Is Inclusivity in My Classroom the Same as in Yours? (short-term, May, 2021)

Organized by Alex Keller, Director, Kahn Liberal Arts Institute, and Sara Pruss, Director, Sherrerd Teaching and Learning Center

Project Description

Imagine the way our students move through many different classrooms with different expectations for, invitations to, contours of, and language about inclusivity. And then there's life outside the classroom. Sometimes, students experience these shifts hourly. 

Any one of us may have come to a strong sense of how to model an inclusive classroom, and we may find that works well for us. But there is a bigger picture, and for our students it's changing all the time. This has an impact on how they experience each of our cultures of inclusion. How do we learn from each other, recognizing that we have, and must have, diverse methods of inclusion in pedagogy? 

For example, in some classrooms, the material itself may provide avenues into inclusionary practices; in other classrooms, inclusion may be embedded more in the practice than in the matter. Sometimes inclusive pedagogy converges form and content, sometimes inclusivity recognizes content in “parallel play” with form.

Cultures of inclusion are different in different classrooms, and we hope to have conversations with colleagues who are curious about these different models, not just because we have something to learn from them as teachers, but also, we believe, because the more each of us understands a fuller map of inclusion methods across the curriculum, the better each of us will be in helping our students transition from one room to another. This is a skill they will need in their lives after college as much as any. We invite faculty from all divisions and fields to participate in this conversation.

Project Fellows

• Scott Auertbach, Chemistry, UMass-Amherst
• Sebnem Baran, Film and Media Studies
• Annaliese Beery, Psychology, Neuroscience
• Esther Castro, Spanish, Latina/o, and Latin American Studies, Mount Holyoke College
• Patricia DiBartolo, Psychology
• Elena Garcia Frazier, Spanish, Latino/a and Latin American Studies, Mount Holyoke College
• Martine Gantrel-Ford, French Studies
• Virginia Hayssen, Biology
• Alex Keller, Film and Media Studies, Director, Kahn Institute, Organizing Fellow
• Jen Malkowski, Film and Media Studies
• Catherine McCune, Spinelli Center for Quantitative Reasoning
• Caroline Melly, Anthropology
• Roisin O'Sullivan, Economics
• Sara Pruss, Geosciences, Director, Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning, Organizing Fellow
• Elizabeth Pryor, History
• Loretta Ross, Study of Women and Gender
• Gwyneth Rost, Communication Disorders, UMass-Amherst
• Frazer Ward, Art
• Dano Weisbord, Finance and Administration
• Michele Wick, Psychology
• Sujane Wu, East Asian Languages and Literatures