Category: Week 8 – Inclusive Pedagogy

If Only

‘Stereotypes are dangerous not because they are wrong, but because they are incomplete.’

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s words, taken from her TED talk on the danger of single stories, reverberate around my brain. I begin to realize the grandeur of this statement. Single stories miss the essence of humanity, nay of life itself.

My perspective comes from that of a biologist. And looking at nature, I can tell you one thing: diversity is fundamental. How do I know? There are over 1000 species of jellyfish. And that’s just an example. If diversity wasn’t a good thing, it wouldn’t be here. That’s how natural selection works. In fact, the whole system would fall to pieces like a flimsy jigsaw puzzle on a bumpy car journey without it.

Thinking of these ideas in an academic context, diversity increases the quantity, and much more importantly, the quality of research output at all levels of focus (within a lab, within a department, within an institution). It’s not rocket science; you’re less likely to do something stupid if you have multiple perspectives assessing the problem at once. The single story in research is the recalcitrant professor who operates a ‘my way or the highway’ attitude towards collaboration.

The single story in teaching is the rigid syllabus, the standardized exams, the lectures that only appeal to certain types of learners et cetera. In this case, we often generalize out of pure laziness; it is a much more straightforward task to teach 30 clones than it is to teach 30 individuals and so we treat them as such. The convenience of viewing an audience as one however, does not justify the indirect result of denying people’s identities and alienating large swathes of the room. The fact that we have acknowledged the problem shows how far we have come; the fact that it is a problem show how far we have to go.

Diversity is one of the key constituents of life, and embracing diversity requires empathy and tact in equal measure. In her talk, Chimamanda also reminded me of my love for Rudyard Kipling, and thus it seems fitting to let him sum up:

‘If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
then you will be a Man, my son.’

The unnoticed assumption

I joined an Arabic music club last semester. I did not plan to do so. My original plan was to learn some music stuff. And in the meantime, my advisor was in that club called Itraab. Then I thought, why not? I started to play hand drums with time and learn how to sing Arabic songs. I didn’t expect the Arabic culture is so romantic until I understand those lyrics. I learned Chinese poems as I grow up. I read Jane Eyre when I was in high school. My experience with Arabic culture was limited. Then when I went to Itraab, I finally realized that love is also a great part of Arabic culture. It seems obvious when you think about it. But the thing was that I had not thought about it before this year. This reminds me of the podcast called “How ‘The Hidden Brain’ Does The Thinking For Us.” I live with many assumptions. I don’t even know many of them exist and they are guiding my behavior. They are there like air. I depend on them and I do not feel them.
Internationalization is unstoppable in the current era. Our education should prepare this generation and the following generations for the tide of global communication. When we encounter something that is beyond our understanding, we may want to revisit the basics and figure if we have some assumptions that are obviously wrong.

Does inclusive teaching affect students’ ability to excel?

In her post ‘How diversity makes us smarter’, Katherine Phillips makes a great point on how being in a group of diverse people allows us to produce better work, and the reasons for it being so. Being around individuals who don’t know much about one truly does push us to be at our best selves. When we interact with people who are different from ourselves, we are more conscious of the way we act as we try to portray ourselves in ways that would allow them to get the best impression they possibly could- whether it be about our background, intellect, culture among other aspects that shape who we appear to be (not necessarily who we are). This also involves the efforts made to show that certain negative stereotypes made about the groups of people we identify with are not true.

Although the benefits of being ‘smarter’ in a diverse groups, one needs to be cautious about how they go about communicating with those who are different and should in fact disregard any differences that may make another feel excluded. This can include the interactions students have within an academic setting. Similarly, in a classroom, it is extremely important for teachers to look at every single student the same way. And to go into every class with the intention of doing so without giving any regards to any stereotypical thoughts they may have built up for one reason or another on the background of students. This also includes the intellect level they perceive the student to be at. For instance, if one student appears to perform poorly and another well on a specific assignment or during class discussions, it is not uncommon for teachers to be more responsive and willing to better explain to the student who is doing better believing that he/she will eventually understand the concept.

Left Turn on Red

I was having trouble with my driving this year. For twice, I almost turned left to merge to two-way streets while the traffic signal was still red. Although I realized it right away, it was still very unsafe. The first time it happened, I thought I was just too sleepy to pay attention and it is […]

The Nervous Instructor

This week’s topic is difficult. I imagine that, inevitably, at some point in our teaching careers we will find some form of discrimination in the classroom. When that time comes, we, as instructors, have an important role to play. The thought makes me nervous – I’m not confrontational by nature, but I know very well that certain situations will require leadership from the instructor. I don’t tolerate discrimination, but would it be too easy to simply kick someone out of class? How can I create a meaningful learning experience out of an unfortunate situation?

I liked what Arao and Clemens1 said – that perhaps what we need are “brave spaces” rather than “safe spaces.” Out of all people in the class, the instructor cannot opt out of difficult conversations no matter how uncomfortable these might be. I would like to set the precedent that social injustice issues hold just as much, if not more importance then the class material itself, and would be willing to dedicate class time to facilitate discussions. I hope to send a message of positivity rather than one of passivity and complicity2.

I think my nervousness largely stems from inexperience – still have much to learn about leadership and handling difficult situations. What are some of your unfortunate classroom experiences dealing with discrimination? How did you handle them?

[1] Arao, B. and Clemens, K. (2013). “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces a New Way to Frame Dialogue around Diversity and Social Justice.” The Art of Effective Facilitation. 135-150.

[2] The Heinemann Podcast: “Dismantling Racism in Education”

The Racist Highway

Of all the metaphors I have heard attempting to describe institutional racism, there is one that has always stuck out in my mind: Racism is like riding a bike on the highway. It is not necessarily that the cars are out to get you, or actively trying to push you off the road. It is simply that the infrastructure was not designed for bicycles. It was designed for cars- and just by using the roads as they were meant to be used, the cars impose on the bike riders and make it very difficult (not to mention incredibly stressful) to arrive safely at their destination.

The main idea here is that not all whites or other majorities are pro-actively racist. Very few actually are, and these are the ones that are easiest to notice and dismiss. It is the mass majority driving unassumingly down the road of privilege that is most dangerous. They do not feel racist, and often they even embrace diversity, but just by being born with the keys in their hand and taking their right of way they perpetuate racial and ethnic inequality.

The solution requires an active donation of privilege. Driving slower (maybe even below the speed limit) or waiting before passing a bike to make sure there is enough room on the shoulder are merely modest beginnings. Maybe you could drive a little less and make use of other modes of transportation. Better yet- give your car to your poorest neighbor and get a bicycle. See what the ride is like from the other side.

This is what Christine Labuski is getting at with the “gender studies perspective” she asks her classes to take and her “Universal Precautions” (UPs) approach. Developing sincere empathy for another person or group’s experience/condition, and assuming that everyone you talk to could be a member of that group, is crucial. While some conditions (like sexual orientation or infection) are not immediately obvious, race nearly always is. As Shankar Vedantam argues in “The Hidden Brain”, we must be more aware of the subconscious judgments we associate with race, all the stereotypes and preconditioned behaviors instilled in us through constant societal cues. We must work even harder to combat our racist “autopilot” reactions by treating everyone with a level of open and equal respect.

Our schools, just like our roads and our society, are designed for the majority. It is not that you cannot make it through the educational system as a minority, but it is often much more difficult to do so. The odds are stacked against you. While children from racial majorities coast through with the support and the resources they need to succeed always readily accessible- minorities can often struggle. The minority student has to significantly outperform his or her majority competition even to be considered. I have friends who have changed their ethnic sounding names and noticed significantly higher rates of acceptance for interviews and applications. The difficulties of cultural and linguistic fluency compound these challenges, especially for immigrant children.

At the end of the day it will be on us as educators to design our classrooms as havens of equal opportunity. But in order to do so we must proactively seek to see through our own prejudices and preconceptions as well as those imposed upon us by the institutions we are a part of. We must proactively strive to provide any curious, motivated student an opportunity to thrive and to learn. It will ultimately be our duty as teachers to make sure the road to educational success is designed for all types of students, regardless of race or background or the vehicle they use to get to class. (I leave it to the civil engineer majority of our class to make sure our roads are more bike friendly for those who wish to commute by bike).

 


Negotiating Limits & Uncertainty Within & Beyond the Classroom

The twin notions of uncertainty and limits of knowledge can be difficult to negotiate in and outside of the classroom. Yet we are constantly doing so, regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not. While each of us deals with these on our own terms, some of the Week 8 authors prompted reflection on the ways I negotiate uncertainty and limits of knowledge. 

I can relate Shankar Vedantam’s humbleness after writing the text on the “hidden brain”. Yet whereas he seems to view this as somewhat of a negative realization – “much less certain about myself,” I relish opportunities that humble my thinking or situations that highlight the limits of my knowledge, because, in effect, these offer the richest opportunities to revisit and confront assumptions, as well as to embrace and manage – not necessarily to overcome – uncertainty.

One of my most recent examples of this in action was as a participant in an architectural history field school this past summer. I was the only member from the social sciences (with little to no technical expertise) on an 11-member team comprised of architects, architectural historians, an urban planner, a structural engineer, and preservationists. We learned about building preservation and restoration, and were tasked with building investigations and analyses in a few structures in central and southern Virginia. I developed a love-hate relationship with all of my colleagues, because I showered them with both “how” and “why” questions. I had them walk me through their processes with respect to specific preservation interventions, structural analysis, or how they thought of the wider contexts of their interventions. It was a kind of ethnographic engagement with their respective practices. Yet I also posed questions that challenged the very premises of their work: “How do you think about the wider implications of your interventions in urban space?” “What is your responsibility to structures and to inhabitants within and around it?” “Do you, as a preservationist or architect, have a part in gentrification?” We had plenty of lively debates and discussions – many of which continue via email today – that challenged each of us (myself included) to carefully consider our agency and role with surrounding environments and fellow inhabitants.

This example brings Phillips’ notion of “informational diversity” – convergence of divergent perspectives to tackle a problem – and Vedantam’s “hidden brain” into sharper focus. My role on the team and the limits of my knowledge was front and center in my engagements with the team. I came from a completely different angle on the work and a completely different way of thinking about structures and urban space (based on experience and through the role of human engagement), and introduced a degree of uncertainty into all of our efforts, but our shared willingness to leverage experience and knowledge proved invaluable. Moreover, this experience helped me to better grasp some of the economic, professional, and political pressures each negotiate in their work, while I like to think – and I believe many would agree – that my questions and contributions in casual discussions over coffee, in the field, or in the classroom recentered the uncertainty of complexity that all-too-often fell to the wayside due to the imperatives of their respective practices. In this way, the limits of our knowledge served as invitations to move beyond our assumptions.

These limits of knowledge correspond to the uncertainty that pervades facilitating what are cast as “uncomfortable” conversations in the Arao and Clemens and Labuski pieces. The “brave spaces” and “universal precaution” approaches set the frameworks and guidelines for discussion, but leave the specificity of the content open to student participation.

The combination of these pieces suggest that the recognition of “informational diversity” or “hidden brains” help us to admit the limits of our knowledge, whereas the “brave spaces” and “universal precautions” enable us to better manage the uncertainties that emerge from these very limits.

Interdisciplinary Learning

My research group is part of VTSuN: The Virginia Tech Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology. In this institution, we have faculties and students from Geoscience, Chemical Engineering, Material Science, Environmental Engineering, et al. It is great to have people from different research background get together to seek some corporation and share instruments and ideas. For examples, the material science people could focus on the synthesis of materials with great performance and we environmental guys could use the materials to solve some environmental related problems. The topic we both focused on is nanotechnology. VTSuN held seminar and group talking regularly and I found it very helpful and inspired.

In a broad way, my project is also part of VT IGEP. The Graduate School is supporting Interdisciplinary Graduate Education Programs (IGEP) to promote and sustain interdisciplinary graduate education and research at Virginia Tech. VTSuN is a related program of IGEP. Some other projects like Regenerative Medicine, Translational Plant Science and Water INTERface are also involved. I used to take an IGEP class and we discussed a lot about interdisciplinary study and people in the class were from various majors. We wrote a proposal as assignment in this class and the three people in my small group were from totally different research field. It’s a great opportunity to learn something from other major. And we came up with one project which was related to the researches about all of us. During the group meeting of my research group, we were always talking about things which we were all familiar. But in the IGEP meeting, everything is so new and fresh. I really enjoyed the diversity of topics and stories.

 Interdisciplinary Learning

 

Sometimes I prefer have a discussion with a person who has different point view from yours more interesting than with those who always agree with you. By debating, great ideas were always generated. People from different research background would form a discussion like this and produce some interesting things. Last week when I reviewed Jonathan’s syllabus about writing from research. This is a very unfamiliar topic for me and I still find some very useful information. Like as a graduate student, I can still enroll class which is focused on research writing. That will help me improve my writing skills. I suppose interdisciplinary learning would become more popular in the future since cooperation makes us stronger.


I Learned a lot…And That is Telling

I learned a lot from the readings and talks for this week’s class.

And I think that fact is a sad and telling on my part.

I grew up in the Deep South, in the 60s. I lived in Alabama when George Wallace governed the state. Race played an important role in my upbringing. I knew words like the “white schools/churches/neighborhoods” and the “black schools/churches/neighborhoods,” “the black help” etc. (The movie The Help reminded me very much of the life I had in the Deep South growing up.) I knew the country club was where everyone went…because there were no African Americans. I heard classmates engage in very disturbing talk about African Americans – talk that we did not have in our home. There was no overt racism in our home. During this time, my father even stood up to the board of his church and announced African Americans would be welcome. None came, but the “higher-ups” did come and back up my father.

Overt racism, maybe not, but as I grew older, I would catch myself thinking in certain ways, just like Shankar Vedantim brought to our attention, almost hidden in my brain somewhere. I decided to address these problems and resolved that the best thing to do was to not see race at all, to see everyone the same, to fight back against my “hidden brain’s wiring,” so to speak. The readings for this week challenged that naïve assumption.

Interesting enough, the thing that really caught my attention was during the Heinemann podcast when one of the speakers talked about not ever hearing shampoo or haircare commercials that addressed her specific hair. The underlying culture that perpetuates racism is pervasive and insidious. It helps create and perpetuate stereotypes that create stereotype threats for our students, as Claude Steele talks about. (I actually watched a youtube video of Dr. Steele talking about his work instead of the readings. The youtube video is here: Claude Steele on youtube.)His research shows these threats impede student performance, but also that these threats can be addressed, at least to some degree.

Which comes back to: What do I do with all this? After reading the readings, I honestly feel ill prepared to address inclusivity issues in my classroom, which is a feeling I don’t especially like. I like, and can incorporate, and have incorporated, role-play into my class, especially on gender issues. And I noticed that this was one of the things Professor Labuski does. I can do this in terms of racism through world history as well, but it just seems like I should do more…. For example, Dr. Steele’s work shows that the way I frame assignments can be important for student success – this is a tremendous responsibility.

I guess, in the end, I feel a bit frustrated and challenged in ways that are good… so maybe that is a starting point.

 

 

 

Small class size helps Inclusive Pedagogy

Inclusive pedagogy is a learner-centered approach where everyone who is eager to learn gets equal attention from the teacher. In the inclusive setting, every student feels welcome although their physical, mental, and cognitive skills are different. Keeping the class size small is probably the easiest way to foster inclusive teaching and learning. Small class size helps the teacher to have an eye on individual student’s need. It also helps students to be more interactive in the class compared to a big classroom. Small classrooms encourage students to discuss issues, personal views, comparing and contrasting views with others.
There are few techniques that a teacher can follow to include a class in learning more effectively. For example, finding out the students cultural and educational background beforehand to plan carefully for the class. This could be done by conducting a short questionnaire survey in the beginning of the semester focusing on the competence of the students in that course, on some specific topics, and so on. A teacher can help students to be prepared beforehand by providing reading materials before the class and providing some questions as food for thoughts. Students can go through it before the class and make them prepared for the discussion in the class. Arranging brainstorming sessions at the beginning of the class on the topics that were taught in the previous class may help the students to clear any confusion on that topic.
One of the issues with small group learning is that some students could be very reluctant to speaking or participating in conversation. This could be because of many reasons including the background of the students and their competence in the language used in a specific class. For example, international students often fail to participate because they find it difficult to form the idea in a complete sentence or they fail to find the appropriate words. Another reason of reluctance in participation is the culture of that individual student. For example, in some culture, asking questions by a student is not common. Rather they prefer to answer when the teacher asks a question. These issues if overlooked by a teacher, can create a serious issue or hinder inclusive leaning style even if the classroom is small.

“Instead of providing something different or additional for children who experience difficulties in their learning, inclusive pedagogy seeks to extend what is ordinarily available to everybody.”
Florian, L. and Black-Hawkins, K., 2011. Exploring Inclusive Pedagogy. British Educational Research Journal, 37(5), pp. 813-828.

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