Promoting Social Justice through the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

Delores D. Liston, Regina Rahimi, Delores D. Liston, Regina Rahimi

• Publisher: Indiana University Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780253029645
• eBook ISBN: 9780253031327
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Higher Education

How can education become a transformative experience for all learners and teachers? The contributors to this volume contend that the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) can provide a strong foundation for the role of education in promoting social justice. The collection features contributions by an array of educators and scholars, highlighting the various ways that learners and teachers can prepare for and engage with social justice concerns. The essays offer reflections on the value of SoTL in relation to educational ethics, marginalized groups, community service and activism, counter narratives, and a range of classroom practices. Although the contributors work in a variety of disciplines and employ different theoretical frameworks, they are united by the conviction that education should improve our lives by promoting equity and social justice.

IV.

CLASSROOM PRACTICES OF REFLECTION AND COUNTERNARRATIVES

10 Swinging with a Double-Edged Sword: Using Counterstories to Fight for Social Justice in the Classroom

Scott D. Farver and Alyssa Hadley Dunn

Many stories matter. Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign. But stories can also be used to empower, and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people. But stories can also repair that broken dignity.

—Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2009)

ON THE FIRST day of class, we watched “The Danger of a Single Story,” a highly regarded TED Talk by Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie (2009). Its overarching themes of combatting stereotypes and recognizing multiple voices set the stage for our overall course, which focused on examining issues of power, privilege, and oppression in K-12 schools and society. After watching, we did a “chalk talk,” a silent activity where students compiled their reflections on the board in words, phrases, or images. They drew arrows or check marks to indicate agreement or connection with other people’s ideas. This “conversation” lasted for about five minutes, with moments of silence when students stood back reading quietly and more “talkative” moments when multiple students were writing on the board at once. Finally, I asked students to read the entire board and share any portions that stood out to them. Five students picked the same comment: “I feel like people only know me by a single story. I want to be more than what the media says I am.” The author of the comment did not take ownership of the comment, nor did I ask the person to identify her- or himself. However, in a written reflection later, a student wrote: “It was me. I wrote the note about being a single story. I was so happy with the way people said they didn’t want me to feel that way and they wanted to hear what made me ME beyond the stereotypes. I hope I have the courage to speak up throughout the semester to tell them. The fact that we started with this video makes me think I will be supported in developing that courage.” By providing a space for students to see beyond a single story—and by following this up throughout the semester with opportunities for students to share their own experiences in the form of counterstories—I hoped to model for them the importance of fighting for social justice both personally and professionally. This chapter underscores the importance of counterstorytelling as pedagogy and also the delicate nature of employing such a practice.

The guiding question for this text is “How can the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) be used to make education a transformative experience for all learners and teachers?” As teacher educators, we take this call seriously in our work, which centers on issues of social justice and equity in education. The classes that we teach focus broadly on issues of diversity, power, privilege, oppression, and equity, including difficult and often controversial topics like race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, linguistic hegemony, immigration, religion, and (dis)ability. We believe strongly that our pedagogy has the potential to be transformative for our students and ourselves (hooks, 1994) as we evolve in our quest toward humanization through a constant state of becoming (Blackburn, 2014). That is, we do not believe we have reached some mirage of mastery in social justice education, but we realize that we, like our students, are constantly learning and growing from our lived experiences.

We enter the conversation within the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning from a unique perspective. As mentioned in an earlier chapter, some scholars may see their roles as university teachers as secondary (or even a hindrance) to what they may consider to be their “real” work of research, particularly if they work at a research-intensive university. This balance is not to be taken lightly, especially when considering tenure and promotion requirements that may place significantly higher value on research and grant-getting than teaching. SoTL, though, challenges us not to view scholarship and teaching as mutually exclusive but rather as mutually supportive in order to best serve the students we teach. It is also a place for us as practitioners to reflect on previous theory and build on and add to that knowledge (Hutchings & Huber, 2008).

Our work as former K–12 public school teachers and our current positions as teacher educators, or those who prepare the next generation of K–12 teachers, allows us to see teaching at the university level as an extension of our former careers. As former teachers who believe teaching can be transformative, we come naturally to viewing our work through an SoTL lens—that teaching in and of itself is scholarly (Boyer, 1990; Menges & Weimar, 1996). By sharing and critically reflecting on pieces of our practice, we hope to link our pedagogy and our research. SoTL allows us to do just that.

To explain the work of disrupting harmful dominant narratives, we take up the metaphor of our pedagogy being a sword. In this metaphor, our teaching allows us to cut through damaging rhetoric or beliefs in order to help future teachers recognize systems of oppression and privilege. It is our hope that in doing this, we help our students resist such narratives in order to become caring educators to their future students. However, we have found that in using this strategy, there can be unforeseen effects. While we use our sword to do what we consider to be “good” work, we sometimes have neglected the other side of the sword, which is just as sharp and can undermine the work we are trying to do. We encourage those who engage in SoTL and who examine our experiences to remember not only the power of the weapon we choose but also its unintended consequences.

Connecting SoTL to Critical Race Theory

In analyzing our experiences as teacher educators in light of SoTL, we also draw on Critical Race Theory (CRT), a framework that grew out of Critical Legal Studies in the 1980s. CRT was initially used by activists and scholars in examining and transforming relationships between race, racism, and power (Delgado & Stefancic, 2012). At the core of CRT is the belief that racism is a normalized part of life in the United States (Bell, 1992). CRT hopes to unmask this entrenched racism (Ladson-Billings, 1998) and gives scholars a framework to investigate multiple forms of oppression in the daily lives of people of color (Pérez-Huber, 2010). Following a central tenet of CRT, we believe lived experiences of People of Color^* to be not only acceptable “funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992) but critical to understanding issues of power, oppression, and subordination (Bernal, 2002; Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Yosso, Parker, Solórzano, & Lynn, 2004). Important narratives, or counterstories, come from “those whose experiences are not often told” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002, p. 32) and speak against dominant ways of knowing that currently shape how we are socialized to understand various concepts. The intent of these counterstories is to disrupt such racist epistemologies. As Ladson-Billings (1998) writes, “Stories by people of color can catalyze the necessary cognitive conflict to jar dysconscious racism” (p. 14). As such, we encourage these counterstories from our university students of color in order to interrupt dominant ways of knowing in our classrooms and to coconstruct knowledge (Freire, 1994). Counterstories are ways for Students of Color to counter mainstream discourses that are laden with White privilege and that exist both inside and outside of our classrooms.

However, by seeking out examples of counterstories in our practice and enacting this pedagogy in “real time” through class discussions and activities, we realize some challenges exist. Our attempts to humanize can sometimes backfire and lead to our creation of dehumanizing spaces that are antithetical to our goals. Thus, though we try to counter the hegemony commonly found in classroom spaces through the use of such counterstories, we have also experienced the difficulties of engaging in those practices. In the following piece, we each highlight examples where a counternarrative from a student in our class has proven transformative in students’ understanding of issues of diversity and oppression. We also each give an example of a time when opening up space for counterstory has perhaps backfired and reinforced dominant ways of thinking. Our hope is that SoTL would allow our experiences to serve as both inspiration and cautionary lesson for those who wish to engage in similar ways of transformative teaching in their own university classrooms.

The Transformational Power of Counterstories

Counterstories offer instructors and their students many opportunities to transform “typical” classroom learning. The long-standing history of ethnocentric and majoritarian curriculum in higher education, when coupled with pedagogies that reinforce dominant ways of knowing and demonstrating knowledge (such as lecture-style instruction and standardized examinations), make counterstories especially important in smaller courses or those more apt to be discussion based and flexible in their pedagogical approaches. In the two examples highlighted below, we briefly explain the context of our classrooms and then describe an instance where the use of counterstories in our teacher education courses proved to be effective and powerful. That is, we offer these instances as evidence that counterstories hold promise and possibility for transformative learning. SoTL would hold that these experiences would add to our collective knowledge base in order that all educators and their students would benefit.

Scott in New Mexico

I taught a master’s-level capstone course for practicing teachers where they conducted an Action Research (AR) project at their school in order to improve their practice. Since AR draws heavily on positionality and issues of identity (Brydon-Miller & Maguire, 2009), I wanted my students to further investigate their own identities and any privileges they might have that could impact their research. Most students were receptive to learning about ideas of intersectionality in identities and the privileges some of those identities grant. However, one White male student I will call Ron was having trouble wrapping his head around the idea of unearned privilege. His comments reflected post-racial ideology (Alemán, Salazar, Rorrer, & Parker, 2011) and hung heavily on the myth of meritocracy (Laughter, 2013). In short, he argued that he worked very hard in his life, and those who did not have what he did had, conversely, just not worked hard enough.

I had anticipated this type of resistance and had adapted an activity that I hoped would reveal to students like Ron that there is such a thing as privilege. This seemed to be a common narrative that I wanted to confront. To this end, I engaged my students in an activity called a “privilege walk.”

Our class walked outside into the predusk parking lot and began the privilege walk. Students lined up at a starting point, and I read a series of scenarios. Some scenarios that granted certain privileges (“You grew up in a family with two parents”) allowed students to take one step forward. Other scenarios (“My family used food stamps when I was growing up”) called for students to take a step backward. The goal was for students like Ron to have a stark visual example of the privileges they enjoyed by physically being further ahead of other students on the walk. True to what I thought, Ron ended up at the very front of the group, far ahead of a Native American female student in the back. I remember thinking that night, “I think he really gets it now.” As I looked around, though, I realized that in forcing Ron to confront his privilege, I had needed a student for him to compare himself against.

Tanya (pseudonym) stood alone at the back of our group, far behind all the others. A Native American female, Tanya was perhaps the most engaged in our course as she was determined to learn how to improve her practice in order to better serve the special education students in her community deep in the reservation. I had taught Ron a lesson, but at what cost to Tanya? As I took in the scene before me, my joy at providing this lesson for Ron turned my stomach. How was Tanya going to react to this? What had I done?

As we trudged inside, I worried about how Tanya and the other students would react. Her identities were not privileged, and we had all seen it in stark detail in the fading light under the desert sky. As soon as we got back to the classroom, Ron was the first to speak. He talked about how he had not realized that the things he had were privileged. To him, they were “natural.” Previously, he believed he had earned everything, yet now he was unsure and could see some of his privileges. His deep voice was soft as he described what it was like to look back and see the other students far behind him, with Tanya at the rear. I glanced at Tanya to see how she was reacting. I could not tell what she was thinking. I reminded the class that while it might be helpful to share our stories, no one was being forced to do so. A few other students shared what the experience had meant for them and then, finally, Tanya spoke. Her voice was soft, but everyone in the room was silent as she began telling her story. About divorced parents. Living on the reservation. Brothers and sisters and aunts and uncles living under one roof. But to her, that was her reality. Growing up, she had never seen herself as “underprivileged.” She had the things she had and that was it. For her, it was “normal” as well.

Tanya’s bravery in sharing her story continues to impress me long after this incident. I had been so laser-focused on presenting Ron with a compelling counterstory to his narrative of White privilege that I had never considered the cost at which this might come to students like Tanya. I apologized to her during break, telling her that I had not meant to make her feel bad. Instead of being angry, though, or at least disappointed by my misguided tactics, Tanya was understanding and compassionate. Though the activity had brought up some painful memories, it had helped her see how pervasive the issue of privilege was. I had been able to solicit her voice, but at what cost? Although in the end this turned out to be a powerful turning point in our class, I had been focusing on the wrong person. My thoughts before and during the activity had been on how I could get Ron to see his privilege. I had not thought about what this activity might mean for students like Tanya. Though her counterstory was powerful to Ron and the others in the class, I had forced her into an uncomfortable position.

Alyssa in France

It was Paris in the late spring, and for most of the students on the study abroad trip, this was the adventure of their dreams. There were strolls to be had along the Seine River, photographs to take in front of the Eiffel Tower, and crepes to be consumed on every corner. But beyond the tourist version of Paris, our goal for the study abroad class was much deeper. A colleague and I had developed a comparative multicultural program in which we examined language, religion, and immigration for people of color in France as compared to the United States. We wanted students to understand the “real” Paris in all of its complexities, to see beyond the single story o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction: Unlocking SoTL’s Potential for Transformative Education
• I. Examining Ethics toward Social Justice
• II. Focusing on Marginalized Groups in SoTL
• III. Community Service, Activism, and Civic Consciousness
• IV. Classroom Practices of Reflection and Counternarratives
• V. Applied Classroom Practices and Social Justice
• SoTL: Next Steps toward Social Justice
• Index