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Andrew Hibel, HigherEdJobs: Dr. Saunders, you are a Clinical Associate Professor in the School of Education at University of Michigan with interests in social justice education and teacher education. Please tell us how you became interested in this area of higher education.
Dr. Shari Saunders, University of Michigan – Ann Arbor: Although my interest in issues of fairness started when I was very young, I became concerned about inequities in education when I was in junior high school and moved from an urban public school to a suburban one. My desire to address inequities led me to work with underserved youth in urban communities first as an elementary special education teacher, and later as a resource room teacher for incarcerated adolescent males. After several years of teaching, I entered a doctoral program in education at the University of Virginia, and this is where I developed my interest in the field of teacher education. After I completed my doctoral program, I began working as a teacher educator in the School of Education at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor. In the first course, which I co-taught, I included diversity as one of the topics. After I began teaching on this topic, it became clear that many of my students had a limited understanding of diversity-related issues. In order to address this gap, I reframed the course to have a multicultural orientation and taught it with that orientation until I changed jobs.
My next job was working in the area of faculty development with a focus on multicultural teaching and learning. In this job, I refined my thinking about multiculturalism. While in this position, I was fortunate to be able to have several opportunities to attend the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education. Through my participation in this conference as an attendee and presenter, I grew in knowledge and skill in the area of social justice. I was able to use what I learned about social justice in my next job, which was in student affairs. This work involved collaborating with several student affairs units to address social identity development and social justice education and their role in transforming student and university communities. It was through this work that I had an opportunity to think in practical ways about social justice issues. When I returned to the School of Education two years later, all of my prior experiences came together, and I began weaving social justice issues into many of my teacher education courses.
Hibel: You were also a member of the National Advisory Committee of the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in American Higher Education. 1 Would you briefly explain the role of this conference and your duties?
Saunders: Sure. The primary focus of this conference is to provide information and learning opportunities that will facilitate the creation of more inclusive environments in higher education institutions. Because there is an emphasis on improving racial and ethnic relationships on college campuses and increasing the success of underserved groups, conference participants are offered a wealth of sessions to choose from that address these issues in some way. There are also sessions that do not have these topics as an explicit focus. An exciting feature of the conference is a set of pre-conference institutes that allow for more in-depth attention to particular themes. These are usually two or three sessions over two days. When I served on the national advisory committee, I worked on one of the program subcommittees. Our job was to create a vision for what we thought would make a powerful program for faculty who might attend the conference and to suggest keynote speakers and conference session ideas that would facilitate implementation of the vision. The report we wrote served as our recommendation to the executive committee members, and they used it to inform their planning of the conference program.
Hibel: The University of Michigan – Ann Arbor has an impressive Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). 2 Would you explain the purpose of the CRLT and why you think it is an important resource for your campus?
Saunders: The purpose of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) is to provide faculty and graduate students with a variety of resources they can use to support and improve their teaching and their students’ learning. CRLT is an important resource because of the quantity, diversity and quality of services it offers individual instructors (faculty and graduate student), departments, schools and colleges. For example, CRLT staff members are available to work with instructors on:
- Designing courses and syllabi
- Developing positive learning environments
- Broadening their repertoire of teaching methods including the use of technology
- Evaluating their teaching and/or their students’ learning
- Addressing issues of multiculturalism and diversity in the pedagogical process
Faculty can also receive financial support for efforts to improve teaching and learning through a variety of CRLT’s grant programs. Their staff members offer workshops on a variety of topics relevant to teaching and learning, and they are available to create customized workshops for academic units. If you are an administrator, faculty member, or graduate student who is interested in improving teaching practice and facilitating students’ learning, CRLT is an incredibly useful resource. It’s worth checking out their website because they offer far more than what I have shared here.
Hibel: You co-authored a paper on the topic of Creating Inclusive College Classrooms.3 Would you explain what is meant by an ‘inclusive classroom’?
Saunders: For me, an inclusive classroom is a space where teachers and students can be their authentic selves, all voices are sought out and welcomed, participants feel free to challenge and/or support other people’s perspectives on course topics, and it is safe for participants to feel uncomfortable and take risks.
Hibel: If a new instructor just started teaching at your university, what would be your top three tips on where to start in creating a respectful classroom environment?
Saunders: Tip 1: Learn the names of your students.
Tip 2: Engage in activities during the first session and create ongoing opportunities that help participants (including instructor) build meaningful relationships with each other as human beings, teachers and learners.
Tip 3: Establish agreements for creating and maintaining a respectful classroom environment early in the term, and check in at various points throughout the term to see how well the course participants (including instructor) are meeting the agreed upon guidelines.
Hibel: What do you think is most important for an instructor to do in order to create an environment where an inclusive classroom can blossom?
Saunders: To be honest about how hard it is to make this happen and why it is important to do so from a learning perspective.
Hibel: In this same paper referenced above, you listed many assumptions of learning behaviors that may occur in a multicultural classroom. Do you think this is proof that there is a strong need for the training of instructors in this area?
Saunders: Because some students have been on the receiving end of problematic behaviors that have emerged from instructors’ assumptions, it at minimum suggests that there is a strong need for faculty and Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) to become aware of their assumptions. What is tricky about this is that instructors often are not aware of specific assumptions they hold until they run up against behaviors that contradict their unexamined beliefs. Although there will always be missteps that result in valuable learning experiences, instructor training in this area can reduce the likelihood of engaging in behaviors that make our classrooms less inclusive.
Hibel: Do you think students support the idea of the inclusive classroom?
Saunders: Many students support the idea of the inclusive classroom. They want to be in classrooms where they are free to share their perspectives on content and issues without being attacked or belittled by others, and they want to participate in ways that are comfortable for them given their dispositions and upbringing (e.g., cultural and/or family). In general, they appreciate the aspects of inclusive classrooms that fit with their comfort level, but on occasion they can be less appreciative of the dimensions that require them to take risks or result in discomfort. For example, although students typically understand that one characteristic of creating an inclusive classroom involves making space for all voices in the classroom, some active participants can feel silenced when they have something to say but are not called on because they have previously spoken several times. In those moments, it can sometimes be hard for some of them to support the reality of striving for an inclusive classroom.
Hibel: Linguistically diverse classrooms are becoming more common in today’s college classroom. In some cases where a student’s primary language is not English, participation in classroom discussions may be overwhelming. What would be your advice to instructors to help all students — especially those for whom English is not their first language — overcome this hesitation and encourage participation?
Saunders: My first suggestion is for instructors to look for patterns of behavior before they take action. When instructors notice that lack of spoken participation in classroom discussions is a pattern for any student, they should talk with the student individually to get a better understanding of what the underlying issue(s) is(are), and collaborate to come up with strategies that will facilitate spoken contributions. Another approach would be to value various forms of participation and encourage all students to get practice with each type. In my courses this academic year, I asked students to document their participation in discussions and categorize them as content (e.g., comments made related to the topic), process (e.g., active listening, helping others into the conversation, helping others explore alternative perspectives) and product (e.g., documenting information for the group). Some students used these forms to share their intentions for growing in a particular area or to ask for suggestions about how they might address a particular participation challenge. I would look at their sheets after each class and respond to questions posed. After several sessions, if I noticed a lack of attention to a particular form of participation, I would raise this in my feedback and encourage them to try a different way to participate in future classes.
Hibel: A resource from Emory University stated some challenges besides linguistics that non-native English speaking students may encounter. 4 For example — culture shock, home sickness, isolation leading to socializing with students from the same nationality group where they feel safe, or different behavioral customs not understood in America. Do you agree with these, and if so, what would be your advice to faculty regarding how to help students overcome these challenges in or out of the classroom?
Saunders: Whether students experience one or more of these challenges may depend upon a variety of factors, including particular nationality, personality, years in this country, whether they have relatives or friends in the vicinity, whether the community they reside in has a critical mass of people from their ethnic group, the number of students from their ethnic group who are in courses with them, etc. My first suggestion to instructors is to be aware of relevant campus resources. For example, if the students who are struggling with these issues happen to be international students, it would be helpful to know the campus resources you can recommend as potential sources of support for them as they deal with particular challenges. On my campus, a couple of the resources that could be helpful, depending upon the type of challenge, are the International Center and the International Student Resource Guide. My second suggestion would be to talk with the student to find out about behavioral customs that differ and see what accommodations could be made in the course. It would also be important to facilitate their understanding of cultural practices both in U.S. society and in university contexts. Your willingness to work with them to figure out how to navigate diverse cultural expectations across different contexts is key.
Hibel: Moving on to the topic of careers. For someone interested in working in the area of diversity, and specifically focusing on respect in the classroom, what suggestions do you have for them of how to become involved in this area and be successful?
Saunders: For those who are interested in working in the area of diversity, there are many career opportunities in higher education in student affairs and academic affairs. However, for those who are interested in focusing on respect in diverse classrooms, they can engage in this work by becoming instructors or faculty developers at colleges or universities. To be successful, they need to understand that even though instructors are a key factor in setting the stage for creating a respectful environment, true success can only occur if students also want to achieve this goal and are willing to collaborate with their instructors to engage in behaviors that forward the goal. Therefore, the characteristics of a respectful environment and the behaviors that support its development need to be determined collectively whenever possible, which involves navigating a multiplicity of dispositions, culture and family backgrounds, participation styles, communication styles, expectations, perspectives, lived experiences, etc. Unfortunately, there is not one set of practices that an instructor can engage in that will guarantee success in creating a respectful learning environment. What counts as respect may be more contextually bounded than some would like to believe, so it is important for the instructor to have a variety of strategies from which to draw. This is one reason why it is important to read scholarship in the area and seek out professional development opportunities. Ultimately, the measure of success should be less about the achievement of the goal and more about progress in the process of striving in the direction of the goal and participants’ commitment to stick with the process even when it gets hard.