2.2: Inclusivity Session

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

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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:

1. 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.) 
2. Stereotype threat: Watch the following the 8-minute video of Dr. Claude Steele (Stanford) discussing stereotype threat, the focus of his book, Whistling Vivaldi. 

    

3. Microaggression: Watch this 4.5 minutes video on Microaggressions by Dr. Derald Wing Sue (Columbia). 

4. 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. 

5. An inclusive syllabus: A Google doc with Six Principles of an Inclusive Design syllabus

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During Workshop

Activities

1. Cultivating Brave Spaces: visit the  Inclusivity Workshop Google Folder and go to the folder for your institution.
   1. Activity 1: Setting community guidelines for engagement.  In the Cultivating Brave Spaces Google doc, read the opening information add your groups list of brainstormed guidelines to the first table. We will adopt these as the guidelines for engagement during this workshop.
   2. Activity 2: In the same Google doc, record your group's answers to the prompts at the top of the second Table
2. 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:
       • Visit the Aperian Global Website to learn about three steps to address unconscious bias. 
       • Take-home findings of students on unconscious bias - Intervention Studies for offsetting unconscious bias.pdf
       • Bibliography links for "Intervention Studies for offsetting unconscious bias.pdf" can be searched for on this site
     • Stereotype Threat materials:
       • A set of empirically validated interventions to offset stereotype threat: Interventions to help reduce stereotype threat.pdf
     • Microaggression materials: 
       • A 4-page document from Equity Solutions with definitions, examples, exercises/tools and links to further resources - Introduction to microaggressions.pdf
       • A 2-page tool for Recognizing Microaggressions and the Messages They Send adapted from Dr. Derald Wing Sue, Microaggressions in Everyday Life: Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation, Wiley & Sons, 2010: Microaggressions_Examples_Arial_2014_11_12.pdf
     • Cultural competence materials: 
       • A resource for Creating a Culture of Inclusion for Students based on a presentation by Lea Webb and Jahtayshia Davis of the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Binghamton University, 2020. Cultural competence.pdf
       • Cultural competency: Visit the National Education Association website
     • Inclusive syllabus materials:
       • Matthew Cheney’s Cruelty-free syllabus
       • Podcast: Toward Cruelty-Free Syllabi (recommended by Dr. Susannah McGowan from Georgetown University)
       • Podcast: Annotating the Marginal Syllabus 
       • Article: Cameras Be Damned by Karen Costa (recommended by Geneva Lopez)
       • Article: One Way to Show Students You Care — and Why You Might Want to Try It
       • Google Document: Six Principles of an Inclusive Design Syllabus (UMass Amherst)
       • Google Folder: Resources for Six Principles of an Inclusive Design Syllabus (UMass Amherst) 
       • Google doc: Radical Open Syllabus
       • First Day Toolkit by the Student Experience Project to create a more inclusive syllabus and more inclusive first-day messaging.

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Post-Workshop

Selected Resources

• First Day Toolkit by the Student Experience Project to create a more inclusive syllabus and more inclusive first-day messaging.
• Want to reach all your students?  Here's how to make your teaching more inclusive. An advice guide by Drs. Viji Sathy and Kelly A Hogan. 
• CBE-LSE Inclusive Teaching Strategies
• Table of evidence-based classroom activities that address specific inclusivity issues by E. Pietri:  evidence-based inclusivity interventions.pdf
• How to include a care note for people of color in your syllabus:
• TEDxUGA Talk by Dr. Ansley Booker, Unhidden Figures: Uncovering our cultural biases in STEM. 
• TEDtalk The Danger of a Single Story
• New classroom tool being developed at Harvard for inclusive teaching practices in large courses: http://teachly.me/
• Cultural competency website from Georgetown: https://nccc.georgetown.edu/curricula/culturalcompetence.html
• Preparing teachers for diverse classrooms from Edutopia: https://www.edutopia.org/blog/preparing-cultural-diversity-resources-teachers
• MCOD - Multicultural Organization Development, website with guidance/resources for organizational change around this issue.
• ASPIRE - The National Alliance for Inclusive and Diverse STEM Faculty - webpage with resources from APLU.
• Video on Cultural Humility:

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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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Session Slides

The slide deck from today's presentation is available here and the file is titled "MoSI Inclusivity 2022 - Final.pptx".  Each slide has associated with it a set of talking points and many have additional resources that you can utilize to take a deeper dive into the concepts that are presented. 

These materials can be reused by MoSI participants so long as they are properly attributed to the MoSI.