• Reflecting on your individual social position within larger contexts such as your discipline, department, and institution. 
  • It may be helpful to consider how others experience these spaces, to discover commonalities or differences. Many people have generously shared their experiences through social media (venues such as #BlackintheIvory) or essay collections (such as Presumed Incompetent I and II). 
• Challenging your ingrained assumptions about authority, objectivity, and social relationships, as these are inevitably informed by our cultural backgrounds. White instructors may find this source on white supremacy culture helpful and provocative as you reflect. 
• Analyzing the patterns of who engages and who succeeds in your classroom, either independently or with the support of Eberly assessment professionals. 
• Shifting from a focus on “deficits” (as measured by dominant cultural values and in comparison to a white, privileged norm) to a focus on the unique assets every person brings with them into your classroom.
• Shifting from an individual analysis to a structural analysis of how inequities are produced.  
  • For example, earlier on this page we said that ARP reduces “inequalities in educational outcomes,” instead of saying it reduces “achievement gaps.” This is not just semantics. A recent study showed that 1) teachers prioritize these disparities more when they are framed as inequalities than as achievement gaps, 2) this effect is stronger for people with higher racial implicit bias, and 3) exposure to the achievement gap language actually increases endorsement of explicitly racist stereotypes. How we frame these issues is important in motivating change and not entrenching racist beliefs about students’ ability.
• Interrogating the historical and modern inequalities of your field and institution. Here is one set of possible reflection prompts (modified from Brooks et al., 2022). 
  • What are the foundational values and priorities of the field?
  • Who has been included in shaping these? Who hasn’t? Why?
  • What is the context in which we’ve gathered the research that is foundational to our field?
  • What are the standard practices, norms, or assumptions in our work that have been shaped by racism and colonization?
  • Who has historically benefited from our work? Who has been harmed? 
• Examining and expanding who you listen to and learn from. 
• Getting practice naming racism and racist ideas explicitly, so that you are able to do so on the spot when you need to.
  

This work is deeply personal, and much of it will be done on your own or with trusted people in your life. As you learn and unlearn about your discipline, consider what actions you are motivated to take to improve equity. 

If you have questions about anti-racist pedagogy and how we can support your CMU teaching, please contact us, eberly-assist@andrew.cmu.edu 

References

• Highlighting common themes of power, oppression, and justice to foster students’ critical analytical skills.
• Helping students feel that they should and can address social inequalities created by the work in their field. This is applicable even in disciplines where the course content itself does not seem to cover issues of race and power. 
  • For example, Hwang et al. (2023) offer a framework for developing a sense of social responsibility in undergraduate engineering students. 
• Focusing on knowledge as constructed by human beings, and discussing both the strengths and limitations of how knowledge has historically been constructed in your field.
  • For example, you might begin an introductory science course with a conversation about the scientific method as one of many different ways of making knowledge that students might bring with them or be able to learn from (Kimmerer, 2013).
  • You can also teach students to analyze the language used to describe and categorize: where did it come from? who uses it? what does it do? what does it hide?
• Researching and revealing the history of who has made knowledge in your discipline and what that knowledge has been used for. 
  • For example, if you’re teaching about population genetics or evolution, you could also include the context of how 20th-century eugenicists in these fields developed bodies of “evidence” around racist, ableist ideas which were then used to support state policies such as forced sterilization. 
  • Look for, or create, an open-access list of examples how racism has shaped discipline to aid in others acknowledging this history in their own teaching. As two useful starting points, Dr. Edwin Mayorga (n.d.) has collected many topic-specific lists of resources, and Dr. Judith Lin (2023) has reviewed the contributions of race-conscious research to fields including computer science and business.
• Incorporating diverse sources (e.g., TED Talks, podcasts, YouTube videos) that represent a variety of voices and bring to light perspectives and knowledge that are obscured in American and European professionally published materials. Here are some examples of how to do this, collected from CMU instructors.
  • Add to, or create, an open-access collection of other content sources created by BIPOC authors so that you and others can uplift their voices into your course content. For example, there is a growing collection of BIPOC-authored sources in the discipline of Psychology.
• Inviting students to make connections to their own experiences, find their own voices, and critically reflect on their own thinking. 

CMU instructors who would like to schedule a confidential consultation can reach out to eberly-assist@andrew.cmu.edu.

References

• Creating a student-centered classroom environment in which students’ interests and needs are prioritized. Student-centered pedagogy has roots in Black and feminist education movements of the past 150 years. 
  • This can include co-creating classroom norms, rubrics, and syllabi with students. 
• Respecting and valuing students’ differences in contribution styles and forms of knowledge. 
  • This will likely require that you focus on the content of students’ writing and speech rather than their grammar or formality. Rigid norms around “proper” language perpetuate racist ideas. Many university writing centers have developed guides, such as this one, for making your classroom more inclusive of students’ authentic self-expression.  
  • When students do need to learn a disciplinary norm in order to succeed outside of your classroom, teach this “hidden curriculum” explicitly.
• Decentering authority in the classroom and sharing power/responsibility with students. There are many ways to do this, including: 
  • Giving students choice and autonomy in their learning. For example, allow students choice of topics or formats for major assignments. See more examples here.
  • Using alternative grading methods such as specifications grading, contract grading, or ungrading. If these forms of grading are new to you, consider trying a new grading structure in one or two aspects of your course, rather than trying to convert your entire course at once.
  • At a departmental level, allowing students to self-place into different curriculum tracks rather than relying on placement exams.
• Moving away from classroom policies and technologies focused on surveilling, policing, and punishing students. There is a rapidly growing body of work on restorative justice approaches to plagiarism; see the resources collected by ​​the MSU Denver Writing Center (under the heading “Restorative Justice Approaches to Plagiarism”). Again, we are recognizing, revealing, rejecting, and replacing systems of power in classroom spaces.
• Being transparent about your expectations of students, why you have those expectations, and how students can meet them. 
• Creating an inclusive classroom climate. Creating a learning space where students feel welcome, supported, and encouraged to contribute can increase student motivation and belonging.
• Implementing equity-based pedagogical modifications in course design. These modifications promote learning for all students, but have been shown to be particularly beneficial for minoritized students:
  • Dedicating significant amounts of class time to active learning. 
  • Increasing accessibility by following the principles of Universal Design for Learning.
  • Supporting students’ growth mindset, and affirming that they can meet your high expectations of them.
  • Using targeted interventions such as values affirmation activities. 

If you have questions about anti-racist pedagogy and how we can support your CMU teaching, please contact us, eberly-assist@andrew.cmu.edu 

References

• Examining how students are recruited and who is retained in your major or program.
• Examining how staff and faculty are hired and promoted. This could involve new outreach efforts or expanding the criteria for evaluating performance. 
• If you are in a position to do so, helping the institution establish incentives for departments to implement best practices in hiring and retention. 
• Reducing reliance on student evaluations of instructors’ teaching in high-stakes decisions such as promotion and tenure. Dr. Rebecca J. Kreitzer has compiled almost 80 peer-reviewed studies showing that student evaluations are biased, many of which found bias on the basis of race and ethnicity. Dr. David Delgado Shorter (2023) has written about how this evidence can inform departmental changes. 
  • Consider leveraging multiple, complementary data sources (e.g., from students, peers, and yourself). 
• Developing diversity vision statements, codes of conduct, and concrete actions for achieving equity at the departmental and institutional level.
• Inviting diverse speakers and establishing diverse, multi-mentor networks for all community members’ career stages to foster connection. 
• Facilitating access to existing resources, such as financial planning and mental health professionals, for staff, faculty, and students. 
• Advocating for thriving wages and benefits for all members of the institution, including graduate students and contract workers (often dining and cleaning staff) who are disproportionately women of color. 
• Confronting the toxic normalization of overwork, which can lead to exploitation of marginalized community members. 
• Examining whether policies disproportionately negatively impact people of color, and changing them.
• Making research accessible to local and impacted communities, or involving those communities in the work—for example, by decolonizing fieldwork or listening to community concerns about how surveillance technologies will be applied. 
• Refusing to let research findings be appropriated to support racist ideologies or make profit through exploitation. 
• Organizing against current political efforts to repress teaching about the existence of racism, such as teaching about Critical Race Theory or the history of slavery in America.
• Joining local organizations fighting for racial justice, such as those compiled by CMU’s Graduate Student Assembly. 

Please reach out to eberly-assist@andrew.cmu.edu with questions or to connect you to other campus resources. 

References

Harbin et al. (2019) and Alderman et al. (2021) also suggest ways to mitigate resistance from students. Many of these strategies have already been covered in the four categories above—for example, incorporating diverse perspectives and sources in the course content and providing multiple methods for demonstrating learning. They also offer some additional strategies we have not yet covered: 

• Being proactive—anticipate students’ misconceptions about race and create course content or assignments to deconstruct these. 
• Ordering course content so that students develop critical background knowledge and skills such as navigating difficult discussions before diving into challenging material.
• Engaging affective learning by encouraging emotional literacy (for example, asking students to pay attention to their embodied emotional responses during discussions of race) and developing empathy.
• Promoting reflexivity, or the ability to understand how your feelings affect your behavior. This can be done through instructor modeling or assigning reflective writing such as autobiographical essays.
• Creating a course norm of welcoming difficulty. Discomfort is an expected byproduct of grappling with racism, or even just learning new perspectives. Instructors can normalize difficulty and should immediately address any harms.
• Assessing students’ incoming knowledge and preconceptions about race. Tailor teaching methods and/or assignments to provide skills for dialogue and engage with their arguments even if they’re simplistic or flawed.
• Inviting a class to collectively make knowledge by bringing together many different perspectives and possible answers to a generative question.
• Using personal writing assignments to help empower students to relate their own stories, experiences, and knowledge.
• Cultivating a learning community and students’ sense of belonging.
  • Introducing yourself and being transparent about your own identities, to the extent that feels safe and productive.
  • Designing opportunities for students to learn from each other. Model humility and willingness to learn from others, for example by welcoming and incorporating student feedback.
• Finding a learning community for yourself to further your own learning.

You can build these norms by establishing guidelines for interaction early in the semester, revisiting them often, and modeling positive behaviors.

Less has been written about how to respond when colleagues and administrators respond negatively to ARP efforts. We acknowledge that this is a thorny problem without easy, one-size-fits-all solutions. Some instructors may choose to engage in this work without publicly claiming it as anti-racist, and this makes it no less valuable. Others may feel comfortable making a strong case for their departments to consider anti-racist commitments. But anyone engaged in anti-racist work can benefit from building a strong coalition of support to help prevent and respond to any challenges. 

A group of peers, such as an instructor learning community or graduate student reading group, can help normalize anti-racism as an essential part of our work as educators. Such coalitions also provide encouragement and energy, which are critical when attempting a project as emotionally demanding as dismantling entrenched disciplinary and institutional racism. 

Finding allies with intellectual and social capital within the institution can be critical to ensuring your freedom to speak, teach, and advocate on these topics. An ally might be a senior faculty in your department, a department head or dean, a member of your field who has written about ARP, a teaching expert who can help you find evidence that your teching methods improve student outcomes, or someone who can nominate you for a prestigious teaching award. Your coalition need not be limited to your institution, one can seek out external groups or professional organizations in higher education where you can share ideas and support one another regarding anti-racist pedagogy.