What exactly does it look like to “create a life of the mind that stimulates and engages all comers”? We won’t pretend to have all the answers, but in order to help departments and individual faculty members as they grapple with this question for themselves, we have assembled a few helpful resources on the concept of inclusive teaching. Along with these resources, we have also included some background and further reading on the current conversation around the idea of decolonizing the curriculum. Since we know that it takes time to redesign curricula and classes (never mind coming up with new ones), we have also included information on grants that are available to support such efforts.
The concept of inclusive teaching is—of course—not new to Sewanee. Many faculty members from different disciplines have been working for some time on making their classes more inclusive for all learners. Since inclusivity (just like all good pedagogy) is an ongoing process that is never fully complete, we hope that the resources gathered below will be of just as much use to those who have been doing this work for a long time as they will for those who are just starting out. Our students are always changing, so no matter your discipline or your level of experience, there is always more to be done.
If you have questions about the materials here or suggestions for other good resources we might have missed, feel free to get in touch with the CfT co-directors to let us know!
inclusive teaching
To teach inclusively is “to move beyond a narrow focus on ‘teaching content’ to consider whether or not all students, regardless of their identities and prior experiences, have opportunities to feel included, supported by, and able to succeed in a learning community” (Sandlin 2019). This guide—created by Betsy Sandlin in 2019 with the support of a McCrickard Faculty Development Grant—offers an accessible starting point for faculty in all disciplines to think about how to make their classes more inclusive for all learners. It includes concrete suggestions on syllabus design, classroom dynamics, and assessment, with reflection questions designed to help you apply the basic principles of inclusive teaching to your classes. We highly recommend it as your first port of call.
Online resources on inclusive teaching
| How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive (Chronicle of Higher Education) |
| Creating Inclusive College Classrooms (University of Michigan) |
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Tools for Educators (UC Berkeley Multicultural Education Program—includes links to a wide range of resources from other schools) |
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Structure Matters: Twenty-One Teaching Strategies to Promote Student Engagement and Cultivate Classroom Equity (Kimberly D. Tanner, San Francisco State University) |
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Creating Inclusive College Classrooms (University of Michigan) |
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Inclusive Classroom Presentation Slides (Betsy Sandlin) |
Books available to check out from the CfT or elsewhere in DuPont library
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Classroom communication and diversity: enhancing institutional practice / Robert G. Powell, Dana Caseau. |
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The art of discussion-based teaching : opening up conversation in the classroom / John E. Henning |
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McKeachie's teaching tips : strategies, research, and theory for college and university teachers / Wilbert J. McKeachie, Marilla Svinicki (includes a relevant chapter) |
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Transforming classroom culture [electronic resource] ; Inclusive pedagogical practices / Edited by Arlene Dallalfar, Esther Kingston-Mann, Tim Sieber |
decolonizing the curriculum
As Elizabeth Charles notes, the idea of “decolonizing the university” has been in currency since at least 2011, but came to particular prominence as a result of the “Rhodes Must Fall” campaign at Oxford in 2016. Although the term “decolonizing” has been used in different ways, the Keele Manifesto for Decolonizing the Curriculum (from Keele University in the UK) is one influential attempt to articulate precisely what decolonizing the curriculum might mean. The authors of the manifesto write that: “Decolonizing the curriculum is to recognize that knowledge is inevitably marked by power relations. Our universities exist in a global economy of knowledge, with a definite hegemonic centre, reflecting hierarchies of race, class and gender.” Decolonizing, as the manifesto understands it, is “about rethinking, reframing and reconstructing the current curriculum in order to make it better, and more inclusive. It is about expanding our notions of good literature so it doesn’t always elevate one voice, one experience, and one way of being in the world.” The authors note that decolonizing “is not just about bringing in minority ethnic writers and texts, but also how we read ‘traditional mainstream’ texts.” While the initial calls to decolonize the curriculum were made primarily in relation to disciplines in the humanities, there has been increasing recognition that the concept of decolonization may have an important role to play in the sciences and other disciplines too (see resources below).
Although the idea of decolonizing the curriculum has become increasingly influential over the past few years, it has also been the subject of some criticism. James Muldoon has argued that some of this criticism misses the point. As he puts it: “The demand for greater representation from non-European writers need not involve burning copies of Plato and Shakespeare’s texts. We can still teach authors like John Locke, but we should note that he was a liberal political philosopher deeply enmeshed in American slavery.” Other writers, however, have raised concerns that the “easy adoption of decolonizing discourse” risks turning decolonization “into a metaphor” (Tuck & Yang 2012). With these concerns in mind, the words of the Keele manifesto seem particularly apt: “Decolonising requires sustained collaboration, discussion and experimentation among groups of teachers and students, who themselves have power to make things happen on the ground and think about what might be done differently. The change will take different forms in different universities and disciplines. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.”
Other helpful resources
| Strategies for Antiracist and Decolonized Teaching (Anamika Twyman-Ghoshal & Danielle Carkin Lacorazza—offers concrete suggestions and reflection questions) |
| Decolonizing the Curriculum: A Guide for Animal and Plant Sciences (University of Sheffield—offers some useful reflection on what “decolonizing” might look like within the sciences) |
Grant support
The CfT offers a number of grant programs that might be of interest to departments and individual faculty members looking to make their classes more inclusive or to consider what it might mean to decolonize their curricula:
| Department and Program Enhancement Grants offer support for departments and programs working collaboratively to undertake significant curricular revision or other work that would benefit from time and space above and beyond regular department/program meetings. These grants can be used to fund food and drink, child care expenses and external speakers/consultants. |
| Teaching Enhancement Grants and Learning Community Grants offer support for individuals and small groups of faculty, and are offered on a regular cycle in the fall and spring. Stipends are available for applicants whose projects involve substantial engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning. |
| Mini-Grants are available on a rolling basis, and are intended to be used for small interventions in classes you are currently teaching. These grants are limited to a maximum of $700. |
For more information on CfT grants, please feel free to contact the CfT co-directors.
