Month: March 2017

What it means to be a GEDI

So I think the time has come to use the GEDI metaphor in more depth.  When it comes to diversity, accepting people from all cultural backgrounds, this is clearly a GEDI (Jedi) trait.  We can see Anakin specifying how unconditional acceptance in the form of compassion is essential.

Diversity is a major part of the GEDI light sabers.  Our allies could be blue, green, even purple!  The dark side… always red!  Now that’s not very inclusive is it!?

We can also see that once Darth Vader emerges, the influence of How Diversity Makes Us Smarter was apparently no longer affecting him.  His ability to consider alternatives appears to have left him.  By this point, the entire galaxy is no longer a safe space and social justice has become a concept of the past.

So if we can embrace the spirit of being a GEDI, then accepting and learning from diversity (even though it may come with its challenges) allows us to grow and help our students to be “smarter.”  Seeing the world in absolutes (black and white, all or nothing, etc.) leads down dangerous paths.  Everyone that you encounter has something to offer in terms of diversity of race, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity, upbringing, etc.  It leads to a lot of aspects of culture to be aware of, but by showing incivility to diversity, we can all grow as a result.

Last semester in PFP class, I shared some of my personal encounters with diversity, and I am still open to anyone reading about how my journey of becoming a counselor has come with its challenges but an amazing amount of awareness, my story.

WHO TEACHES SMALL ANGELS?

According to The Hidden Brain by Shankar Vendantam, children start to realize face colors when they are three years old and assign specific attributes and stereotypes to different groups of people. It is admitted that this tendency comes from our nature of lazy brains that turn on autopilot mode frequently. As an international female. I would like to share my experience with two children.

Two years ago, I went to the Disney World in Florida, and was playing merry-go-roung. Suddenly I realized a little girl was looking at me curiously.  She was about two years old and was accompanied with her mother on a wooden horse by my side. From her smiling eyes. I felt the pure love that I never experience before. Somehow, there was a deep connection between us at that moment. We were looking at each other’s eyes and smiling until the end of that playing song. She was still smiling at me on her mother’s shoulder and finally disappeared in the crowd. However, I could tell her mother was not so friendly. She did not say anything or smile, even though she observed the friendship between her daughter and me. From her eyes. I realized that I didn’t belong to their group and definitely was not treated as a friend. However, in my heart, her little daughter liked an angel who cannot tell the differences of skin colors or any stereotype assigned to that.

The second thing happened in three weeks ago. I went to the gym and there was a small girl playing with some young white ladies at the locker room. She was about four years old and looked very pretty. I smiled at her and sat down to change my shoes. However, when she walked to me, her face changed dramatically—from smiling to angry. She beat me and scolded me by some words such as “pig!” At that moment, I was so angry not only because of her offensive behaviors but also because nobody she played with there said anything her until her mother came back and simply apologized to me. Then she said nothing to her daughter. I really hesitated to forgive her but had to say “It is Ok.” in order to be polite. I think there is something wrong in that girl’s education.  I’m afraid that when she grows up, that bias and hatred will not disappear but hide deeply in her unconscious mind. She might be as superficially polite as her mother, but treat people differently based on their races, religions, cultures and background.

These two things make me think that whether my small angel in the Disney World will turn into a girl like the unfriendly girl in the gym when she grows up to the year of four, due to the influence of her parents, teachers or the public media in the very early stage of education. If this happens, I will feel so sad.

 

Reference

Shankar Vedantam. How ‘The Hidden Brain’ Does The Thinking For Us

Inclusive Pedagogy and Bias

Fostering an inclusive environment is essential for creating a functional learning environment. Interacting with people from different walks of life only enhances our experience. Unfortunately, studies have shown that even young children are prone to unconscious bias against those who are different from themselves, and it’s not something that improves with age. The key is to be aware of our biases or the potential for bias. No matter how hard we try, bias can insidiously creep into our thought processes. This can prevent us from seeing the whole picture or from coming up with creative solutions to problems. They key is to be aware of this “hidden brain,” and to try to get out of autopilot mode. Last semester in our intro to the future professoriate course, we discussed the following riddle  which illustrates this point well:

“A father and son are in a horrible car crash that kills the dad. The son is rushed to the hospital; just as he’s about to go under the knife, the surgeon says, ‘I can’t operate—that boy is my son!’ Explain.”

People came up with all sorts of explanations for this, such as maybe the “father” was a priest, but overlooked one explanation. The surgeon was the boy’s mother! This was a group of people who prided themselves on avoiding bias, but even they had fallen for this riddle. This phenomenon has serious repercussions in the real world. Only by actively working on our biases will we improve in this area.

From safe space to brave space

One might think of social justice in the realm of politics, and economics, ensuring the equal access to basic human rights and needs. But how do we teach Social Justice in a classroom in which social justice is not enacted? What does social justice in the classroom translate into?

A crucial question that was dealt by Brian Arao and Kriti Clemens in “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces: A new way to frame dialogue around diversity and social justice” written in the Edited volume entitled “The Art of Effective Facilitation: Reflections From Social Justice Educators” by Lisa Landreman. The rest of this blog will primarily rely on their contribution.

Arao and Clemens strived to draw a distinction and advocate for a transition from Safe Space to Brave Safe. The term safe space is described as an environment in which “students are willing and able to participate and honestly struggle with challenging issues’’(Holley and Steiner, 2005). In other words, a space in which “everyone feels comfortable expressing themselves and participating fully, without fear of attack, ridicule, or denial of experience’’ (National Coalition for Dialogue & Deliberation).

The term “safe space” has often been used in the context of classroom environment to reassure students about their guaranteed rights in the classroom and the freedom they hold to express themselves freely and respectfully to others. Safety is therefore associated with an environment free from harm or risk. However, one knows that in the public sphere, or on social media, one is not always protected in a safe space. Unfortunately, most students will be exposed to harsh criticism, personal attacks, and unfounded judgments, and they need to be able to defend their position regardless. Establishing a safe space can be a challenge when the dialogue moves from polite to provocative as the authors remind the readers. Hence, Arao and Clemens argue for a brave space instead.

We argue that authentic learning about social justice often requires the very qualities of risk, difficulty, and controversy that are defined as incompatible with safety. These kinds of challenges are particularly unavoidable in participant groups composed of target and agent group members (…) We have found that the simple act of using the term brave space at the outset of a program, workshop, or class has a positive impact in and of itself, transforming a conversation that can otherwise be treated merely as setting tone and parameters or an obligation to meet before beginning the group learning process into an integral and important component of the workshop.
Brave space is a space not solely defined by the facilitators or the instructor, but commonly defined with students. It is a space that encourages the courageous conversation about important and controversial topics, such as race, class, etc.
By revising our framework to emphasize the need for courage rather than the illusion of safety, we better position ourselves to accomplish our learning goals and more accurately reflect the nature of genuine dialogue regarding these challenging and controversial topics.
The Brave space is based on five common rules:
  • Common Rule 1: Agree to disagree
  • Common Rule 2: Don’t take things personally
  • Common Rule 3: Challenge by choice
  • Common Rule 4: Respect
  • Common Rule 5: No attacks
I found the distinction between safe and brave space extremely useful and intend to use it in my teaching. Needless to say that this blog is not about dismissing the importance of safe spaces, but emphasizing the strength of using both approaches, brave and safe space in the classroom. I hope this will help future professors!

The Ac-ron-y-mous B.I.G.

This post is actually inspired by a comment I left on a classmate’s post (for the Contemporary Pedagogy course I’m taking this semester) that I really liked. (See Elizabeth Clark’s “What’s in a Name” if you’re interested.) It’s a great example of using an acronym as a starting point for outlining one’s teacher “voice” or identity, and I thought it would also be a good starting point/crossover for my initial Global Perspectives Program blog post since we’re all still in the process of getting to know one another/defining ourselves within the contexts of higher education. At first, her use of an acronym reminded me of an episode of the TV show 30 Rock, where Alec Baldwin’s character Jack Donaghy is trying to make a decision regarding the two women he has romantic feelings toward. “All right, Donaghy,” he says to himself. “Follow your heart.”
Follow your HEART: Hard Equations And Rational Thinking
Source via llemonliz.tumblr.com It’s never not funny to me, and it’s a reference I tend to make any time I notice someone having a mind/heart decision-making struggle. At any rate, her post then got me thinking about how I would make my own acronym to describe my teaching voice. It’s an interesting challenge, to be sure. In the spirit of sharing, here’s what I came up with for myself: RACHEL = Real: I am my real self around my students… because I want them to feel comfortable being their real selves in my classroom. (See also: And in life!) Aware: I am aware… that my students have different goals and needs with respect to writing instruction. (This means I do everything I can to help them meet their goals in the context of their own lives, not just my classroom.) Charmingly Self-Deprecating: I am charmingly self-deprecating… which means I’m always one to poke fun at my self to remind my students that no one is perfect. And that’s okay by me. (This one came from a student during my first round of student evaluations way-back-when, and it’s something I’m oddly proud of, I guess.) Humorous: I am humorous… because a well-timed quip or comment during class is one of my favorite ways to reach students. (This is inspired by all the teachers I have had over the years; each one found ways to teach us to learn and to laugh, and sometimes how to do both at once. It doesn’t have to be all seriousness and rigid structure for a learning environment to exist.) Empowered: I am empowered… by those who taught me in the past, and by the students I teach now, to share knowledge and help others. (I got this one from her post; I think it’s an important one.) Loyal: I am loyal to the idea that we can all be lifelong learners (e.g. our ongoing self-education through the lives we live), to the focus of my discipline (e.g. effective communication), and to my students (e.g. supporting their goals and identities while pushing them to learn as much as they can). …By the time I got to the end of this, I felt like a pro at the whole acronym game, hence the cheesy title of “The Ac-ron-y-mous B.I.G.” But I can’t be the only one. What’s your acronym for your teaching identity?  

Strength in Differences

This week, I want to specifically address Katherine Phillips piece entitled “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter.” My typical approach to blogging is to try to relate the readings to my own experiences, and this one really hit close to home. Having grown up in a conservative, rural small town, I spent most of my adolescent years attending church youth group, playing sports, and silently chastising the lifestyle choices of the more artsy, progressive students in my school. This is not to say that my childhood was inadequate, so to speak, but it was undoubtedly uni-dimensional and not necessarily conducive to personal discovery and growth.

I had the great blessing of being accepted into graduate school in New York City, which eventually led to my being introduced to my Jordanian husband, and moving to the Amman to live for a year. This would come to be one of the most critical and informative years of my life.Amman

In her article, Katherine says: “Diversity enhances creativity. It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. Diversity can improve the bottom line of companies and lead to unfettered discoveries and breakthrough innovations. Even simply being exposed to diversity can change the way you think.”

How can we harness this effect into a classroom of diversity-enriched discussion and discourse? For me, it took a quite literal immersive experience for my brain to re-wire in a way that allowed me to comprehend and accept alternative viewpoints, and to ultimately change the way I viewed politics, policy, and globalization. I know this will be different with each student I encounter, kind of bringing the whole idea full circle. While we acknowledge the importance of diversity and the strength in our differences, we too must accept that this kind of larger-than-life growth takes time. We must encourage the movement towards acceptance of diversity in a gentle way, otherwise our message may get lost amongst the kicking and screaming.

Contemporary Pedagogy at VT: A Conversation with Shelli Fowler

Working with the Open Learning cMOOC  (#OpenLearning17) has given me the opportunity to re-connect with one of the most inspirational and talented educators I know. During her long tenure at Virginia Tech Dr. Shelli Fowler developed and taught a graduate course  called “Pedagogical Practices in Contemporary Contexts.”  A jewel in the crown of certificate programs in Transformative Graduate Education and Training the Future Professoriate, Contemporary Pedagogy brings together graduate students from across the university in a seminar devoted to developing a distinct teaching praxis. Shelli designed the course, which is known across campus as “GEDI” (the Graduate Education Development Institute) to help graduate students acquire the diverse and flexible skill sets they need to succeed and lead as teacher/scholar/professionals in the changing landscape of higher education. It works at multiple levels — as a professional development forum for early-career teachers, as an interdisciplinary discussion of the challenges and commonalities of engaging undergraduates at a Research I university, and as a site of critical engagement over the connections between the philosophical underpinnings and practical application of pedagogy (praxis).

When Shelli moved to VCU in the fall of 2015, she asked me to continue offering the class for the graduate school. I was delighted to help, because the course, its creator, and its constituency had terrific reputations. I also welcome any and all opportunities to work with students outside my main area of expertise.  As I’ve learned to teach GEDI over the last few terms I have been inspired by the passion students bring to the linked endeavors of professional development, interdisciplinary dialogue, and critical engagement with pedagogy. I have been invigorated by their talent and willingness to grow and learn from each other.  And above all, I have been mightily impressed with the form and substance of Shelli’s curriculum.  I have tweaked the corners of the reading list, updating a few things here and there. But the only major change I made to was to shift more of the interaction and content creation into the open and into connected spaces. The arc and substance remain Shelli’s.

Busy as she is in her position as interim Dean of University College at Virginia Commonwealth University, Shelli generously agreed to help facilitate this week, and to answer a few questions about the history and design of GEDI.*

*Pronounced like “Jedi” – as in “GEDI’s use the Force to Cultivate Curiosity.” The current course website is here: http://amynelson.net/gedis17/ Find us on Twitter @GEDIVT and #gediVT.

AN: Tell me about the Genesis of GEDI: Where (and when) did you start, and how did you move from concept to implementation? What was your main goal for the course?

SF: GEDI began in the spring of 2003 as a pilot graduate seminar with around 18 students.  I was a new addition to the Learning Technologies division (new TLOS) at Virginia Tech.  The VP of my unit, Dr. Anne Moore met with the new Dean of the Graduate School, Dr. Karen DePauw, to explore how her unit might collaborate with and support the new Dean’s Transformative Graduate Education (TGE) initiative.  The idea of a professional development experience focused on teaching and learning for the 21st century, one that supplemented and moved beyond mentoring at the departmental and college levels, was born.  Because of my work in faculty development and critical pedagogy, I was tapped to create GEDI.  The first couple of semesters it was a small graduate seminar and I worked with the graduate student participants to discover what they knew about teaching and learning, what they wanted to know, and how we could co-create a semester-long seminar experience that provided opportunities to move beyond the still over-utilized ‘stand and deliver’ content-delivery approach that informed their disciplines, both in the experiences as learners and, for those who had done some teaching, in the ways they were expected to teach.  The main goal for GEDI was to create a dynamic, active co-learning environment that continually challenges us to reexamine traditional teaching strategies and explore active, connected, critically engaged co-learning across the disciplines and in a wide range of learning environments–small and large, face-to-face, blended, fully digital.  As such, I really intended from the very beginning to ‘gently disrupt’–a favorite descriptive phrase of mine, the status quo of teaching and learning practices that students suggested were based on ‘we’ve always done it this’ or ‘it’s efficient and easy to assess,’ or ‘just follow the teaching tips on the handout provided.’ Interestingly, the emphasis on (and some might argue epidemic overvaluing of) assessment as the driver for curricular and pedagogical praxis very often leads to over-simplified student learning outcomes and an attempt to standardize assessment in ways that indicate the teaching (and coverage) of material occurred but that fails to gauge student agency and engagement with, or ability to apply and build upon, curricular knowledge.  What was unexpected was how quickly the course grew.  By the third semester, the course had gone through the university-wide approval process and became a three-credit, graded, semester-long graduate seminar, GRAD 5114, and a core requirement of the “Preparing the Future Professoriate” nine-credit graduate certificate.  This is not a GTA workshop or a college teaching: tips and tricks one-credit course that are common at many institutions.  GEDI is a dynamic graduate seminar taught each semester.  Until I left Virginia Tech in May 2015, I worked with approximately 90-100 graduate students each year in the course.  Doing paradigm-busting with GEDI Knights (as they began to call themselves) has been a great experience for me as both a teacher and a learner.  While I love the challenges and opportunities of my new gig at VCU, I miss–and will always miss–the unique TGE program at VT, all of the remarkable GEDIs and the opportunity to work with and learn from our future faculty in that arena.

AN: The syllabus presents a lovely balance between the practical and the theoretical.  We start by talking about the mechanics of connecting online via the website, which makes for an easy segue into the concepts of connected learning and active co-learning, which makes it easy to problematize and interrogate some pretty important and often unexamined assumptions about the significance of what we as faculty “do” in our classes, what traditional assessment modalities do (and don’t do), and even what we mean by “learning.” These meta-level issues become concrete in discussions about authentic and sideways learning, and by examining how different teaching modalities work on the ground. Then students have the opportunity to integrate all of this into a learner-centered syllabus. How did this particular configuration of topics come into being and how did you determine how best to integrate the theoretical and applied components of the course?

SF:  The exploration and development of one’s own teaching praxis is a central focus of GEDI.  A critically engaged Freirean approach requires us to embrace the ways in which our theory must inform our praxis, but also reminds us that our teaching experiences in different contexts must also inform our the theoretical approaches.  The specific sequencing of topics on the GEDI syllabus evolved with input from the graduate students.  The focus on disrupting unexamined status quo practice is a constant current, no matter what activities and co-created deliverables. That requires reflection, of course.  A critically self-reflexive awareness of who one is as a teacher, of how one’s ‘teaching self’ is read and misread, and empowered and/or disempowered, is an important part of the process, too.  That work begins in week one of the seminar and informs the work we do together in the readings and the creation of curricular materials that students do relevant to their current or future teaching.

AN: I’m also struck by how the intensity of the course builds through the first seven weeks (and the syllabus project). The topics from these weeks lay the foundation for heart of the matter —  Inclusive Pedagogy and Paulo Freire’s Critical Pedagogy.  Why are these two topics so important and how do they inform your own teaching praxis?

SF:  While an inclusive praxis informs all we do in GEDI, I discovered from the GEDIs that the most honest, deep-dive, open and vulnerable engagement with the topic of diversity, social justice, equity, inclusive excellence occurred after the community of co-learners had been challenging themselves and each other of less fraught topics.  We become better listeners, more attentive to the cultural differences among us, when we’ve been doing some collective ‘paradigm-busting’ as a learning community.  Rather than begin week one right out of the gate with Freire and inclusive pedagogy–a focus that might unintentionally be (mis)perceived as a prescriptive methodology when a Freirean praxis is intentionally non-prescriptive and essentially an anti-methods pedagogy–GEDIs begin by exploring the broader category of teaching and learning in contemporary U.S. higher education (or K-16 +).  They begin to reflect and interact and support and challenge as they discover or articulate what they think and why in their blogging and as they begin to challenge unexamined assumptions about what teaching should be or what constitutes learning.  In my work, adapting a Freirean pedagogical praxis is essential, regardless of disciplinary field(s) or course content.  The very difficult work for all of us is to invent and (re)invent our praxis so that it is dynamic, rather than static, and stays attentive to equity and access and social justice, domestically and globally.  In the GEDI seminar, we begin that process and intend for it to shift and evolve not just throughout the remainder of our seminar but over the span of our teaching.

AN: After the heavy-hitting weeks devoted to inclusivity and Freire, the momentum again shifts in more practical directions. Once again the “deliverables” (a teaching philosophy statement and Problem-Based-Learning / Case study assignment) find powerful undergirding from meta-level framing at the same time they are shaped by very practical “how to” thought-pieces and flowcharts. How did you develop this part of the course in ways that speak to future faculty in all fields — the engineers and other STEM specialists as well as those of us working in the humanities and social sciences?

SF: One of the things that occurs with the move back to what the GEDIs affectionately refer to as ‘tangibles,’ (items such as those you name above that they will use as they construct, or reenvision, their teaching praxis), is a rethinking of the ways their assignments reify traditional power structures in our learning environments.  In GEDI, the meta-level framing encourages participants to foster collaborative and inclusive learning environments not just via their syllabus redesign, but in their PBL/case study assignments, for example, with the integration of ethical dilemmas that require students to navigate the complexities of systemic inequities as they learn and apply content to become problem-solvers and problem-posers, including in the STEM fields.  I have found that GEDIs in engineering, the sciences, and vet med to be some of the most think-outside-the-box innovators when provided the opportunity to do PBL/case study/ethics curricular design.

AN: The last thing I want to comment on and commend is the way the final module (on ethics in the 21st-Century academy) bring the student back to the notion that we are all in this together. As faculty we face the same challenges and imperatives as our students. We need to commit to learning from and with each other, and to identifying the best ways to make our educational system more humane, ethically oriented, and responsive to a rapidly changing world. Would you like to speak to this?

SF: We are facing similar challenges and imperatives, you’re right.  The final curricular segment in GEDI uses a Parker Palmer article, “A New Professional: The Aims of Education Revisited,” to spark awareness that we as faculty need to foster learning environments that encourage learners’ sense of agency and their understanding that their actions as (future) professionals always have ethical repercussions to which they should attend.  And that is the same for those of us in academe, too.  It is increasingly important in this current moment–how do we best leverage the power of networked co-learners to build and to shape more humane, ethical, equitable, and responsive educational opportunities and non-institution-like institutions of higher ed?  One of my takeaways from working with GEDIs is that it is possible to do this if we value working with and learning from our students.

 

How to Build An Inclusive Academic Environment

Last week was not one of the best weeks I had this semester. I was trying to cope with the feeling of being lost in my teaching and academic experience when one of my professors referred to the concept of diligence as part of his definition of the qualitative side of our work as scholars. This concept led me to think about the way we perform our daily teaching practice and interactions in the classroom and work environment. I have found out that as the workers in the knowledge production process, we have to cope with the contradiction between reductive pragmatism and immense idealism. Thus, the gap between these extreme approaches is the space where our conscious and unconscious processes are negotiated. I realized that becoming a scholar/teacher required a diligent and constant effort to navigate within this gap by paying attention to our biases and prejudices, by opening space for diversity, and creating an inclusive environment.

 

 

The excerpt[i]from the ‘Hidden Brain’ by Shankar Vedantam illustrates an extreme example of the extent to which individuals may act indifferent to immediate human suffering. During the incident at the Belle Isle bridge in Detroit, a woman of color tried to avoid verbal harassment by a man, who later chased her to the Belle Isle bridge with his friends two other friends. Beaten and injured severely, she climbed to the edge of the bridge to save her life. The moment she realized that her perpetrator will not stop and that there is no one to help her, she jumped off the bridge holding on to the slightest chance of her survival. All happened before the eyes of many bystanders, who acted as spectators of a horrific scene rather than witnesses to a brutal crime. Vedantam argues that those who came forward as witnesses later “did not have the insight into their behavior.”[ii] Presenting that our mind works in two modes, pilot/conscious and auto-pilot/unconscious, Vedantam argues that “the autopilot mode can be useful when we’re multitasking, but it can also lead us to make unsupported snap judgments about people in the world around us.”[iii] The “hidden associations”[iv] between new situations and preconceived beliefs start shaping our unconscious when we are as young as three years old. Thus, these connections, centered on the dichotomy of the Self and the Other, determine how we value human life. The moment some of the bystanders changed their minds and admitted their guilt was when they found out that the victim was a mother of a thirteen-year-old.

 

The Belle Isle bridge incident proves that the life of a woman of color becomes worthy when she had the title of mother, which is respected and sanctified and with which the spectators of the horrific scene at the bridge can identify. Thus, the mind tends to fill the logical gaps with our social and moral judgments, partly shaped by the conventional thought patterns of the society in which we were born, raised, and live. The sense of familiarity or foreignness shapes the way we feel and act within a particular environment. Katherine W. Phillips introduces that it is not hard to understand why people prefer a homogeneous environment over a diverse environment. The conformity of the former is easier to handle than the former: however, Philips invites us to look closely into the benefits of diversity before judging and eliminating it. Thus, she presents some studies showing that diversity increases productivity, and enhances decision-making and problem-solving skills since it pushes us to change the way we think about the problems and issues with which we deal. Philips concludes that “when we hear dissent from someone who is different from us, it provokes more thought than when it comes from someone who looks like us.”[v] Although this idea is plausible, we also need to ask the conditions under which we hear about the dissenting opinion of someone.

 

In her book, Whistling Vivaldi, Steele shares her experiences in her academic career. Steele presents our perception is segregated by the actor/observer dichotomy. Her example concerning a discussion on racial bias in the university setting illustrates the miscommunication between the administration and some students, who recently become aware of their status as a member of a minority. Steele captures a significant point that everyone is not heard the same, as she switches from observer’s perception to actor’s perception, and shares her realization as follows: 

“These students lack motivation or cultural knowledge or skills to success at the more challenging coursework where underperformance tends to occur, or they somehow self-destruct because of low self-expectations or low self-esteem picked up from the broader culture or even from their own families and communities.” (22)

 

In the face of the rigidity of structures of cultural domination and social organization, I wonder whether the actors would feel safe to make their voices heard in the first place. Also, even if there is enough evidence to invest in diversity in our highly pragmatic professional life, is such belief capable of removing the glass ceiling? I believe as long as we rely on our observer perception, to which Vedantam refers as the hidden brain, we could only come up with suggestions such as “try twice as hard ignore what other people think”[vi] or “just have faith in yourself”[vii] to the struggle of the Other.

 

As scholars/teachers, I believe we have an important role in shaping the blocks with which we construct the frameworks of culture and social organization. The activity of teaching is part of our everyday practices in which we encounter and reproduce the hidden associations that are the by-products of the history of suffering. Our task is being diligent and self-reflexive, not only with our teaching and scholarly works, but also in our day-to-day interaction with our students and our encounters with the physical, political, social, and cultural structures of the university environment.

 

 

 

[i] See http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122864641

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Ibid

[v] See https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/?wt.mc=SA_Facebook-Share

[vi] Ibid

[vii] Ibid

 

Bibliography

 

How ‘The Hidden Brain’ Does The Thinking For Us: NPR, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=122864641 (accessed March 06, 2017).

 

How Diversity Makes Us Smarter: Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/?wt.mc=SA_Facebook-Share (accessed March 06, 2017)

 

Stelle, Clause M. Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do. New York. W. W. Norton & Company, 2010.

Affect’s Effect on Inclusive Pedagogy

I bet you’re thinking “Why did she use the words affect and effect side by side in the title? It makes no sense!” If this was your first thought, hang in there — I promise it’ll make sense by the time you’re done reading this article. Let me start by defining the word affect as it was used in the title. Affect (pronounced “af-ekt”; noun) is a term  referring to feeling or emotion, and it plays a key role in how an organism (i.e. humans) reacts to a stimuli.  Much of my doctoral research is focused on understanding the relationship between affect and food and how that relationship influences food choice. Additionally, I also study affect’s role in biases as it pertains to interdisciplinary group settings. So when I read Shankar Vendantam’s How “The Hidden Brain” Does The Thinking For Us, I couldn’t help but think about how my research relates to inclusive pedagogy.

In his article, Vendantam mentions that our brain operates in two modes: “pilot” (consciously) and “autopilot” (subconsciously). What’s fascinating is that the brain absorbs and processes information in both modes simultaneously. We don’t realize it, but our brain takes a multitude of explicit (i.e. consciously perceived) and implicit (i.e. subconsciously perceived) factors into account when cataloging information for future use. Even the positive or negative emotions we experience during an interaction with a stimuli can affect how we will respond to it (or with other stimuli we perceive as being related) in the future.

As Vendantam stated “…the mind is hard-wired to ‘form associations between people and concepts’.” From the first moments of fetal existence, everything we encounter or experience shapes how we think for the rest of our lives. In the whole nature vs. nurture debate, it’s safe to say that nurture significantly impacts one’s cognitive processing. What does this mean in the context of pedagogy? Everything.  It means that each and every student is unique in how they behave and interpret the world around them. This impacts their ability to learn and interact with information as well as their fellow classmates. As an educator, it means that your teaching style as well as the manner in which you conduct yourself and your class are greatly influenced by your past experiences. It means that the individual experiences of students in your class will impact their future actions. This is why, as educators, it is vital that we are mindful of ourselves, our students, and the learning environment we establish. Care needs to be taken to ensure our courses are as inclusive as we can make them. With 10 or even 300 unique individuals in a class,  maximizing inclusivity may seem like a daunting challenge. However, by focusing on learner-centered materials and teaching methods, I believe any educator can be successfully implement inclusive pedagogy.


Hidden Brain

As a social scientist I appreciated this week’s readings. Shankar Vendantam, The Hidden Brain -which discussed the brain on “autopilot” and  children’s absorption through cultural upbringing associations of faces really struct me. the author states that, “hidden associations” of that essentially determine what happens in the unconscious minds of these children. “Our hidden brains will always recognize people’s races, and they will do so from a very, very young age,” Vedantam says. “The far better approach is to put race on the table, to ask [children] to unpack the associations that they are learning, to help us shape those associations in more effective ways.” The author also speaks to the fact of the “colorblindness” issue of the U.S. (it would be nice if everyone were colorblind but in all reality we are not)

I appreciated reading this document as I have yet to teach and being an instructor in Sociology I have been anxious in thinking how I would discuss and instruct topics of race and race related issues to students that already have a positionality. I have been anxious about how I would  introduce “uncomfortable” conversations to students but still constructing an environment of respect of peer option. The author lightly mentions about how to “take back the controls” of our unconscious thoughts but does not go into detail about how to do so -the only critique that I have about this piece but otherwise it is useful to read insight to how our conscious and unconscious mind works. The author states that we us our unconsciousness/ “hidden brain” more often than we may realize.

Diversity enhances creativity. To me that is a clear statement. The fact that there are structure issues in society that is not inclusive and pushes a homogeneous group up in society while leaving others behind in problematic. The fact there is a “Inclusive VT” program in 2017 worries me a little (even though it is a great program and I appreciate the call for inclusion) these efforts should have been put into the making along time ago. “If we are to change, grow and innovate as quoted from Katherine W. Phillips, “How Diversity Makes us Smarter”. The discussion of safe spaces was also a topic in this week’s readings, speaking from my perspective and my identity in society there are a lack of safe space to have conversations in relation to race and social justice, in academia that is another story. As an instructor my hopes are to create a space space for my students especially with having to instruct course that directly deal with these issues. Would that space provide students with enough comfortableness for them to share the thoughts in their hidden brain? Would that be necessary for students in order the feel included and heard (as we all have had different experiences)? These questions maybe answered in different way or not at all, however as I am a still in the learning process I do hope that I learn how to construct a conducive classroom environment for all my students to be able to think like a sociologist.

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