Category: Week 8 – Inclusive Pedagogy

In reading and listening  to the material this week, various points came to mind. A similar topic that was discussed in week four regarding mindful learning came into mind again this week when discussing the “Hidden Brain”. How we go into auto-pilot mode and do not fully consider everything that goes on around us, but more importantly what we are doing or what we are subconsciously thinking as a form of unconscious bias.

A strong example that was presented was the Belle Isle Bridge in Detroit, although the analysis and discussion that the hidden brain had on the event is not thoroughly discussed the setting and details of the event raise many questions. Specifically, why didn’t any one do anything? I think such a question is still something we can ask ourselves as a gateway to start evaluating how our own hidden brain works and what we would have done if we were present that day.

Looking over Georgetown’s inclusive pedagogy site, I appreciated the fact that they stated that we all have implicit biases. And that it is important for us to be aware of them and of strategies to handle them. Additionally, further consideration of ways to implement an inclusive classroom is relevant because we must consider methods to include all students and if we are unconsciously biased against one group of students we will not truly reach an totally inclusive classroom. If a need arises where a difficult converstaion as a class must be had, it’s better to have thought about it before hand and thinking of possible alternatives instead of dealing with it on the spot.

After a dinner party with some friends this evening, this whole section resonated with me. As they shared experiences of their students pointing out “gestures” or “faces” the professors make. The idea of he hidden brain and unconscious bias really explained a lot of why we do or what we do or think what we think, as well as how much we are expressing it without realizing it.

Personally speaking, as a Chinese I never encountered with racial discrimination in my daily life. Although I was reminded of this issue by my relatives and friends seriously before coming to the United States, I have not encountered any obvious racial discrimination. But this may be because I am lucky to be in Blacksburg, and in Virginia Tech—it is a peaceful, harmonious and friendly community which residents have higher levels of education and income. When I met with friends from other universities and regions in the United States, racial discrimination was a must-have topic. Although my friends have not suffered racial discrimination in class, those living in metropolitan areas have encountered some unpleasant things in their neighborhoods. Sometimes these behaviors are not invasive, bad or indifferent, they will make you feel treated differently. For example, I went to Georgetown University to attend my friend’s graduation ceremony. He told me that: “one driver of our school bus at night is an African-American. He never greets or speaks with the Chinese or people looks like a Chinese.” I take this bus with him that night, and he is right; The driver only said hello to blacks and whites. For the Chinese, it is just a poker face with silence. I don’t think this is discrimination, but obviously, it makes me feel uncomfortable unconsciously.

Before I came to the United States, racial discrimination is not a topic of concern. In my hometown, the Hui nationality (Muslim) is the most important ethnic minority in addition to the Han nationality. But the only difference in school you can feel is that they go to the halal canteen (no pork), not the ordinary canteen. Besides, they can get extra points in the college entrance examination. However, this situation has changed slightly in my college life. Just as Shankar Vedantam mentioned, “The Hidden Brain” may affect our thinking. In college admissions, universities will give preferential treatment to ethnic minorities such as Tibetans and Uighurs, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan students as well as foreign students. One consequence of this policy is that although they can enter China’s top universities easily, there is a huge gap in academic performance between them and Han students. This gives the Han students a feeling in the subconscious: THEY are not as smart as WE are. I can guarantee that I have never seen public ridicule, discrimination or any inappropriate behaviors toward them, but from everyday chat, you can feel that everyone regards it as a fact: they are counting down on the scores. In the qualifying exam for the doctoral student program in my school, if a student from Xinjiang or Taiwan fails, we will think it is normal; but if a Han student fails, we will think it is a shame. I think that is how “The Hidden Brain” works and it’s harder to eliminate, just as a Chinese philosopher Wang Yangming said: “It is very easy to eliminate the bandits in the city, but very difficult to suppress the bandits in your heart” (破山中贼易 破心中贼难).

Moreover, in my view, while racial discrimination is not a problem, the challenge of inclusive education is enormous, especially cultural differences between American and international students. When I do group work, presentations or papers, I usually work with other students from Asia—Korean, Filipino, Indian and Vietnamese. Well, this may be because there are too few Chinese in our department! But indeed, I don’t have much communication with the “native Americans”. The differences in values? The difference in living habits? I am not sure. Although I sometimes work with American students according to the mentor’s arrangement, I rarely take the initiative to team up with them. To be honest, I don’t have much feeling about the role of diversity in the classroom. At this stage, it is like a “politically correct” for me which is overestimated in the real world. I know it’s important, and everyone is talking about it, but I think I still need to experience it and feel it more in the future.

 A pedagogy is inclusive only when there are a diverse group of people equally engaged with biases discarded. Inclusive pedagogy can just be useful when we have radical educators who are intentional about teaching in an inclusive environment.  According to Katherine Philip diversity can be difficult if not well managed with intentions to bring innovations and development.

I believe having a diverse community does not mean that it is inclusive.  However, the community can only be inclusive when there is an intention to embrace each other’s difference regarding ideas and collaborate in enriching a healthy diversity. 

Inclusive pedagogy makes a pedagogy engaged and not static. I remember reading through the book known as Teaching to Transgress by Bell Hooks she laid emphasis on strategies on how to teach in an inclusive classroom which was also mentioned by Georgetown which includes getting to know the student, active commitment to the process of self-actualization for both the students and teachers to be empowered. These self-actualization process means to be aware of your biases, also give your student ground rules to help in structuring conversation.

Hooks emphasized that the learning ability of student is so diverse, and so there is a need for educators to be flexible. This is very achievable if the educator is fully aware of the various theories of learning ( experiential, critical race theory, feminist, transformative, socio-cultural e.t.c) and adopting these theories into the classroom makes teacher grow in the process.  In my home country, we don’t have racial diversity in education, but we have other forms of diversity instead in which one of it includes various learning styles, however one thing I think most educators in my home country fails to do is to be flexible in their ways of teaching.

As an educator learning through experience is mainly significant to me because it serves as a learning process and also a product.  I remembered during my undergrad in Nigeria almost all courses taken was taught through the banking system and there was no much experience attached to the learning and so I only learned it for grades, I had no idea on how to practically apply this knowledge. So, therefore, I believe firmly in both creating experience for the learners, allowing the learners to make their own experience that gives birth to new knowledge from their experience.

Most importantly I found inclusive pedagogy as very interesting and also challenging.  It is interesting because it creates a relationship and produces freedom for both the learners and the educator. Challenging because it can be so demanding in term of individual conscious effort to teach to transgress and the feedback from the learners might not be encouraging. There is a need for the learners to realize he or she needs this knowledge, if the learner cannot come to this realization then it might look challenging to achieve an inclusive pedagogy.

However, as an educator, I still ask myself the question of how can one genuinely differentiate if the skill learned by the learner will be for a long term or short term period? The reason for this question is that even after teaching learners a particular skill in a program, one cannot fully determine if the learner will attain 100 percent of the ability even after several years of the program. When does one stop follow-up? What if there is no trust between the learners and the educator and so the follow up done did not efficiently yield because the learners give untrue feedback to get more grant. As an educator, how can one address this issue?

 

All of the characters in Disney cartoon movies I enjoyed when I was a kid were all in good shape and kindness, and the villains were like monsters and vicious. These scenes bring unconscious prejudices to young children. This makes children more likely to prefer Barbie dolls with long blonde hair and makes a person appraised only by appearance. This is not the fault of children at all. This is one of the leading cases in which children are unconsciously biased.

People have different thoughts about white people, black people and Asian people. It is formed from your limited experience or from the stories you hear from people around you. When we see the skin color of a person, we are going to treat people with the prejudice of “This kind of people acts like ~” Actions or languages ​​that come from this prejudice are called racial discrimination or racism. It is racism not only to use racist language but also to treat people unequally (For example, black people are more likely to undergo ID testing in areas with high crime rates).  I felt very tired when I realized there were so many kinds of racism in America. This is because Korea, which I have been living in, is composed of a single race and the ratio of foreigners is extremely low. The funny thing is that this tired variety makes us more creative and diligent. In fact, there are several studies that show that the more diversity there is, the better. There are also studies that social mix makes a community better in the housing sector which is my research area. Various income classes and various races/ethnicity can lead to various problems, but it implies that a better society can be achieved by solving the conflicts. Diversity is a seed of tragedy and can be described as an opportunity to leap.

How should we educate children and young people about diversity? Is diversity an unconditional goal to pursue? Pedagogy should also develop. I do not know exactly what kind of education method can make a positive effect. But I will finish by introducing the example that my prejudice has fallen in childhood. I remember the movie Shrek was the first movie to challenge my prejudice. Shrek’s story of a monster-like appearance and timid character showed that anyone could be the protagonist of life, and I realized that I had an unconscious bias. I thought it might be more important to identify the prejudices inherent before creating various experiences.

Each morning I drop my son off at daycare. He sees familiar faces of his little friends playing on the floor, parents dropping off other kids, and the teachers moving about the room. When I toured the center, of course I had my first impression about whether a person seemed friendly or approachable, but I never really stopped to think what judgments the children may be making about who these people are. You expect them to have their favorite friend or a teacher they are drawn too, but a bias toward race? How can this idea of bias settle into toddlers?

The NPR article, How the Hidden Brain Does the Thinking for Us, describes how bias against race can be seen in three years olds! As a parent that is alarming. We try to teach our children kindness and acceptance for others, but societal norms seem to be shaping what is “okay” or “bad” in a questionable direction. If children learn what seems safe or normal by watching the world around them, then we need to inject more diversity. Easier said then done.

As children move up in education, it’s not like this bias goes away. Societal norms become even more prominent, further shaping the bias toward others. The challenge is this bias of the hidden brain is not intentional. It not like we go out of our way to group people into buckets of good or bad. Like the NPR article said, the brain is wired to form associations. However, associations described about context come from society, and society gravitates toward what is common, not what is different.

Embracing diversity and having an inclusive mindset has the potential to bring immense benefit to society, workplaces, and the classroom. In the article, How Diversity Makes Us Smarter, socially diverse groups are the ones that bring innovation and creativity. Those are characteristics we all want in the classroom setting, from preschool to college. Somehow as a society thought we have to find ways to integrate more diversity into our everyday. If starting at a young age we were exposed to more races, ethnicities, etc, then bias might be reduced. We can also be more aware and cognoscente of our own biases. These are small changes, but they have the potential to nudge us in a less biased way of thinking.

Each one of us makes hundreds of decisions in a day, from the time we get up (or whether to) until we are asleep like a log (and some even after that). Some decisions are involuntary like brushing the teeth (you are no lion and need to do it every day, maybe twice) while some are very hard and require significant brainpower like whether to take a shower (come on, I just took one, last week!). The involuntary and voluntary parts of the decision-making are very important. I am not the only one who thinks that, Shankar Vedantam thinks like that too (the fellow is a Nieman Fellow at Harvard, you got to respect that at least), you can read it here. He says we really need to know when the ‘autopilot’ mode of our brain is on and whether we should allow it to go on the autopilot.

Every decision that we make matters and has an impact on our mind. From choosing the color of our toothbrush (fine, blue is my favorite too) to the person we choose to sit next to in the bus (I know Blacksburg Transit is awesome and there is hardly any space to stand), everything is recorded by the mind. Alexa (Amazon assistant, at least she has a name!) might miss some of the things that you say (or everything in my case, she doesn’t get my accent) and do but the brain won’t. It is VERY important to understand this because this is where we are training our brain what to do in the autopilot mode. Now don’t call on your brain when it takes some stupid decisions like nominating and confirming a white-male judge, accused of biased opinions and possible assaults, for the highest court of the country. You taught your brain to do that. You were responsible for training it well. When you didn’t and allowed it to go on an autopilot (when you really should not have), it may play a little and take some innocuous wrong decisions.

Our brain is a machine, it wasn’t born with its own mind (you see what I did there). But it learns and how. It becomes very powerful and can take its own decisions without you even knowing what you just did. However, we are the one in control. If we fed it junk, it is fine, happens, we can still make it unlearn that and start giving it some fresh veggies and fruits (Go vegan, you’ll). It is never late because we don’t want to be sorry!

P.S.: I was writing this with ‘autopilot mode’ on, so please excuse my irritating commentary (but why was I commentating, it is my own blog, ahh, whatever).

I actually don’t remember that much about 9/11, compared to many of my classmates.  Memory just wasn’t a strong suit of my 8-year-old self growing up in Missouri, and it still isn’t today.  Back then, there wasn’t a screen in every corner or pocket within the school, and my family wasn’t that interested in watching TV every day.  I vaguely remember school was let out early and my mom was quiet and silenced the radio on the drive home.  I kept doing what I did pretty much all the time: blend in and observe intently (even if I did forget soon after).  While nothing memorable happened to me that day, my friends couldn’t say the same.  Because when the principal and counselor pull 8-year-old you out of class to question you: “Do you know bin Laden?” you’ll remember.

I have always been a pacifist, the good friend that you wouldn’t want to bring to a fight.  For the past couple of years, anger hasn’t been one of my go-to emotions.  But this doesn’t mean that I am going to be able to solve conflict or display good judgement.  Teachers need both of these, and a way to connect and empathize with all of their students.  So should a teacher share in a student’s justified frustration?  Or strive to rise above it with stoicism?  Whichever they choose, they are teaching that to the student.

What should or shouldn’t have happened to my friend those many years ago is one of the situations that I can get angry over.  And there is far too much going on now to remind me of these injustices.  But the number of extreme cases can shift of the Overton Window to make us not notice the small differences.  This is what worries me because these small differences that pop up are the most common reminders to my friends of how a (race, sex, etc.)–ism will continue to affect their lives.  So I try to keep one eye on each target, one glaring down the big differences, and another on the lookout for the small ones.

The global world we live in today demands a great emphasis on diversity. Most universities recognize the importance of diversity of being beneficial for the learning environment. It also enriches the culture within the university campus and extends cross-cultural relations between students. Academic diversity is essential in helping students develop an understanding and appreciation for other cultures. Inclusive pedagogy advocates for incorporating varying ethnic, social, and intellectual elements to the academic environment. In order to create an inclusive learning environment, universities should pave the way to giving a voice for different ideas, thoughts, and opinion. So, in order to be more inclusive, should universities use race as an admission criteria?

A recent poll by WBGH concluded that 3 in every 4 Americans do not want race to be used as a factor in deciding who gets admitted into universities. It is important to note that by the current laws by the Supreme Court, universities are allowed to use race as an admission criteria. The Supreme Court affirmative action policy was implemented to ensure diverse student body. However, many of the people participated in the poll indicated that students should be judged by their merits. Although a lot of support exists on diversity on college campuses, there seems to be a disconnect between diversity and meritocracy. Students grades and achievements are typically influenced by their access to information and how it is presented to them. So, what can universities do to ensure an inclusive and diverse learning environment?

Universities need to go beyond just providing information about diversity. Universities should develop an engaging learning environment that cultivates awareness about bias and inclusivity at their academic resources and the community at large. This should be a collective effort that inspires students to think critically about cultural differences. Universities are leveling fields that have immense leverage in closing the cultural awareness gap.

The idea of this blog stroke my mind the second I got the result from the implicit bias test (https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/selectatest.html). For some of the implicit biases, I got pretty strong biases on some of the categories that I do not think I have biases on. The experience of taking the test also showed me how the feeling is when one acting follow an instinct that he/she cannot resist. Combining this experience with the reading about “The Hidden Brain”, I’m convinced that there is a great part of unconsciousness of my brain. Accept the existence of the unconsciousness leaves me a question about how should I get along with it.

Obviously, the unconsciousness is not a thing that we can fight with since it is actually part of ourselves that formed possibly by the culture, family, values, and status of us as we grow up. However, it is probably neither a good thing that we cut it loose and let it form us. Therefore, not only accept the unconsciousness, we should keep conscious about when we are leading by the unconsciousness intend to control the consequence of it.

I also figure the awareness of unconsciousness could also be the starting point for me open up to diversity. By reading news, I find out that sometimes the reasons for one group of people dislike the others are completely irrational, in contrast, the reasons are always merely feelings coming from their instincts. “I just don’t like blablabla..” they probably may say. If we can be conscious of our instincts and be retrospective about the feelings, we may become more open-minded to a diversity of cultures and people and easier agree with disagreements. Borrow the argument mentioned in the article “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter” (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/?wt.mc=SA_Facebook-Share): Diversity increase creativity. The argument makes our awareness of our unconsciousness the stepping stone of better group learning and teamwork as individuals in a group.