GETTING STARTED:

Including All Students

Including All Students means teaching in ways that do not exclude students, accidentally or intentionally, from opportunities to learn. In this section of the TA Handbook we have identified important principles and classroom practices to help you accomplish the goal of teaching more inclusively:

• Introduction: Diversity as a Reality and as a Resource
• From the First Day On ...
• Course Content and Teaching Strategies
• Anticipating Potential Challenges

Diversity as a Reality and as a Resource

This section of the TA Handbook is based on a number of important assumptions about diversity at UW:

• Diversity is a fact. Different identities, experiences, and perspectives are represented in every group of people, even if they are not always apparent.
• Diversity is desirable. Diversity is a resource for instructors who want to help their students value contributions of others who see things differently, meet intellectual and social challenges in a broader context, and view knowledge from new or different perspectives.
• Diversity is not something new. Diversity has not always been given attention or valued, and it has often been discussed using different terms, but it has always been a social reality.
• Diversity includes diversity of opinions. It is not a goal to downplay difference for the appearance of harmony, but to find strategies for teaching which honor diversity and foster critical thinking, reflection, and dialogue.
• Diversity is not always comfortable. It is sometimes uncomfortable to encounter differences, but experiences that cause discomfort - and even conflict - can be great sources of learning and powerful for stimulating change.
• Diversity is complex. Many of the strategies and resources which are identified here will provide you with starting points, but these are complex issues influenced greatly by the immediate context of each situation.

As a result, we recommend that you take this site as a starting point, and follow through by working with colleagues, consulting with CIDR, or interacting with others who share your interests in order to help you put these principles into practice.

From the First Day On ...

Even when an instructor does not purposefully plan to exclude students, a number things may convey to students that "you don't belong in this class." From the very beginning, it is important to communicate that all students are welcome and will be included in opportunities to learn.

Some instructors have concluded that, since their subject matter is the same for all the students in the course, then the best way to include all students is to treat all students in exactly the same way. It is true that all students must be treated equally - that is, all receive the same assignments, all are given the same opportunities for help, and all are evaluated by the same standards. However, students do not all learn in the same ways, and many have had previous experiences which cause them to conclude that the educational system will be biased against them. Thus not all students will recognize your class as "neutral ground" for learning simply because you treat them all in the same way.

To be more proactive about making it clear that you intend to include all students, you can start at the beginning of the course by communicating how you value diversity, and showing how diversity can contribute to their learning experience in your course. For example,

• Include in your syllabus a statement of your course goals pertaining to diversity. Even apparently homogeneous groups of students are often diverse in ways that are not necessarily visible, and all students are preparing for future careers in diverse communities and workplaces. How will your course acknowledge and prepare students for these realities?
• Provide examples of how you hope to recognize diversity in your course. Possibilities include the voices represented in course materials, your use of examples, and different types of activities that draw on students' diverse experiences, learning strategies, and perspectives.
• Plan ahead to establish good working relationships with and among students in the class. In order to help you recognize what each student brings to the class, and to help them see the value of other students' contributions to the course, ask students to introduce themselves to you and to one another. Collect information that you need in writing (for example, name, contact information, interest or experience with the material to be presented in the course), and plan activities that will allow students to find out who their fellow students are.
• Emphasize that all students have equal opportunity to succeed in the course based on their ability and effort - that is, not based on how well they might identify with the instructor.
• Set expectations for civil classroom behavior. By providing clear guidelines and by your own example, demonstrate to students how you expect them to interact and respond to one another in class. For more information about preventing and responding to uncivil classroom conduct, see Setting the Stage for Potentially Sensitive Material
• Let students know how they can contact you to express any concerns about the class, whether in person, by e-mail, or at various points in the course when you plan to collect student feedback.

Course Content and Teaching Strategies

At times the content of a course directly addresses issues that potentially exclude students. Some courses focus on issues of social history, gender, or ethnic identity, for example, and it may be possible to identify topics or activities that are likely to generate strong reactions among your students. The goal is not to avoid issues that might be controversial, but to prepare students for dealing constructively with controversy so that their strong reactions do not become barriers to learning. See Anticipating Potential Challenges, below.

Other courses may not have the same explicit focus on diversity, but you communicate more indirectly (by the examples you give, the scholars whose work you cite, or the problems you identify as important) that some perspectives are more valid than others. In situations like this, you can prepare by developing a repertoire of cases, examples, and illustrations which draws from a diverse range of experiences, perspectives, and scholarly work.

At other times it is not the content of the course that raises issues of diversity, but the ways in which it is taught. For instance, student learning teams may be an important means for achieving your course goals, but teams may operate in ways that are biased against some students: Who determines team membership? How are roles on the team assigned? Whose opinions are included in team decision-making? In another case, a course taught primarily by lecture may suit some students well, but other students will benefit from more active participation or hands-on learning opportunities: To what extent is it possible in a course to provide a diverse range of opportunities to learn? As these examples show, including all students is not solely a matter of course content, but of expectations that you set for classroom behavior, teaching strategies that you employ, and ways that you structure student interactions during class.

For more information and additional strategies, see Consider How You Teach

Anticipating Potential Challenges

You may encounter challenges to including all students. One common challenge is a student perception of instructor bias. Students may easily think they are not welcome in your class if they hear comments that seem to reveal or perpetuate stereotypes which they don't share - all the more if the stereotypes are about a group or individuals that they identify with. Even an impersonal comment not directed at particular students in the course can become a distraction that prevents students from engaging in the class. See for example one student's comment:

One day the professor started class with this joke about people who speak with accents. Chances are he didn't mean to make fun of them, but it's all I thought about for the whole hour. I might as well have stayed home that day for all I was able to pay attention during the rest of the lecture.

Most people respond strongly to stereotypes directed at them. Students' social identities are strongly held, but students also want to be treated as individuals: as members of certain social groups, and also as unique individuals within those groups. For this reason, students can be put off if their views as members of a social group seem more highly valued than their views as individuals. The challenge of taking into account both social and individual identities is described by Harvard University's Derek Bok Center as "The Cardinal Rule":

1. Learn as much about and become as sensitive as you can to racial, ethnic, and cultural groups other than your own. At the same time:
2. NEVER make assumptions about an individual based on the racial, ethnic, or cultural groups he or she belongs to. Treat each student first and foremost as an individual. Get to know students individually.

   (Encouraging Students in the Racially Diverse Classroom)

    

A second challenge to Including All Students rests not in students' perceptions of the instructor, but in the instructor's ways of responding to comments made by others in the class. It is important to respond promptly to discriminatory remarks or other kinds of disruptive behavior because failure to do so may be seen as your tacit approval of the comment or remark.

Be careful not to discredit or diminish students' strong reactions to negative comments. Bell et al. (1997) write that

Targeted group members usually have a long history of developing sensitivity to negative cues that signal oppressive attitudes. They have been subjected to, suffered from, discussed and thought about such cues throughout the course of their lives and so are highly tuned to note them. Dominant group members ... are often oblivious to the effects of their language on targeted group members and in fact are often shocked to realize this effect. Thus the potential for breakdown in communication, hurt feelings, defensiveness, and recriminations is high. (Teaching for Diversity and Social Justice, p. 302)

For more discussion of your options for responding when student comments like these come up, see Responding Promptly to Discriminatory Remarks

A third challenge you can anticipate is how to handle potentially sensitive material during class discussions. Many instructors have found it helpful to begin by establishing a set of shared expectations with which all students in the class can agree. For example,

• Acknowledge that students may have strong personal opinions about the material.
• Sum Work with students to set ground rules for discussion. Many instructors assign students to develop the ground rules they want to operate by. Others provide their own ground rules that include items such as:
  1. Treat one another with respect.
  2. Discussion should focus on the views that are represented, not on the people who represent them.
  3. Speak from evidence or experience and avoid generalizations about other groups of people
  4. Listen respectfully when others present different perspectives.
  5. Focus on own learning, not winning arguments.
• Plan to be the "Devil's Advocate." The discussion may become one-sided for a variety of reasons. If the discussion is not well-rounded, you need to offer the underrepresented point of view, regardless of your personal views on the matter.

For additional links to resources and ideas on Diversity and Inclusive Teaching, see CIDR's Inclusive Teaching web site