Strategies
Inclusive teaching: As in writing programs across the country, our pedagogy is characterized by student-centered learning, relatively small class size, pair and group work, individualized support, personal outreach when students struggle, and close mentoring relationship; this pedagogy increases the chances of engaging minority students, including first generation students, immigrants, international students, students of color, and LGBTQ+ students. It allows us to pay attention to and be deliberate about inclusion.
Fostering cultural identity: Helping students develop confidence in their own cultural backgrounds and identities is an effective DEI-fostering pedagogy. Some of our instructors ask students to pin a world map with where they or their parents are/were from, and another instructor puts “a map on the board” to facilitate a class discussion among students. Others prompt their students to learn about their country’s role in recent colonial history.
Diversity of values and beliefs: Some instructors help students consider multiple interests, values, and beliefs; understand entrenched positions; and reframe the conflict as a “shared” problem by considering 1) increasing resources, 2) gradual reciprocity, 3) new options, 4) interdependence, 5) compensation, and 6) penalties.
Cross-cultural understanding: To facilitate cross-cultural understanding, during class introductions (and when thematically relevant in their writing or class discussion), many instructors encourage students to share where their parents or grandparents are from, and what languages they speak.
Use of global literature/texts: Several PWR faculty members use texts by non-Western authors. Professor Gene Hammond, for example, has his students write textual analysis texts that depict life or critique colonization in other countries. Students explore how their home countries have colonized or were colonized by others, researching and writing about the effects of colonization on current global issues. Many other instructors, including Dr. Rita Nezami, use cross-cultural reading materials to foster critical and global perspectives.
Global/multiple perspectives: In research paper assignments, several instructors require students to find evidence from at least three countries </spanto learn in a hands-on way the value of considering different, often better, solutions to problems than just domestic ones.
Fostering awareness about colonial histories/dynamics: Exploring colonial history and global issues through writing assignments can help students understand continuing effects of colonial hegemony on issues they care about. A number of faculty members, including Dr. Rita Nezami, MaryAnn Duffy, and Soni Adhikari, assign argumentative research papers on global issues in their writing courses. Exploring global issues or researching a local issue comparatively helps students recognize global contexts/dynamics of local issues, use diverse perspectives to better understand local subjects, and especially develop awareness about inequality (of power/privilege, resources/access, etc) and injustice across borders, as well as locally. Dr. Shyam Sharma shares more about this pedagogical focus/approach in Relevant Publications section under Research below.
Engaging diverse learners: Instructors use various inclusive teaching strategies that engage diverse learners, including those who learn better through visual and kinesthetic materials, as well as more introverted learners/learners with learning disabilities who may be more comfortable working in small groups rather than participating in class discussions. Dr. Sara Santos uses a group-based citation game: “after a brief explanation of citation style and format, students receive color-coded cards, which they have to organize into properly formatted references lists.”
Valuing student knowledge: Research can be daunting for students who didn’t have privileged academic backgrounds. To address this fear, Prof. Hammond has his students “survey each other about their chosen issues and/or interview family members as part of research papers,” which “helps to show that expertise is all around them, and not just in people who happen to have published in a peer-reviewed journal.”
Fostering Respect, Compassion, and Care: Writing educators across the country have been at the vanguard of creating environments of respect, openness, and inclusion in the classroom. In the PWR, Dr. Kristina Lucenko incorporates a collaborative “charter of respect, compassion, and care,” inviting students to identify principles and practices of equity and respect in a diverse classroom, which can ground students in an awareness of social justice. Often paired with classroom charters are grading contracts that emphasize student labor in the learning process. Some of us in the PWR use grading contracts rooted in anti-racist assessment practices to create a more equitable learning environment for all university members.
Exploring personal-social connections: Through an assignment called “Discovery Narrative,” Soni Adhikari engages students from all backgrounds (socio-economic, cultural, linguistic), helping them use narrative as an approach to exploring the social dimension of personal and community experiences. The assignment also serves as a “discovery” draft toward further researching and writing the more challenging academic research paper (which becomes less daunting after students have made broader sense of personal knowledge/experience).
Critical language awareness (CLA): Some instructors frame writing courses with a historicization and contextualization of Standard Edited English by having students read and discuss texts written in translingual styles and vernacular Englishes. Other instructors encourage international and multilingual writers to focus on their development as writers by not docking grades for grammar/language issues in draft and instead supporting students to improve their language by learning to notice and fix language issues. Issues of power and politics, prejudice and justice are central to languaging in writing education. Many instructors use reading materials and teaching methods that raise students’ critical language awareness, through which they learn and write about identity, inclusion, equity and justice in society. For instance, Dr. Lisabeth assigns readings in vernacular Englishes from the anthology.
Addressing technological bias: Technology mediates and often magnifies bias. As writing is mediated by technologies, a critical approach to the medium can help students explore issues of social injustice that are mediated/magnified when they focus on built-in bias. In one of Dr. Kristina Lucenko’s courses, students read a “Data & Society” report on racial literacy in tech and social media (https://racialliteracy.tech), then discuss in a discussion board forum examples of how racial bias and racialized thinking are embedded in technology.