Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to FHSU Tilt Talk, a podcast about educational technologies, teaching and learning, scholarly research and service hosted by Teaching Innovation and Learning Technology Staff.
[00:00:14] Speaker B: Welcome to the Tilt Talk podcast, episode 17. We're doing something a little bit different today. Today we are discussing a book and the team in Teaching Innovation and Learning Technologies collectively read what Inclusive Instructors do by Tracy Marcella Addy, Derek Dube, Khadijah Mitchell, and Mallory Sorrell this summer. And then each arm of the team is going to give you a podcast, taking the part that is most closely related to their work. So for today's episode, the faculty Development team will share takeaways on part one of the text. These two chapters frame these points why Inclusive Teaching is Critical to Higher Education an explanation of the mindsets and rationale for implementing Inclusive teaching My name is Nicole Frank. I'm a Faculty Development Coordinator in Teaching Innovation and Learning Technologies.
[00:01:07] Speaker C: And I'm Leticia Hague, the Faculty Development Training Specialist in Teaching Innovation and Learning Technologies.
[00:01:14] Speaker B: So chapter one begins with some definitions, and I think it's helpful to start at that point and say, well, what is inclusive instruction if we're going to have this conversation?
And they provide definitions that are pulled from the research they did, and various faculty members submitted some qualitative comments on what inclusive teaching or inclusive instruction is to them.
So these are survey results. They're all really interesting, but I think at some point it's important it's necessary to find where those definitions overlap and show commonality so that we can establish a working definition and move on to our teaching. The authors shared that from all of the research that they looked at, two themes emerged, and those two themes were that to instructors, inclusive teaching involves designing learning environments that are equitable, where all students have the ability to reach their potential and welcoming, and that the environments foster a sense of belonging. So they reiterate that point a few times in this part in this section of the book. Chapters one and two, Part one Equitable and welcoming being the two indicators or descriptors that define inclusive environments and create a vital sense of belonging. And I found myself nodding in agreement with the author's assertion here when they talk about the history of inclusive instruction and definitions that many instructors actually do a lot of things that are equitable and welcoming, but they don't know it necessarily, or they don't name it or articulate it with that terminology.
[00:02:46] Speaker C: Yeah, you're exactly right, Nicole. You know, the book even says that inclusive teaching is seemingly elusive.
So as the authors explain it, it's important to not only define the terms diversity, equality, equity, and inclusion. But it's also important to operationalize them. You know, what does that action look like when you're talking about those terms? And so I'd like to point out some of those terms specifically from page four, because they really bring to light what those terms look like in action. And let's start with diversity. This is really how learners differ from one another regarding their social identities, demographics and perspectives, prior experiences, attitudes, their knowledge on a. On a content area, the skills that they bring, and other attributes. And so, to put it simply, this is all the unique characteristics that make each person who they are. And it's not only framed by those classic or standard demographic descriptors, but also those qualities that develop the whole person. You know, the experiences they had through life, how and where they were raised, what classes they've taken prior to coming in, or maybe what they didn't take prior to coming into a course.
And then we look at the term equality, and that's the belief that all students have identical learning experiences, regardless of these differences.
And obviously, this term does not align with inclusive teaching practices.
So that's why the next term is key, and that's equity. And equity is acknowledging the differences between the learners, their diversity, and the types of learning environments that help diverse students succeed. And this term really helps instructors understand and implement inclusive teaching, because if they acknowledge those differences, then they can really create an inclusive environment. And so that last term, inclusion is creating a welcoming environment and intentionally not excluding any learners.
You know, you talked about the survey data that they include throughout the text, and one of the responses that I really liked that helped the survey sort of explain the purpose, what she does in her instruction. And she said she likes to craft opportunities for all students to demonstrate their individual strengths. And that one really stood out to me because I just really feel like it's a especially important on the social belonging piece, you know, students need to feel they belong and they can freely contribute to the course. And so when instructors consider the diversity of their students and they look at how they can acknowledge those diversities between their learners and bring that into their course, that's really when students start to engage.
[00:05:32] Speaker B: Well, what an eloquent way to describe inclusive teaching, right? To craft an opportunity for all students to demonstrate individual strengths, I think that that's what we should all strive to do, certainly.
So let's move on to defining the types of students that we're talking about.
So here the authors list, and they briefly describe the many ways in which our students can be diverse, such as first generation adults. Class, mental health needs and religion.
[00:06:01] Speaker C: Yeah. These brief descriptions help instructors realize both the classic definitions of diversity and the sometimes less obvious characteristics of students. Students, you know, for example, those first gen students or those adult learners, those who can maybe bring life experiences to the course because they have obligations like employment and family outside of being a student, so they can bring that into the course.
One term that we hear often is low, lower socioeconomic learners, or actually the term that was used by the authors that I really like, limited financial means.
You know, just because you go to college and you might have a scholarship doesn't mean that it's still not difficult.
We also talk about students with accommodations, learning accommodations, and learners with mental health concerns. And those are those students, that latter one, who really need trauma informed pedagogies. We really, especially coming off the pandemic, I think we've really had an awareness now of trauma informed pedagogies and how we can accommodate those students with mental health concerns.
And of course we have those classic definitions of race, sex, class, nationality and religion combined with just these mentioned before, those less obvious ones. And that really affects the personalities, the temperaments, the political viewpoints, and even the preferences of learners. And those are all things that should be considered in designing an inclusive instruction. You know, again, I go back to one of the considerations offered by one of the authors on page 10 for inclusive practices, and it was specific to accommodating students with some sort of learning need.
But it really could be applied to all types of diversity. And it says supporting students with. So here you would insert the characteristic or type of learner is not changing the content of the course, but rather making it more accessible for all students. And I think that's something that's important to consider.
It's not lessening the rigor in your courses.
It's changing or adding supports so that they can meet them where they are.
[00:08:08] Speaker B: Right. And that's really important.
You pointed out the unique demands on adult learners in regards to having full time jobs and families. And one of the simple recommendations the authors make is setting a deadline for Sunday night instead of Friday afternoon, because that can make a course work better for adults for whom the weekend is just a much better time to get their studies done. And you're not changing content or rigor in that situation. You're just changing logistics where the instructors discuss how faculty can be important connectors to university services like mental health services. I can't help but think of the study that the author cited showing that 64% of students who leave college cite mental health reasons, and half of those, so 32% or so, never sought out campus resources.
So here I think it makes much sense that the authors point out that inclusive college environments can't just be the responsibility of students affairs offices, that faculty are vital, and that pedagogical interventions are impactful and important.
[00:09:08] Speaker C: The adage that they don't care what you know until they know how much you care really kind of plays into this, right?
[00:09:16] Speaker B: And that kind of carries over into our next topic that we wanted to discuss, which is about barriers. Because there are a couple of times in the text when the authors discuss the faculty mindsets from their surveys. And one of those was, well, this isn't really my job. I don't teach a diversity class.
Really. This is the work of the student affairs offices, the student physical and mental health center, and so on. And of course, what we're seeing here is that if we have 64% of students who leave school citing mental health reasons and half of those never connecting to services, we can't just rely on those services. We have to look to pedagogical interventions as well. But one of the barriers that I found really fascinating was, was what Addie and her colleagues point out as the deficit model, the deficit thinking model. They point out that even the most intentional of inclusive instructors will sometimes miss the mark and that being afraid of making a mistake or doing something wrong can be a barrier itself. Because they want to do the right thing. They want to accommodate students who have needs while maintaining rigor and expectations and content.
And so they're so afraid of making a mistake that they don't even try because they worry about the implication of the mistake. And then in the deficit thinking model, often well intentioned faculty may still think about, even implicitly, the norms of college. And the problem of thinking about college in terms of norms is that we know historically in the United States, college, the university, was designed for young white men, typically from wealth.
And so the norms that are established are not going to work for students today. We have to upset those norms.
And if we continue to imagine college in terms of those norms, even implicitly, that were established in previous era, then we'll easily see any student who fails to meet those norms, in our perception, as coming in in deficit. So then we think, well, we should assimilate to meet that norm, right?
We need to accommodate, to meet that student who's coming in lacking something. And we also often assume, or you know, the authors point out that that if a faculty operate from a deficit model mindset, they will assume that students from certain backgrounds may never meet that.
And so we're already kind of underestimating those students.
And what the authors say is that when we think like that from a place of deficit and we really want to help those students succeed, it can be easy to think that the answer is lowering rigor or expectations, changing the content, changing the rules or the expectations for, for that student.
Even if we feel like we're compromising our integrity and lowering those expectations, it can feel like that's what we're supposed to do to accommodate those students. But I found this part really interesting, and I guess I got a little bit excited here because I noted something that took me back to Peter Felton's book on relationship rich education.
And that is the comment that the marginalized students do not appreciate lowered expectations. In many cases, the students that Felton interviewed found it insulting.
So that is not the answer. Then the authors here, Addie, Dube, Mitchell, and Sorel, go a step further. They tell us that deficit model thinking perpetuates stereotypes, of course, around inferiority because it allows us to continue thinking students who come in from this background or with this school preparation or whatever are coming in from deficit. And then we ignore and minimize structural issues that need to be addressed and disrupted. And this makes sense because we're still thinking about that antiquated college norm and that that's what's appropriate and all students should submit to it. So we ignore those systematic issues when we think the actual problem is a deficit the student comes in with instead of the system that the student is trying to succeed in, using those terms
[00:13:13] Speaker C: equality versus equity that we talked about earlier. So, yeah, I really like the point the authors made about instructors augmenting the learning environment by considering the many skills, the cultures, the experiences, the attitudes, perspectives, habits of mind, personalities, all of those things that they bring into the classroom.
And capitalizing on those allows instructors to implement, you know, one of those frameworks that they discussed in chapter two, or even the community of inquiry framework that we've talked so much about here in Tilt, especially that Social Presence piece, this, which leads really nicely to the next thing that we wanted to discuss. So I'll let you introduce that.
[00:13:54] Speaker B: Right. So we've talked about definitions of inclusive teaching and what inclusive learners look like, and then some barriers.
And then the next thing we want to talk about are what are the benefits? What is the why of implementing inclusive instruction? And here I found the research the authors shared to be really compelling. In one case, the African American students in a study were told during their freshman year in college that college would indeed be tough, but this initial toughness would pass and things would get easier as they acclimated to college. So this was a social belonging intervention, and it seems like such a simple one, but the students who received it showed better outcomes in both health and academics. Four years later. And a similar example from the book, female engineering students who were treated with both affirmation training and a social belonging intervention had higher GPAs than female engineering students who didn't experience these two treatments. It's kind of amazing what good can come from just talking to students, normalizing the difficulty of college and then as the author suggests, as an easy go to, or an immediately applicable go to sharing your own experience navigating school when you were in college, what was hard for you, and share that with your students.
[00:15:07] Speaker C: It's definitely building those relationships.
And that was one of the things that I thought the authors explained. Well, in chapter two, which is the second part of part one, the instructors who understand their learners diverse needs tend to advance their critical thinking. So it's necessary to understand students from not just an institutional level, but also a program or classroom and individual levels. And that really helps our understanding of the student be evidence based rather than stereotypical or assumption. And so I think we both agree, you and I have talked several times about this, that there are a lot of frameworks mentioned in chapter two, and so there's a lot to consider in inclusive teaching. But there was one that was recently shared with me and it's an acronym. It's called isil Instruction, Curriculum, Environment and Learner.
And I really like this one because it's easy to remember. The acronym is easy to remember. It's rooted in a problem solving approach that debunks the myth that student learning problems exist primarily in the learner and underestimate the degree to which instructional practices, curriculum or content demands and environmental influences impact the learner's performance. So instead of looking at the learner itself, it goes out wider and it looks at, you know, how is instruction handled? What do you do in your, you know, to set up your course? And then what are those content demands of the course, which goes back to that rigor and then it also looks at the environment. I think we also have to be mindful of the fact that we don't have traditional classrooms like we think of. It goes back to that norm that was established. We have online classes down. What does that look like for students? And so you really look at all of those factors and Then you look at what you can do, what the learner brings into the course itself.
And so you know, these levels, though, they ask instructors to consider all the different areas covered in those different frameworks that are in chapter two.
I like isil, like I said, because you could almost in a way make a chart and match those frameworks that they discuss in chapter two to each of those four terms. You know, this is an instructional framework, this is a curricular framework, this is a environmental framework, this is a learner framework.
So it really helps you in designing that inclusive environment and especially aligned with those learner centered and growth mindsets similar to what you talked about with, you know, those African American students were told, hey, it's tough but it's going to get better, just stick with it. You know, that goes with that learner centered and those growth mindsets that yet it's tough now, but it will get better. You're just not there yet.
[00:17:52] Speaker B: Yes. And I think it's important to note that instilling the confidence in the student, like Peter Felton's research said, instead of saying, I'm going to reduce the rigor for you, you can do it. It's going to be tough the first year, but you can do it. You can handle this course. Yes, I know this course is difficult. It was hard on me when I took this course too. Right, right, yes, absolutely.
[00:18:16] Speaker C: So we've covered a lot of ground today in those first two chapters. So we are going to go ahead and wrap up for today, but we'd like to encourage you to check out the text what Inclusive Instructors Do Principles and Practices for Excellence in College Teaching. And we'd especially like to point out in Appendix E that provides a worksheet for establishing a welcoming course and classroom. And then we also want to encourage you to watch for the second episode in this series coming from our Instructional designers and Teaching Innovations and learning technologies on how you can implement inclusive teaching practices instead of just the why you should do it, but how you can do it.
So thank you for joining us today. Thanks, Nicole, for spending a little bit of time visiting with me over.
[00:18:59] Speaker B: Yeah, thank you, Leticia, for these topics.
[00:19:02] Speaker A: Thank you for listening to this episode of FHSU Tilt Talk. Subscribe on Spotify, Amazon and Google Podcast. In the meantime, check out the Tiger Learn blog or the Tilt social media pages for updates. We'll see you next time.
