The Elon Teaching and Learning Conference this summer had several session formats including 30 minute and 60-minute talks. Tonight, we watched a 60-minute talk entitled “Teaching for Equity and Inclusion”by Mary Jo Festle, Maude Sharpe Powell Professor, Professor of History, and Associate Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, Elon University. Festle started the session with a prompt on the screen for attendees to share “1 helpful thing you bring to this work of teaching for equity and inclusion.” The responses included willingness to learn and experience. Festle summarized trends and talked about several anti-racism frameworks discussing what we know and don’t know. Festle also mentioned assumptions and clarified that diversity in the talk was used to represent human diversity. I enjoyed her introduction and explaining how we can work on improving classroom climates and challenge students while supporting them. Festle shared a statement from Elon’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning that reads:
Instructors who teach for equity and inclusion intentionally create learning environments where all students are treated equally, so that all students have equal access to learning, and feel valued and supported in their learning.
Inclusion means that all students feel invited to explore ideas, safe to express their views in a civil manner, and respected as individuals and members of groups.
Elon’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching & Learning
This statement is meaningful yet simple and understandable. It made me think! Festle recommended thinking about what we teach, who we teach, how we teach, how we assess, and who we are as a framework to organize our thinking. For what we teach, Festle explained that we should systematically review our materials to learn whose perspectives are included and our learning goals. Festle paused for a solid five minutes to allow the audience to take notes and think about content in the courses they teach.
The next section was focusing on who we teach. Students bring with them skills, knowledge, and other assets we can leverage in our teaching. The section on how we teach. Festle talked about signals and stereotype threat. The last consideration mentioned by Festle was how we assess – a topic that many of us are revisiting! A question Festle asked that is worth spending more time on is do my assessments allow students to show progress and growth? Do students understand quality and are able to recognize those differences in their own work? Implicit bias and the halo effect to give the benefit of the doubt to certain students were discussed. Festle shared useful frameworks to help us think systematically. I appreciate the guiding questions. The session had several pause points for reflection yet moved at a reasonable pace. I enjoyed it and learned about some resources including the CATL website on teaching for inclusion and equity!
