Teaching Diversity Relationally

Engaging Emotions and Embracing Possibilities

Grace S. Kim, Roxanne A. Donovan, Karen L. Suyemoto

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780367181185
• eBook ISBN: 9780429602016
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Teaching Diversity Relationally: Engaging Emotions and Embracing Possibilities offers process-oriented guidance for negotiating the psychological and relational challenges inherent in teaching about race, privilege, and oppression. Grounded in the philosophy of Transformative Education and incorporating psychological theories, the authors present concrete strategies for effectively teaching diversity and social justice courses.

The authors develop an intersectional social justice framework for Transformative Education that emphasizes five emotional-relational pillars of successful teaching for diversity: cultivating reflexivity and exploration of positionality; engaging emotions; fostering perspective taking and empathy; promoting community and relational learning; and encouraging agency and responsibility. They provide guidance on how to prepare for social justice education that fosters the growth of learners and educators by addressing intersecting levels of engagement—intrapsychic (within individual students and educators), relational (between students, between faculty and students), and group dynamic.

Teaching Diversity Relationally follows the developmental arc of a diversity course across a semester, exploring how students respond as the course moves into deeper content material and more intense discussions. The authors describe the psychology behind these responses, and offer best practices for different points in the semester to facilitate learning, manage class dynamics, build connections among students, and prevent faculty burnout.

Teaching Diversity Relationally addresses the teaching process in diversity courses. The authors' companion text, Unraveling Assumptions: A Primer for Understanding Oppression and Privilege provides the foundational content for university courses that can be expanded upon with a range of disciplines. Unraveling Assumptions offers an introductory exploration of power, privilege, and oppression as foundations of systems of inequality and examines complexities within meanings and lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, and social class.

1 Purpose, Postulations, and Positionalities

DOI: 10.4324/9780429059582-1

We start each chapter of this book with a dialogue among the three of us, the co-authors, where we reflect on some of the main themes or questions related to the chapter. These dialogues are parts of actual conversations we had (and recorded) while writing the book. Although we edited some of what you’ll read for clarity and brevity, we sought to present the discussions as they organically unfolded. We begin this way because developing our conscious awareness of how and why we teach as we do has always been greatly fostered through dialogues, among us and with other colleagues. We seek to invite you into this on-going conversation and connect with you as fellow educators. In this first chapter, we discuss what we wish we had known when we first started teaching and the rewards that keep us committed to teaching diversity¹ content from a Transformative Education² lens.

1 By diversity, we mean issues such as race, ethnicity, and intersectional identities and ­statuses such as social class, sexuality, and disability that affect individual experiences. We also consider access to resources and opportunities because of the ways that these issues are related to social hierarchies of power, privilege, and oppression. 2 There are a number of terminologies that refer to teaching in ways that foster critical thinking and critical consciousness. For instance, the language “transformative learning” is often used in relation to Jack Mezirow’s work focusing on adult learning, which emphasizes active and critical reflection to transform ways of thinking and knowing (see overview of Jack Mezirow’s theory in Taylor, 1998). Critical theorists, such as Paulo Freire, emphasize transformational education or Transformative Education/teaching in developing critical consciousness, to highlight the belief in the power of education to transform people’s understandings and actions within systems of structural oppression and foster their ability to affect change in the world. We use Transformative Education, inspired by the latter and simultaneously informed by the former.

ROXANNE: We’ve been talking about writing a book like this for several years, and the more we talked, the more excited we got because we realized there’s a huge gap in the information that’s out there. The books that exist usually deal with “here’s how you teach and here are some activities,” but they don’t really deal with the relational aspect of teaching classes like this.

GRACE: Exactly! There is a lot of information about identifying and considering the content. But those books don’t answer the questions about how you manage difficult feelings in the room, or when students are really struggling internally or with each other. So, I thought maybe we should write something, while recognizing that we don’t have all the answers, and we are still learning things. I am excited about what might come out through the process of writing and learning from each other.

KAREN: For me, a big piece of wanting to write about this is reflecting on how educators can think proactively to anticipate reactions and make decisions in our pedagogy and in our curriculum, not to avoid the difficult dialogues and just keep control of the classroom, but to intentionally engage these difficult topics in ways that will move students and contribute to the Transformative Education that we are trying to create. As opposed to just always being reactive when something happens, like “what am I going to do now?” When I look back at when I first started teaching, I can see all of the mistakes that I made because I was just reacting. So I’m thinking “let’s offer something so that others don’t have to make the same mistakes!” [laughs]. I learned a bunch from those mistakes, and I think I still make mistakes, but there is maybe guidance we can offer to others.

ROXANNE: When I first started teaching I didn’t realize that there is often a part of the semester where everyone, including the instructor, begins to feel a little hopeless, making it hard to see there is also light at the end of that tunnel. So, I hope this book provides an understanding of what is typical in a class like this, and also helps educators be gentler with themselves when they’re in a place where they feel like they’re not getting through, or that they’re not good enough, or that the students aren’t good enough, or that no one’s getting it. To understand how these experiences can relate to where the class is in the semester and to prepare for it.

GRACE: I wish I had known that emotions will always be in this teaching, and that sometimes they might be really intense. And that’s okay, because a lot of learning happens through emotions and that’s not something to be ignored. I wish I had known more about how to engage those emotions within students, between them, or among them. And I wish I had known that I don’t have to do everything at once. It’s a process. I don’t have to attend to emotions in one single session in some absolute magical way and be done with it. Things will come up emotionally a lot, for everyone, and that is necessary and it’s okay.

KAREN: Related to what you both said, I think about “how do we maintain our own hope and passion for this, while it is as difficult as it is?” I wish I had known that the struggle is a normal part of the teaching and learning, because that knowledge is part of maintaining hope for me. If I know that, then I don’t kind of internalize it as, “Bad me.” You know, [I’m the] bad professor for creating this negative space. I wish I had known how emotional it would be for me and how normative that is, too. And that that, also, is not somehow due to some lack that is within me, or some inability to manage my response enough.

GRACE: I definitely hear that. We’ve talked about what we wish we had known, but what are the rewards?

ROXANNE: You know, the greatest reward for me is to see the intimacy that develops in some of the classes among the students. Some develop what seems like very deep relationships with each other because they are having what’s considered taboo conversations with each other in more authentic-ish ways. And to hear about students years later talking about how they have built on the learning, and they’ve extended their learning to others within their sphere of influence. That is just some of the most gratifying moments that I’ve had in my professional career.

GRACE: Yeah, deeper connections and relationships with students! And learning a lot about what I need to learn more, because especially as I get older, there are new things that students bring up that I’m like, “Wow, ok. I really need to do work on this area.” I need to keep learning. I’m also reminded of the resilience of people around me, and that I have to still be upset about all the things that are happening politically or socially around the world. So, it keeps me engaged. And once students really start to engage with each other about issues related to justice and equity and come up with their own solutions, or consider little things that they can do within their own sphere of influence, that’s just really rewarding. I don’t want to be somebody who gives answers to people because I don’t have the answers. So, that kind of process of students engaging with each other, and really reflecting on what kind of power they already have in their own lives, and how they could use that and to work within their communities, those things are really exciting for me. They get me going and help me keep doing the things that I am doing.

Karen: Yes! It’s maintaining my own hope, as I see change happen, right there, in the moment. Like Grace, one of the biggest rewards for me is how much I learn from my students. And also, some of my most rewarding moments have been students who are really resistant initially, and sometimes it’s even students who leave the class still not “agreeing” with me. But who have been able to come to understand how the resistance that they were showing was a reflection of a narrowed field of vision, so that they have more active choices in critiques and choices in the future. For me, teaching this material in this way also keeps me grounded in what’s really meaningful. This teaching, however difficult, is a piece of integrity in my life and an opportunity for growth. I am enormously thankful to my students that I am always growing in these experiences. And because students are often more in the beginning of their journey, that keeps me from kind of developing this academic, ivory tower bubble of jargon and abstract ideas and absolutes. Engaging their experiences and emotions and their struggle—being connected with them keeps me emotionally connected to the meaning of being together in struggle for justice within these systems of oppression.

Thought pause: Take a moment to think about your personal answer to these questions:

• What are your hopes and fears about teaching diversity courses from a social justice orientation?
• In what ways do you feel more or less prepared to meet the challenges you anticipate? What kind of training or preparation have you had related to teaching these kinds of courses?
• What are you seeking from this book? What information, understandings, awareness, or skills are you hoping to develop? To what extent do you also feel that you may not know what you don’t know (and therefore find some of these questions difficult to answer)?

The Purpose of this Book: Our Intentions and Goals

The idea to write this particular book emerged from decades-long conversations we have had about our teaching of diversity and social justice courses. These conversations repeatedly engaged how challenging and rewarding it could be to teach from a transformative philosophy that emphasizes emotional and relational engagement. In these conversations, we often lamented how little guidance there was for this process-focused teaching, and how many things we wish we had known earlier.

As we began presenting on relational and emotional issues in teaching diversity material from a Transformative Education (TE) orientation, we found that the audiences at these sessions or workshops were consistently larger than we had anticipated. Attendees from diverse disciplines (social sciences, humanities, and critical studies such as women’s and gender studies, ethnic studies, and sexuality studies) were hungry for this kind of information, emphasizing that we were not alone in identifying emotional and relational processes as central. However, most educators did not have the kinds of theoretical frameworks that we had as clinical psychologists that helped us to make sense of what was happening in our students, our classrooms, and our own responses. And educators within psychology often did not have the critical theory and transformative framework that we centered from our connections to ethnic studies; psychology faculty had also not been trained to apply psychological understandings to teaching. So, while attendees came from multiple and diverse disciplines, they described similar appreciations. They noted that what was unique and most useful about our approach were the ways in which we focused upon psychological responses and interpersonal dynamics, and prioritized developing intentional and strategic responses in the service of transformative learning.

As we talked about our workshop experiences and the feedback we were receiving, we realized that many of the books we had, ourselves, read about teaching diversity courses focused on an overarching philosophy of teaching, or on content or disciplinary specific goals, or on activities and exercises. The kinds of emotional and relational issues that were highlighted in our discussions were rarely the central focus; when they were, they were presented descriptively, addressing the what and the why (what is going on) and rarely focused on the how (what do I do). Simultaneously, we found that our understanding of what we were doing in our own teaching was positively affected not only by hearing about others’ challenges and successes, but also by the formal articulation of our connections among theory, frameworks, and on-the-ground teaching praxis.

We were also cognizant of how often books or presentations about teaching diversity approached the topic by centering people with privilege. These books talked as if teaching diversity courses was only about teaching privileged (often meaning White) students. The exception to this was material focused on empowering students with oppressed statuses by teaching them about their own oppression, coming particularly from critical studies areas. Although there are good reasons for these relative foci, our experience has been that teaching these courses is more complex than either/or. Privilege and oppression are rarely binary and an intersectional³ approach is necessary not only to reflect the goals of Transformative Education but also to avoid short-changing students who are oppressed. For example, our experience is that our students of color often have a lot to learn about race that is not related to their own oppression and a lot to learn about other intersectional identities and statuses; they deserve to benefit from these courses, too. We wondered if it were possible to take more of a both/and approach: considering how experiences might be shared and distinct, and integrating reflections on positionality.

The result of these reflections and conversations is this book: Teaching Diversity Relationally. Our goal in the writing is to move beyond descriptions of teaching challenges and activity examples to explore the interlocking psychological, relational, and systemic forces that impede and facilitate Transformative Education. We use our background in clinical psychology to help you understand the emotional and relational dynamics that are taking place in your diversity or social justice oriented course. Effectively engaging these dynamics involves understanding that reactions and relationships in diversity courses are intersections of the intrapsychic (personal experiences of individual students and instructors), relational (between students, among students/class, between instructor and students), and systemic (institutional and sociopolitical context) experiences. It also involves understanding how intersectional positionality affects these experiences, particularly how faculty can teach diversity courses in ways that reach people at the intersections of both privilege and marginalization.

3 Intersectionality considers how experiences of multiple identities and positionalities interact (Crenshaw, 1991), structurally and in effects on individuals and groups.

In this book, we are most concerned with the how rather than the what. We present minimal information about the specific content of diversity courses, which we see as related to your discipline and goals. And we refer you to our companion book Unraveling Assumptions: A Primer for Understanding Oppression and Privilege, if you are seeking conceptual foundations and definitions for your students or yourself. Being focused on how also means we present the why primarily in relation to what you, as educators, need to know about why students are responding in your classrooms so that you can think and plan proactively and make decisions in your pedagogy and in your curriculum that will advance student learning in diversity courses, so that the emotional and relational aspects work toward the learning goals. We also aim to present the how in a way that can be sustained, because we know that burnout is a major risk of teaching diversity courses, given the emotional and relational challenges. Therefore, we specifically discuss the reactions and emotional responses of educators, consider issues of individual capacities and contexts that affect curricular and pedagogical choices, and present strategies for self-care that emphasize a transformative, whole person approach that minimizes personal depletion and supports the maintenance of your health, focus, and engagement with the class throughout the semester.

We anticipate that most readers will be faculty from primarily social science, education, health, and humanities disciplines and have organized the main content to follow the temporal arc of a semester-long course. But we think the content of this book has relevance for educators of late adolescents to adults in other kinds of settings and courses; the conceptual foundations and strategies presented here unfold in a range of presentations, workshops, and course sections focused on diversity (e.g., community workshops and dialogues to promote equity awareness and social justice, student and staff diversity-focused orientations and workshops, or sections of general education or disciplinary courses focused on diversity where the overall course is not necessarily a “diversity course”). The overview of conceptual foundations of Transformative Education as change process in Chapter 2 and the emotional and relational processes presented in Chapter 3 may be particularly helpful to educators who are not teaching a full semester diversity course within a higher education context but who are seeking to develop greater understanding of related process and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Epigraph
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1. Purpose, Postulations, and Positionalities
• Section 1: Foundations
• Section 2: Transformative Education across the Arc of a Semester
• Section 3: Considering Contexts and Conclusion
• References
• Index