Instructor Interview
Below, Dr. Darcy G. Gordon describes various aspects of how and why she and Catherine Drennan created the Inclusive Teaching Module.
OCW: What is the general approach of the online module?
Darcy Gordon: This online module and companion workshop are intended to be used to deepen our own teaching practices. Deep teaching, an educational approach advocated by Bryan Dewsbury, involves critically reflecting on our identities inside and outside of the classroom, building empathy, making sound pedagogical choices, fostering a healthy learning environment, and leveraging campus resources for holistic support of our students. The Inclusive Teaching Module uses this kind of reflective teaching approach as opposed to prescriptive checklists of dos and don’ts. We take this reflective approach to encourage the development of an internal process for critically examining our pedagogical choices that is applicable to all instructional contexts.
OCW: What is the Facilitator’s Guide, and how is it meant to be used?
Darcy Gordon: Do you want to offer a vetted inclusive teaching workshop at your own institution? We use the online module in a blended (i.e., using online and in-person activities) workshop for MIT graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and staff to help participants employ inclusive practices in their teaching contexts. The Facilitator’s Guide and Appendix files provide you with all the logistical and practical information needed to bring this workshop to your own department or group. In facilitating these workshops at MIT, we see significant shifts in participants’ self-reported knowledge and attitudes aligned with our learning objectives (unpublished data). We strongly believe in this curriculum and hope that by making these materials public we can help spread inclusive values in education.
OCW: What does research tell us about the impacts of inclusive teaching?
Darcy Gordon: Inclusive teaching is a collection of practices and mindsets that invites and enables students with diverse backgrounds to learn successfully together. In this online module, we tend to focus on data-driven teaching practices that demonstrate respect and empathy, encourage autonomy and self-efficacy, value open communication and transparent policies, foster belonging and personal connections, and center growth, accessibility, and flexibility. Here are a few examples from the literature aligned to this framework:
- Respect and empathy: By learning student names, which is a sign of respect, instructors can have positive effects on student attitudes about the course, perception of the instructor and materials, and behavior in the course (Cooper et al. 2016).
- Autonomy and self-efficacy: Students’ ability to believe in their capacity to achieve, or self-efficacy, can be enhanced by directly involving them in the construction of their own learning (i.e., active learning strategies) (Ballen et al. 2017). Active learning is especially beneficial in closing achievement gaps between underrepresented students in STEM and their majority peers (Theobald et al. 2020).
- Open communication and transparent policies: Using well-defined rubrics to communicate assignment expectations and guide grading can reduce the bias of the instructor and empower students by promoting a growth mindset (Feldman 2018).
- Belonging and personal connections: Including examples of scientists from different backgrounds can improve counter-stereotypical thinking among students and increase students’ relatability to scientists, which may positively impact student beliefs about their possible futures (Schinske et al. 2016).
- Growth, accessibility, and flexibility: Universal Design for Learning, a framework to improve the accessibility of learning experiences, pulls from the science of how people learn to make recommendations for making classrooms more equitable (CAST 2018). For example, all learners, not just those with disabilities, learn better when materials are presented in multiple modalities (Mayer 2003).
Bibliography
Ballen, C. J., Wieman, C., Salehi, S., Searle, J. B., & Zamudio, K. R. (2017). Enhancing diversity in undergraduate science: Self-efficacy drives performance gains with active learning. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(4), ar56.
CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines version 2.2. Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org
Cooper, K. M., Haney, B., Krieg, A., & Brownell, S. E. (2017). What’s in a name? The importance of students perceiving that an instructor knows their names in a high-enrollment biology classroom. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 16(1), ar8.
Dewsbury, B. M. (2019). Deep teaching in a college STEM classroom. Cultural Studies of Science Education, 15, 169–191.
Feldman, J. (2018). Grading for Equity: What It Is, Why It Matters, and How It Can Transform Schools and Classrooms. Corwin Press. ISBN: 9781506391571.
Mayer, R. E. (2003). The promise of multimedia learning: using the same instructional design methods across different media. Learning and Instruction, 13(2), 125–139.
Schinske, J. N., Perkins, H., Snyder, A., & Wyer, M. (2016). Scientist spotlight homework assignments shift students’ stereotypes of scientists and enhance science identity in a diverse introductory science class. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 15(3), ar47.
Theobald, E. J., Hill, M. J., Tran, E., Agrawal, S., Arroyo, E. N., Behling, S., … & Freeman, S. (2020). Active learning narrows achievement gaps for underrepresented students in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and math. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 117(12), 6476–6483.
