therefore it creates an active atmosphere for the students to learn from other cultures. One of the reasons that I preferred to go abroad for my higher education was that I could learn more about other cultures and understand their school of thoughts.

I remember when I participated in Grad 5104 course, I was impressed that the class included several majors, for example, Art, Engineering, humanities and etc. The students also talked about their country briefly in two sessions and it was another interesting issue. Because it was great to gather students from more than eight different nations.

Now in pedagogy class, I have the same experience and it seems that the courses those are presented by Graduate School have been designed for this purpose. But, I think that we may use this opportunity better. For example, we may ask the students to present their experience of their culture related to pedagogy rules and methods. I watched an interesting video related to inclusive pedagogy and diversity. The instructor from Ball Sate University experimented a case by some students. In this video, the students explained their experience in this experiment.

http://dvisweb1.bsu.edu/media/BSU/OID/Timothy_Berg.html

It was so nice that the students learned several issues during that study. I believe that this type of classes has some advantages:

• The students learn from their peers and can be familiar with other cultures and religions.
• They share their ideas and it helps them to amend their style of life if they think that it is not perfect.
• As an international student, I saw some misunderstanding related to my culture and religion in the past two years since my enrollment at Virginia Tech. So, by this method, the students understand each other better and it helps them to solve some misconceptions between different cultures and religions.

Consequently, inclusive pedagogy has a significant effect on the students’ life and may serve the students to learn more things in their life beyond their academic education.