Humble Beginnings: Developing A Supportive Program for Students to Mentor Faculty in Equitable and Inclusive Teaching Practices

OM 3741

In the context of increasing diversity, heightened social polarization, and complex classroom power dynamics, educators have increasingly turned their attention to developing equitable and inclusive teaching practices. Many educators are actively looking to adopt reflexive, responsive, and decolonizing pedagogical frameworks. At the same time, the neoliberalisation of education has placed increasing demands on both teachers and students. This leaves many educators tackling highly complex and challenging issues relating to equitable and inclusive teaching ‘off the side of their desks’ even as expectations regarding credentialization, publication, academic service and so on are on the rise. At TRU, the Intercultural Learning team is developing a supportive program that pairs students from diverse backgrounds with faculty to provide feedback and suggestions with regard to issues of equity and inclusion in their classrooms. This relationship-focused model provides faculty with one-on-one, contextualized feedback on their teaching practices from students’ whose perspectives and experiences have tended to be marginalized or ignored in conventional educational settings. The program will be integrated with the Intercultural Ambassadors peer mentorship program run through the Faculty of Student Development. With a particular focus on issues of relationship building, safety, and power dynamics, this session will provide an interactive exploration of the program. Building on work that has been done at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, this engagement initiative is a potentially valuable mechanism for tapping into students’ situated knowledges in ways that promote equitable and inclusive teaching practices.