Working Toward Greater Equity and Inclusivitythrough Pedagogical Partnership

Working toward Greater Equity and Inclusivitythrough Pedagogical Partnership

A growing body of research asserts that higher education is failing “as the great equalizer” (CarnevaleStrohl, 2013; Devlin, 2013;Hockings, 2010; US Department of Education, 2016) and that, in particular, “noninclusive pedagogies and ineffective college and university cultural programs” ensure that students from underrepresented backgrounds “continue to experience racism, insensitivity, and a lack of intercultural understanding and social support” (Simmons, Lowrey-Hart, Wahl, and McBride, 2013, p. 2). In this keynote I will describe two forms of a partnership approach that aim to address this problem: (1) pedagogical partnerships between students and faculty focused on making classroom practices more inclusive and responsive, and (2) research partnerships through which students, faculty, and staff collaborate to gather, analyze, and present findings regarding inclusive and responsive practices. After an overview of the main arguments presented in the literature on the practice of and research on pedagogical partnership, I will describe a classroom-focused pedagogical partnership program I have directed for ten years and draw on data from research projects I have maintained throughout that time funded by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations. Both the program and the research have positioned students from equity-seeking groups as “holders and creators of knowledge” (Delgado-Bernal, 2002, p. 106)—as student partners and co-researchers. I will share recommended strategies from our partnership practice and research regarding how to work toward greater equity and inclusivity, and I will invite the audience to reflect on where in their practice they do or could incorporate such strategies.

In case you want to include (or link to?)thereferences, here they are:

Carnevale, A., & Strohl, J. (2013). Separate and unequal: How higher education reinforces the intergenerational reproduction of white racial privilege (Report from Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce). Retrieved from

Delgado-Bernal, D. (2002). Critical race theory, Latino critical theory, and critical raced-gendered epistemologies: Recognizing students of color as holders and creators of knowledge. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 105–126. doi: 10.1177/107780040200800107

Devlin, M. (2013). Bridging socio-cultural incongruity: Conceptualising the success of students from low socio-economic status backgrounds in Australian higher education. Studies in Higher Education, 38(6), 939-949.

Hockings, C. (2010). Inclusive learning and teaching in higher education: A synthesis of research. York: The Higher Education Academy.

Simmons, J., Lowrey-Hart, R., Wahl, S. T., & McBride, C. (2013, July). Understanding theAfrican-American student experience in higher education through a relational dialecticsperspective. doi:10.1080/03634523.2013.813631

U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development and Office of the Under Secretary. (2016). Advancing diversity and inclusion in higher education.Washington, D.C.