In the Classroom

Progressive, holistic education, "engaged pedagogy" is more demanding than conventional critical or feminist pedagogy. For, unlike these two teaching practices, it emphasizes well­-being. That means that teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualization that promotes their own well­-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students.

- bell hooks (1994)

Anti-racist Pedagogy

To teach through an anti-racism lens is to actively acknowledge and oppose racism, no matter the content of the course. Anti-racist pedagogies can be implemented in science and engineering courses. We hope that in these pages, any instructor can find resources for an entryway to adapt strategies to their own teaching.

Self-reflection prompts

  1. Am I ready to do this work, even when it becomes uncomfortable?
  2. Have I learned enough to confidently support this conversation?
  3. How has my own experience shaped my perspective and biases?
  4. Am I ready to facilitate, rather than dictate?           
  5. How will I handle potentially challenging scenarios?

Creating an inclusive space for classroom discussion

  1.  Establish the "why" by setting course intentions.
  2.  Set an example of vulnerability, honesty, and a willingness to learn.
  3.  Share communication guidelines for your class.

From The Anti-Racist Discussion Pedagogy.

Sample communication guidelines

  •  Name the discomfort. Speaking out about what is making you feel uncomfortable can help with understanding where the source of the discomfort is coming from. This is important for being able to learn and communicate. 
  •  Not all discomfort is unwelcome.  While we do not want to create unsafe environments, which impede learning, some discomfort can help us challenge our assumptions and held beliefs in the face of new information. 
  •  Your impact is everything. Stating intentions can help avoid misunderstandings, yet the impact of your words or actions are more important. Address and apologize for harm caused, even if unintentionally. Do so by centering those you harmed, not yourself.
  • Seek to understand before being understood. Your own personal experience is valid and real and does not negate other people's very different experiences.
  • Speak for yourself, not as a representative of a demographic group. At the same time, do not ask your peers to speak on behalf of a group. 
  • When not speaking from personal experience, back up your statements with sources, as much as possible from the research. As a good scholar, check the source and bias in the data presented. 
  • Challenge ideas, not the individuals in the classroom making statements. 
  • Use appropriate language. Respect the way individuals in the class want to be addressed and be open to learning new language and recognizing how language evolves.
  • Provide space for all to contribute. Be mindful of how much space you are taking up and make sure others can add their voice. Before speaking, think about whether you need to be the first to do so. 

Adapted and modified from: The Anti-Racist Discussion Pedagogy and the ADVANCEGeo Partnership Guidelines.

Why is this work important?

Commonly, efforts to address racial disparities in education have taken a deficit approach, assuming that students are lacking in ability, motivation, preparation, or familial support to excel. Thus, they have focused on "fixing" the student rather than on critically questioning contextual factors that influence student learning and performance, including societal inequities, educator biases, and discriminatory structures, policies, and practices in the education system.

Current STEMM pedagogy and curricula uphold research agendas and methods that center the experience of white people as "universal" and delegitimize other experiences and ways of knowing. An anti-racist instructor attends to teaching practices  - including interactions between instructor and students and among students; forms of course delivery and assessment; use of accommodations, etc. - as well as to the content of the course, e.g., whose knowledge is privileged, what material and examples are presented, what material and examples are devalued or rejected.

Creating effective and engaging learning experiences for students from different backgrounds requires a thoughtful understanding of how students learn and a reconsideration of what domains of learning are valued.

Educational Approaches 

Critical approaches to pedagogy openly invite analysis and reflection of topics traditionally not considered in STEMM training, including history, discrimination, power dynamics, and one's own positionality within the learning environment.

- von Vacano et al. 2022. Critical faculty and peer instructor development: Core components for building inclusive STEM programs in higher education.

There are multiple educational approaches that can contribute to enhancing student feelings of belonging and learning for academic success. Each of these has a rich body of literature. The following are examples of educational practices to achieve an equity-minded, inclusive, culturally-relevant, anti-racist course (expanding from those summarized in Camacho and Echelbarger (2021)) :

  • Equity-mindedness
    • Recognize and address the presence, source, and factors maintaining inequities in student outcomes, including existing structures, policies and practices in higher education.
    • Use of transparent assignments and grading rubrics.
    • Give students choice in assessment types.
    • Use of free and open-access educational resources.
  • Inclusive
    • Provide access to resources for students to overcome barriers to learning.
    • Integrate principles of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) which aim to provide students with equal and diverse opportunities to make learning more accessible. UDL provides a blueprint for creating instructional goals, methods, materials, and assessments that are flexible and can be customized and adjusted for individual needs. 
    • Build in accommodations into the course structure, including non-traditional office hours and modalities, rather than having students ask for them.
  • Culturally-relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings 1995)
    • Center excellence and focus on academic success by attending to students' academic needs.
    • Provide students with skills to develop cultural competence. 
    • Allow students to bring their diverse experiences and perspectives to the classroom.
    • Provide students with skills to develop critical consciousness to question cultural norms, values, mores and institutions that produce and sustain social inequities.
    • Use images, data, case studies and scholarship that reflect a diversity of experiences and perspectives.
    • Use real-world examples that connect to social issues and provide contextual relevancy to course content.
  • Anti-racist education (Lynch et al. 2017)
    • Identify and make visible systemic oppression and recognize the roles of whiteness and racism in maintaining systemic injustice and oppression.
    • Actively work to transform structural inequities. 
    • Integrate issues of race, racism and social justice throughout the curriculum.
  • Epistemic inclusion (Settles et al. 2020)
    • Include a range of methodologies and conceptual frameworks to value different ways of knowing.
    • Teach quantitative and qualitative methods as equally valid.
    • Include scholarship from minoritized scholars in syllabi.

Epistemic inclusion counteracts epistemic exclusion or epistemic injustice, which is the dismissal, rejection, erasure or deligimitization of specific bodies of knowledge and of groups of knowledge-builders due to differences in power dynamics, bias and discrimination.

Furthermore, Camacho and Echelbarger (2021) proposed the following practices for engaging with a diverse group of students:

  • Intentionally teaching concepts via scholarship relevant to the experiences of the students in the classroom that does not come from a deficit perspective;
  • Intentionally teaching research concepts via the work of scholars of color;
  • Intentionally teaching concepts via scholarship relevant to creating a more equitable and just society;
  • Intentionally teaching in a way that values diversity with regards to epistemology (i.e., different sources of knowledge, different ways of knowing, different ways of communicating knowledge).

A challenge in anti-racist pedagogy is the marginalization of students of Color by centering the race-consciousness building and learning of white students. In "Sidelines and separate spaces: making education anti-racist for students of color," Blackwell (2010) draws from Black feminist standpoint theory to provide useful recommendations on how to minimize this risk. Similarly, common arguments on the utilitarian value of diversity embraced by many U.S. universities are seen more favorably by white students than Black students, and are associated with greater racial graduation disparities (How university diversity rationales inform student preferences and outcomes by Starck et al. 2021).

Resources on teaching practices:

Resources on teaching about the history of science through an anti-racist lens:


      Next Page »