Workshop Overview
The Inclusivity workshop uses facilitated discussion and reflection to increase awareness of the most common invisible factors that serve as barriers to success for students from underserved groups. Awareness is only useful when paired with action, so participants will use their awareness to develop and share teaching strategies to offset the impact of structural barriers. Therefore participants will walk away with concrete examples of strategies they can use in their courses to reduce barriers and increase success for all students.
Learning Outcomes
Participants will be able to:
- Articulate factors that contribute to systemic inequities in education;
- Self-reflect on beliefs and behaviors to better understand how we can change to remove barriers to our students success;
- Incorporate strategies to remove, mitigate or offset barriers that contribute to system inequities.
Key Terms
- Inclusive teaching
- Social justice
- Equity
- Implicit/explicit diversity
- Implicit assumptions/unconscious biases
- Privilege
- Microaggression
- Cultural competency
- Stereotype threat
Active Learning/Formative Assessment Strategies
- Brainstorming
- Directed- and random-call report out
- Life walk
- Think-pair-share
- Small group discussion/breakout rooms
- Reflection
Pre-Workshop
Background
The goal of the following pre-workshop homework is to introduce all participants to five factors that make our classrooms exclusive: a) unconscious bias, b) stereotype threat, c) microaggressions, d) lack of cultural competency and exclusive language and policies in our syllabi. During the workshop, each participant will choose one of these areas and as part of a group will do a deeper dive into that topic and then share resources and strategies with their cohort peers for offsetting that factor in the classroom.
Tasks
Please complete the following tasks prior to the workshop for an introduction to four barriers to inclusive classrooms:
- Unconscious bias:
- Read this 2-page NYTimes Op-Ed "What? Me Biased? What? Me Biased?.pdf
- Visit Harvard Project Implicit and take at least two Implicit Assumption tests of your choice. (*Note: It can be uncomfortable to find out that you have unconscious biases. It's important to know that unconscious biases are a result of YOUR ENVIRONMENT and not what you consciously believe. The goal is to use awareness to make conscious efforts to offset unconscious biases. Knowledge is power.)
- Stereotype threat: Watch the following the 8-minute video of Dr. Claude Steele (Stanford) discussing stereotype threat, the focus of his book, Whistling Vivaldi.
- Microaggression: Watch this 4.5 minutes video on Microaggressions by Dr. Derald Wing Sue (Columbia).
-
Cultural competency: Visit the National Education Association website and read through the information on cultural competency on the first page. This can also serve as a resource later as there are links to resources for educators here as well.
-
An inclusive syllabus: A Google doc with Six Principles of an Inclusive Design syllabus
During Workshop
Activities
- Cultivating Brave Spaces: visit the Inclusivity Workshop Google Folder and go to the folder for your institution.
- Read the opening information in the Cultivating Brave Spaces Google doc and record your group's answers to the prompts at the top of the first Table.
- Move to the second activity - Setting community guidelines for engagement in the same document and add your groups list of brainstormed guidelines to the second table. We will adopt these as the guidelines for engagement during this workshop.
- Equity - Visit the Inclusivity Workshop Google Folder and go to the folder for your institution.
- Record your group's answers in the Equity activity Google Doc.
- Deeper Dive on Invisible Barriers to Inclusion:
- Visit the Inclusivity Workshop Google Folder and go to the folder for your institution to report your findings in the Deeper Dive on Invisible Barriers Google Doc.
- Use the materials linked at the bottom of the Google document (for your convenience) or below for your topic to develop and share classroom strategies to offset one of the four invisible factors that contribute to classroom inequities.
- Unconscious Bias materials:
- Stereotype Threat materials:
- Microaggression materials:
- Cultural competence materials:
- Inclusive syllabus materials:
References
- Theobald, E., Hill, M. Tran, E., Agrawal, S., Arroyo, E., Behling, S., Chambwe, N., Cintrón, D., Cooper, J., Dunster, G., Grummer, J., Hennessey, K., Hsiao, J., Iranon, N., Jones, L., Jordt, H., Keller, M., Lacey, M., Littlefield, C., Lowe, A. Newman, A., Okolo, V. Olroyd, S., Peecook, B., Pickett, S., Slager, D., Caviedes-Solis, I., Stanchak, K., Sundaravardan, V., Valdebenito, D., Williams, C., Zinsli, K., Freeman, S. (2020) Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math. PNAS 117(12) 6476-6483.
- Inclusive Teaching, Bryan Dewsbury and Cynthia J Brame (2019) CBE - Life Sciences Education, 18:2.
- Does STEM Stand Out? Examining Racial/Ethnic Gaps in Persistence Across Postsecondary Fields by Catherine Riegle-Crumb, Barbara King, and Yasmiyn Irizarry. Does STEM Stand Out_.pdf
- Structure Matters: Twenty-one teaching strategies to promote student engagement and cultivate classroom equity, K Tanner CBE-LSE: Structure Matters 21 strategies inclusivity.pdf
- A special report from Magna Publications, You Belong Here: Making: Making Diversity, Equity and Inclusion a Mission in the Classroom - You-Belong-Here-Making-Diversity-Equity-and-Inclusion-a-Mission-in-the-Classroom.pdf
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University of Montana Materials
Inclusivity Slides presented by Lauren and Ginger are here
Mobile Project rubric is here
Cultivating Brave Spaces document is here