During the pandemic, faculty participation in professional development activities expanded dramatically. Faculty involvement, though, has been gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels. In this episode, Sarah Rose Cavanagh joins us to discuss strategies for bringing more faculty into discussions of teaching and learning.
Sarah is a psychologist and the author of four books related to teaching and learning. She is the senior associate director for teaching and learning and associate professor of practice at Simmons University and also is a regular contributor to the Chronicle and many other publications. Sarah often serves as a keynote speaker and we were very fortunate to have Sarah join us for a keynote address at our Academic Affairs Retreat in Oswego last August.
Show Notes
- Cavanagh, Sarah Rose (2024). “After a Tough Year for Classroom Innovation, It’s Time for a Reset.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. May 7.
- Josh Eyler (2024). Failing Our Future. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 344. June 5.
- McMurtrie, Beth (2023). Students Crossing Boundaries: Rudeness, disruptions, unrealistic demands. Where to draw the line? The Chronicle of Higher Education, November 14.
- Bryan Dewsbury and Kayon Murray-Johnson’s Inclusive Teaching MOOC
- Silverman, Sarah (2024). Navigating “access friction” in teaching. Beyond the Scope substack. May 23.
- Pittman, C., & Tobin, T. J. (2022). “Academe Has a Lot to Learn About How Inclusive Teaching Affects Instructors.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. February 7.
- Chavella Pittman and Tom Tobin (2022). Include Instructors in Inclusive Instruction. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 231. March 16.
- If anyone would like to sign up to hear more about TUnE-Bio!
Transcript
John: During the pandemic, faculty participation in professional development activities expanded dramatically. Faculty involvement, though, has been gradually returning to pre-pandemic levels. In this episode, we explore strategies for bringing more faculty into discussions of teaching and learning.
[MUSIC]
John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
[MUSIC]
John: Our guest today is Sarah Rose Cavanagh. Sarah is a psychologist and the author of four books related to teaching and learning. She is the senior associate director for teaching and learning and associate professor of practice at Simmons University and also is a regular contributor to the Chronicle and many other publications. Sarah often serves as a keynote speaker and we were very fortunate to have Sarah join us for a keynote address at our Academic Affairs Retreat. Welcome back, Sarah.
Sarah: Thanks for having me.
Rebecca: Today’s teas are:… Sarah, are you drinking tea,
Sarah: I thought about trying to blow your mind and saying I’m drinking some Bergamot green thing. But no, I just finished my last coffee for the day. And now I’m on to water. [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: You’re so consistent.
John: My tea today is a black raspberry green tea.
Rebecca: And I have an Awake tea, which clearly I need. [LAUGHTER]
John: We’ve invited you here today to discuss your May 7, 2024 article in The Chronicle, entitled, “After a Tough Year for Classroom Innovation, It’s Time for a Reset.” And I think this is something that’s going to resonate with a lot of educational developers and many faculty. You begin the article by noting that there was a sudden increase in attention to student-centered teaching in response to the pandemic, but has that shift been as persistent as many of us might have hoped?
Sarah: Oh, I think yes and no. I think that a lot of people started focusing more on their teaching. In those pandemic years, we all saw in our teaching and learning centers, higher attendance at events and a lot of engagement, both in these larger events, and then faculty coming to us for consultations. And one hopes, as educators, that learning doesn’t just go poof, that the effect of all of that attendance and thinking and consulting is still impacting people in their classrooms. But I think that there definitely has been a trend on my own campus, and most campuses that I talk to, about declines in attendance at those same sorts of workshops and talks and consultations. And there also, I think, has been a bit of a pendulum shift in some of the topics such as flexible deadlines, where I think we saw a lot of people move in one direction, and then are starting to see a little bit of a shift back. And so hopefully, we still have overall nudged the average over towards student-centered teaching and that hasn’t changed. That’s my hope. But I definitely see a little less intensity and interest lately.
Rebecca: We definitely have seen similar declines in professional development on our campus as well. And sentiments like, “I’m just really tired,” or “I’m done” [LAUGHTER] which you highlighted in your article, and one of our most popular workshops of recent years has been related to burnout. Can you talk a little bit about ways that we can re-engage our faculty or why burnout is such a popular topic? [LAUGHTER]
Sarah: Right? Well, I think that if we’re thinking about kind of a shift away from student- centered teaching, or even a backlash, as we’ll talk about in a little bit, that burnout is one of the many causes of that. I think that faculty are just tired, as you said, and that sentiment of “I’m just done,” like, I’ve heard those words multiple times from multiple different people. And a lot of student-centered teaching, and certainly attending professional development workshops takes time, and there’s just no time. And so there’s the burnout that’s related to the emotions, and the trauma of the pandemic, and just workload being completely ridiculous. But then there’s just also a paucity of time. And I think that part of that is this whole Zoom… we’re here, not on Zoom, but we’re here virtually, and those virtual options open up so many possibilities. But I feel like we took all of our pandemic solutions with the Zoom sessions, and all of that, and we brought them into the future. But then we brought back all the in-person stuff. [LAUGHTER] And so there’s zero time for anyone. And so I think that the burnout is so strong, and that’s why there’s such attention to that. And that is one of the most popular topics right now.
Rebecca: Feeling over scheduled definitely limits the ability to feel creative, or to dream or to think about new things. So if people are used to kind of being in that state, or historically have been in that state, and they’re just feeling like they can’t get to that state. I can imagine that’s why people say they’re done is because it’s hard to come up with new ideas or to put the energy into that kind of thinking.
Sarah: Absolutely. And I think also students are equally, at least equally, burnt out. [LAUGHTER] And so I think another thing that’s happening is faculty put all this time into student-centered teaching, but then it’s not working. They’re not seeing more engagement or better learning. And so you’re investing all this time, but then the students are so burnt out that it doesn’t look like it’s being effective, and that’s frustrating, and I think that that’s also part of the feeling done, like, if you’re just throwing everything you have at bettering your teaching, but then still feeling frustrated by the outcome, then that is demoralizing.
Rebecca: It’s interesting that the way you put it instead of like getting re energized… [LAUGHTER] like, depleted.
John: And we never observe the counterfactual, we don’t see what would have happened, had we not been focusing more on student-centered teaching after some really tough times. So, why do you think faculty are pushing back a bit more against student-centered teaching approaches, because we had a lot of buy-in on that during the early stages of the pandemic, and for a couple of years after that, but we’re seeing a little bit more pushback.
Sarah: Yeah, well, I have a long answer for this one, because I am a psychologist and so I think everything is highly multi-causal. And one major factor is the level of burnout, both on the faculty side and the student side. And so we don’t have to go back to that, but I just want to highlight that I think that that’s part of it, is this burnout, and I love Rebecca’s depiction of like how impossible it is to feel creative and do new things too when you’re feeling exhausted. And so I think that’s a big part of it. On my endless commute yesterday, [LAUGHTER] there was a Red Sox game (I work in the Fenway), I listened to your interview with Josh Eyler, which was excellent, of course, and I think it probably predated the article, but you were talking about just this topic of sort of a backlash, specifically against alternative grading schemes as a student-centered practice. And Josh said, that I thought was very insightful, as everything Josh says is, that he had this analogy of a rubber band, and that there’s just this effect. And I think of it as a pendulum as well, which I already referenced, that there’s just this natural effect when you move in one direction to kind of snap back a little bit. And he saw that as part of the cause of this. And I think that that is true. I think it’s sad, but we love pendulums as human beings. I’m always like let’s just settle into moderation, [LAUGHTER] but we love swinging from one extreme to the other. So I think part of it might just be a regression to the mean sort of effect. But I think there’s a lot of other factors. I think that one is, if you drill down into the recommendations of so many different theoretical approaches to good teaching, you come up with similar recommendations, whether you’re focusing on inclusive teaching or accessible, teaching, engaging teaching, all these things, they all drill down to these recommendations of being warm and welcoming, having a promising tone, seeing students as people, giving them autonomy and giving them choice, all these things. And I think that some faculty feel, after attending several years of the pandemic and all these different intros and frames, but then the same recommendations feel like they got it. [LAUGHTER] And that might be part of it. The final two causes of the backlash are a little more delicate. I think one is the student reactions. And we talked about this a little bit, that students themselves are so burnt out and so faculty aren’t seeing great results when they experiment with student-centered teaching. But I think that there’s also a rise in student incivilities. Beth McMurtrie had a great report in The Chronicle, about a year back on the rise of student incivilities. Another term that people use is reactance, when they’re pushing back against the instructor. I can tell you a brief anecdote. I was on a different campus talking to a faculty member. And she had been using alternative grading practices, it was kind of a standards-based approach where students had multiple attempts at achieving a standard, but they’re passing an assignment and would either be competent or not yet competent. And she was teaching in a male -dominated field. And this student of hers who was male, he got a “not yet competent,” and threw the paper back in her face and said, “You don’t know what you’re doing.” And so I think that that too, when you’re putting all this time and effort into student-centered practices, and then having reactance and incivilities in reaction, that’s also demoralizing. And then finally, just to get myself in trouble, [LAUGHTER] I think that we in the teaching and learning fields, bears some responsibility. I think that especially toward the end of the heyday of teaching and learning years on Twitter, things got a little bit ugly. There was some shaming of faculty pile-ons, and some of the pile-ons were of people engaging in student shaming practices and other things that are ugly on their own. But some of it was also just venting stresses of teaching, and then getting piled on. And I saw this really clearly because I was active on Twitter in the teaching and learning fields. And then because I was more of a research focused faculty for most of my career and all my social contacts in person are more like that, I’ve had all my faculty friends on Facebook, and they would post just some things. They all very care deeply about their teaching and their students, but they would post things and I was like, “Oh my God, if you had posted that on Twitter, [LAUGHTER] you would be dead in the water.” So I think that we, as we talk to each other, and we convince each other, and we get more and more excited about change, and about some innovative practices, that sometimes we get a little out of touch with the majority of faculty who are teaching on the ground, and their constraints and practices.
Rebecca: We spent a lot of time talking about students as humans, but teachers are also human, I think, [LAUGHTER] and I think we need to be, and you’ve mentioned this before, too, is just making sure that we’re treating everybody as humans, and that everybody has constraints, and everybody has different pressures. And in your article, you suggest that the time seems ripe for a complementary revolution, one that recognizes and respects the autonomy and bandwidth of teachers. Can you talk about what this counter revolution might look like?
Sarah: Sure. And this is easy for me to say, because in my position I have no control over budgets, [LAUGHTER] or faculty workloads. But I think that primarily what we need is we need a revolution in how we treat faculty. Faculty have been through the pandemic, I think the coming demographic cliff and all of these things that administrators push for faculty to be more and more responsive to students, more and more student-centered, to take on more and more things. At my last institution, they had us writing letters, personal letters to individual possible students to try to encourage them to put down deposits. All of this emotional labor time, regular labor. And so I think faculty in response need more time and money. And I think we’ve just piled on and increased the workload and increased the workload and expanded the scope of the work exponentially through these pandemic and post-pandemic years. And I think that faculty need course releases, I think they need stipends for some of this work. And I think that we need to put a lot more resources toward our faculty. I think it also means a lot more full-time lines with security as well. And those are going in the opposite direction. I think that the other thing that we need is hands off our classrooms. [LAUGHTER] I think that we need to respect faculty autonomy and faculty choice. And so many of us get into this work, because we want that autonomy, we want that choice. We’re willing to work harder for a lot less money than if we went elsewhere. But it’s because we want to be self determined, and do the things that we want to do. And I think that we need to respect that.
John: One of the things you’re suggesting in the article is that there’s no single approach to student-centered teaching that works for all faculty or for all students. Could you give some examples of approaches that work for some faculty in their context that might not work as well for other faculty, given their context?
Sarah: Absolutely. There’s so many… class size is one, you know, are you teaching 25 students? Are you teaching 750 students? …very different strategies are going to be effective there. Courseload… are you teaching two courses a semester, or you’re teaching five courses a semester, that is going to affect the choices that you can make. Precarity of position… both pre-tenure and post-tenure, but also: Are you full time? Are you contingent? Are you on a semester to semester? Contract… identity, these characteristics of the instructor. We had Chavella Pittman come out and talk to our faculty at Simmons University last semester. She was fabulous. She talked a lot about student incivilities, and how many more faculty of color and other minoritized faculty receive of those student incivilities and what majority faculty can do differently in terms of their policies to help support their minoritized faculty. Your teaching philosophy, I think, is important. And again, autonomy is important. And a little bit your teaching talents. For instance, I’m not funny. [LAUGHTER] Some people are really funny. And that is like being humorous in front of the classroom is a really engaging strategy, but it’s not open to all of us. And some people are gorgeous lectures and actually, lecture might work better in their class than someone who’s not. And there’s just so many contexts, there’s so many constraints that are going to influence this vast buffet of teaching choices.
Rebecca: Sometimes when we’re thinking about offering students choice, that also means there’s an impact on faculty too. And so you’re kind of underscoring a faculty choice and some of the individual faculty needs where they might be balancing other things may have certain kinds of time constraints, physical limitations, there’s all kinds of things that could be at stake. How do we help folks understand the need to balance student needs with also faculty needs, and to make those kinds of decisions?
Sarah: It’s so tricky. I often think of all of teaching as kind of a dance, and there’s an art to it. And there’s a little bit of an intuition to it. I’m mad at myself, because I meant to look this up before this talk, but I will send you a link to something later on. Brian Dewsbury and some other folks put together an inclusive teaching massive online course through HHMI. And I lead faculty through a learning community using it. And they were discussing, and I’ll send you the link and the person’s name after. But it was an approach to teaching that, instead of being learner centered, it’s learning centered. And this balances out this competing tension between faculty needs and student needs, but also between, and I think we’re going to talk a little bit about this in a bit, students to student needs, you know, variations in the needs of students. And instead of centering the learner, centering the learning, and thinking about what is going to be most effective for the goal of this course, which is learning, and what can I do in terms of my teaching choices, and the structure of the course and the types of assessments and things like that, that centers the learning, which is going to center the learner as well, because it’s their learning that will happen. But I liked that subtle shift in how we think about this. And I think that might be one approach to approaching this dance with balance.
John: And that brings me back to when I first started working at the teaching center. The year before that an advisory committee put together a draft statement of the purpose of the teaching center, and they went with learning centered. We’ve still tried to maintain a focus on learning, because that’s kind of what we’re here for. And that’s why students are here. So I think that focus is really good.
Sarah: Oh good. [LAUGHTER]
John: But going back to that issue about different techniques working for different faculty, isn’t the same also true for students? That the flexibility that many faculty provided to a greater extent over the years immediately following the pandemic might work really well for many students, but might that provide a loss of structure which is really important for many of our students?
Sarah: Absolutely. A question I often get when I give talks about emotions in the classroom is about my recommendations for a lot of warm-up activities and small-group discussions, and getting students interacting with each other to maximize the sense of belongingness and community, which we know is important for learning and especially for marginalized students. But I often get the question of what about socially anxious students? What about introverted students? What about neurodivergent students? A lot of these students might really struggle having so many social engagements during a class period. And I don’t know that my answer is very helpful, [LAUGHTER] because I always try in my own teaching to have varied methods. So it’s not always social, that there are some classes that are much more independent, there are options to write in small books and things like that. And in the piece, I referenced Sarah Silverman’s work on access friction, and she didn’t coin the term she gives credit to Areley McNeney, and others, but about this friction that arises when one student’s accessibility needs are different, or even opposing in tension with another student’s. I think variation is good, you know, varying things around and flexibility and talking to your students, using who’s in class surveys to find out about student needs, always respecting students’ accommodations, of course, but having that conversation with students and drawing them in. And one thing that I really tried to do in my own teaching, is to be transparent about why I’m doing a certain thing. So I often start my classes with an explanation for why there’s going to be so many community building sorts of activities and how it is the research suggests that that’s important for their learning. So we think that kind of transparency, varying strategies, not doing the same thing all of the time, and then just acknowledging that certain teaching strategies are going to be more effective for some students versus others. And so let’s not just blast one teaching strategy the entire semester.
Rebecca: I think one thing that often happens is the use of the term universal design, not necessarily universal design for learning but this idea of universal design implies that one size can fit all, but usually universal design, if we’re really following those principles is that there’s variability and is that the space or the technique or the situation can adapt to the person and vice versa, rather than necessarily having one solution that works for everyone. I mean, it’s part of it, but there’s usually this flexibility piece that’s key, but flexible doesn’t have to mean so much extra work for a faculty either. There’s different ways to have flexibility.
Sarah: Yeah, multiple points of entry for students always is great.
John: When I first started teaching, I was told by the department chair at the time, who’s long since retired, don’t waste too much time on teaching, spend your time on research and other things that are essentially the currency of higher ed. We’ve moved quite a ways from the time where many faculty are getting that sort of advice, and those of us in educational development often become really passionate about encouraging student-centered teaching approaches, and we generally provide some criticisms of high-stakes exams, the sole use of lecture, multiple choice tests, and so forth. Those were pretty much considered to be standard practice not too long ago, and are still very common in many disciplines at least. You mentioned Twitter, many people would consider some of those techniques to be sort of like malpractice, where they’re actively doing harm to students and learning. Have we perhaps gone a little bit too far in pushing for changes in instructional practice, in the direction of a one-size-fits-all approach that perhaps we should back away from somewhat to bring more people into the conversation?
Sarah: Sure. So multiple layers there. I think one thing is, this is one of the places where I see the conversation on social media among teaching and learning folks as being a little disconnected from reality, if I can say that, [LAUGHTER] because I think that there’s so much of this still going on. I think that we talk to each other and then we talk to these wonderful faculty who come out to our professional development events. And that’s just like the tip of an iceberg. And we don’t tend to talk to people who don’t come to our events, [LAUGHTER] or don’t engage with us on social media. Where I see in this Facebook versus Twitter differential is I see my friends who are in much more research-focused careers, and all of their demands and rewards are all based on their research productivity. So you say we’ve moved away from that, but I think we’ve moved away from that some, and we have higher teaching demands even on research faculty, but I don’t think that the focus on research for a lot of those folks has changed very much. And when you’re burnt out, and all of the values and reward systems are rewarding you for research and not teaching, and you have TAs doing a lot of the on the ground face-to-face stuff with the students. I think there’s a lot of these so-called traditional practices still going on. And so I think it’s happening, and I think using the word harm might be a whole other big conversation. I would like us to step away from that word when talking about individual faculty and the teaching choices that they’re making in their classes. I think that there’s a host of problems with that word. And I think that part of the backlash, too, is this feeling of feeling judged by teaching and learning center, folks, and I think that that is not going to get us toward the sort of change that we want if there’s kind of these scores of faculty who are not part of the conversation yet. They’re not going to step into the conversation, if they’re feeling like we feel that their teaching practices, that they feel like they’re doing the best they can, are poor or actively doing harm to their students.
Rebecca: And the reality is they’re probably not actually harming students. Students are still learning and they’re having some other experiences and they’re facing challenge. That’s not, as you noted in your article, that’s not harm. Can you talk a little bit about fostering challenge for students?
Sarah: I don’t like to equate high-stakes exams and all these things… this is challenge and then student-centered teaching is low challenge, because I don’t think… and I’m not saying that you’re doing that… but I just want to be clear on my position for that. I think having really high expectations of students is challenge. I think asking students to take emotional risks and be a little vulnerable is challenge. And I think that all of that is done most effectively in a classroom where community has been built where students feel that they belong. I think reducing stakes is a really powerful tool to developing that feeling of safety in terms of willingness to take risks. So I am pro low-stakes. [LAUGHTER] And I’m not arguing that we should all be going back to sage on the stage and three exams, certainly not. And I have worked really hard over the last 10 years to try to nudge us away from those practices. But, I do think that they are not necessarily causing harm. And I think most of us, in our intellectual journeys, thrived under those conditions. I do think that people who have thrived under those conditions, usually people who’ve had a lot of privilege and a lot of resources. And so that’s another reason why we need to move away from these practices. But I think if we want to pull people with us and reduce high-stakes exams and reduce some of these practices that may not have been as effective at bringing all students to the table, then we need to do so with an open hand and also have ways that faculty can make incremental change. I reference in the article, Michael Palmer had a POD presentation at one of the teaching and learning conferences, in which he presented 15.9 million choices [LAUGHTER] that a faculty member makes in the construction of an individual class and argued that if we really want to make lasting change, we should be nudging little changes in all of those choices towards student centeredness, toward more inclusivity, rather than asking faculty to kind of throw everything out and start fresh and do something entirely new, and I found that compelling. And so if we could do that nudging, in the absence of judging, and by suggesting that there might be better effectiveness and equity, and doing that nudging, rather than saying you’re actively harming students with your current practices, I think would be a lot more compelling for a lot of those faculty who aren’t necessarily coming to our workshops.
John: So, nudging not judging, that’s a nice way of summarizing that, I think.
Rebecca: Yeah.
Sarah: That is a much more catchy way of saying it. [LAUGHTER]
John: I was thinking it would be a good title…
Rebecca: Yeah.
John: …or the podcast.
Rebecca: I was just thinking about, you never know what small little change you might make, that actually makes a humongous difference for a learner.
John: To use the technical term
Rebecca: I only use [LAUGHTER] technical terms. [LAUGHTER] So I think what you’re highlighting is really important, because these small little changes can make a big difference for an individual learner, or a set of individual learners. And you just don’t know what little tweak you’ve made, and what kind of impact it might have made. I’ve certainly had the opportunity to have a conversation with a student where they tell me about something that made a really big impact for them. And to me, it was like something that was really small, like, “Oh, alright, well, I should keep that.” [LAUGHTER] But it’s helpful. And they all add up over time.
John: What can we do to bring some of these other faculty who haven’t been as active in discussions of teaching into conversations, and to make it easier for us to do some of that nudging? We can’t really nudge people if they’re not talking to us or not coming into teaching centers?
Sarah: Well, I think more dedication of resources from the administration would be good. I think that bringing people to these events who haven’t traditionally come might happen if there’s more time and money, a course release or something, aa stipend for something else. I saw a presentation by Betsy Barre, a wonderful presentation where they had participation in a one-day teaching celebration event that was at something like 67% of the faculty attended. But it was very well resourced. They had a bunch of really fantastic speakers, a lot of great food, it was an entire day, and the provost canceled classes and like kind of shut down campus for the entire day and said, “This is important, come to this.” And they got something like 67% of their faculty at Wake Forest to attend that. So I think more resources is an answer. I think also having more varied offerings. So I tell the anecdote in the article when I was at Assumption University, one of our faculty came to us and he was from a department that never attended anything [LAUGHTER] that we offered and he said that, and he said, “Actually, none of us ever come because we think that you’re doing harm to teaching with all of these approaches that he felt were not effective, and that were kind of degrading education.” [LAUGHTER] And we had a conversation, and so what the result of that conversation was we had one of our faculty learning communities that we do over dinner with a book, and he gave a presentation called “the art of the lecture,” and it was a defense of lecturing, primarily lecturing as a mode of pedagogy. And then we also had a few other faculty do little flash talks about how they did kind of dynamic innovative lecturing. And then we had a conversation and a debate. So we weren’t advocating for this, but we were showcasing him, and then faculty were engaging in debate and dialogue around when is lecture appropriate? Like what are the ways to make it more student centered. And I would like to say that his whole department came out to that, and they didn’t, [LAUGHTER] but he was there. And I think demonstrating that kind of respect for all the variations of teaching, I think is good. Another that we did at my current institution is we had a panel of faculty and we intentionally chose faculty with varied deadline policies, so on the spectrum of more strict, more flexible, and kind of in the middle, and had them present their rationale and their procedures and then did q&a. And that was really well received and better attended than some of our other events. So I think mixing things up and creating a space where it is clear that we are respecting faculty autonomy, and that we see variation as good. I think it can be powerful.
Rebecca: I’m hearing some themes of celebrating teaching and learning [LAUGHTER] and respecting and listening.
Sarah: Yes.
Rebecca: …listening and respecting a wide range of teaching in all of the examples that you just shared, which I think are two things to remember and keep in mind, because I think you also said not in this last answer, but a couple answers back something about [LAUGHTER] I think you put the words faculty and equity in the same sentence rather than we usually think about students and equity. But I was hoping maybe you might elaborate a little bit more on this idea of some equity around faculty as well when we’re thinking about teaching in particular.
Sarah: I think that probably what you’re referencing in my previous answers was when I was talking about Chavella Pittman’s visit. And I think one thing that we don’t always acknowledge is the impact that our teaching choices can have on other faculty in our department and at our institutions’ teaching choices. And so she was talking about how many more incivilities and classroom disruptions faculty of color and other minoritized faculty get compared to white cis het faculty. And that when we make choices in our own classrooms, that might have an impact on other faculty. And so specifically, when white majority faculty have a lot of policies in their classes, that they have a lot of flexibility, or they don’t have a classroom disruption policy, or the classic example is “Call me Sarah, and don’t call me Dr. Cavanagh,” that sort of thing. That actually makes it more difficult for faculty who, in order to have a good classroom climate, needs to demonstrate their authority. I know we don’t like to use that word when we talk about teaching, but all our friends need to be called by “doctor” and need to have a classroom disruption policy, because otherwise there’ll be a lot of classroom disruptions. If there’s also this perceived differential in those two classes, then those faculty are going to get accusations from students that :”Oh, you’re so strict, you’re so this or that compared to these other faculty who are just like, relaxed, why can’t you be more like them?” And so I think that we do need to think… I’m saying “respect faculty autonomy,” but then also, “let’s talk to each other about our classroom policies in order to make sure that we’re not engaging in these behaviors that are going to impact other faculty.” But again, it’s a dance, it’s a dance and a balance, a little bit of this, and a little bit of that.
John: And I’ll mention that Chavella Pittman and Tom Tobin had a discussion of this in an article in The Chronicle, I believe, and then they joined us on a podcast for that too. And we’ll share links to both of those in the show notes.
Sarah: This has been a great conversation, but I want to be clear that I am so dedicated to student-centered teaching. And that is why I feel really passionate about this backlash because Rebecca, you mentioned listening, and I’ve just been listening and listening. And I’ve been hearing it all over the place. And again, I worry with these pendulums that we could just snap back to a place that we really don’t want to be. But I think sometimes when I have these conversations, I come out as “Oh, pro high-stakes exam and let’s have three exams, multiple choice, strict attendance, policies, all these things.” And that’s not the case, I just think that we need to do the nudging, not judging so that we can continue pursuing change, because I think we had this accelerant with the pandemic, and it was great, with so many people in zoom rooms and in seats, and really eager to like innovate and all of these things, and that has kind of faded, and we now have these other tensions that are pushing in the opposite direction. And so let’s have some new strategies so that we can continue pursuing educational reform
John: And the strategies of having different people with different perspectives discussing it, is probably a really good way of getting people to state their opinions, but also to hear some things that might nudge them in another direction. So someone who only lectures hearing a little bit about the possibility of doing an interactive lecture would be a relatively small adjustment that they wouldn’t have heard if they hadn’t attended an event of that sort.
Sarah: Absolutely.
John: I think that sort of approach is a really good one that we should try doing more of here.
Rebecca: I think also having varied classroom experiences is healthy for students, it’s a good experience for students and helping students to see the value and having just different opportunities, different ways of flexibility being demonstrated to them is helpful to point out to students rather than being really careful when you’re having a conversation with a student about the classes that they’re in, for example, and highlighting maybe some of the skill sets they might be getting from a particular experience rather than kind of bashing a faculty member or particular class and helping them understand they might want a variety of different kinds of classes to help their own workload and interest and that kind of thing. So we always wrap up by asking: what’s next?
Sarah: Well, I have an NSF-funded network in intro bio called TUnE-Bio, and we’ve been holding a lot of qualitative interviews of intro bio faculty and and digging into some of this, they’re thinking about change and the constraints and barriers and facilitators of change and I’m getting excited about kind of expanding that network into the possible future.
Rebecca: That sounds like some interesting work.
Sarah: Thanks.
John: Well, it’s always great talking to you. Thanks for joining us. And we look forward to hearing more about that project as more information comes in, as well as anything else that you’re doing that you’d be willing to talk to us about.
Sarah: Great. Thanks for having me.
[MUSIC]
John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
[MUSIC]