As an instructor, I prioritize social justice and transformative processes that promote individual and social change. To this end, I challenge students to understand and disrupt social inequalities; I create an accessible, inclusive, and trusting learning space; and I use active and collaborative learning activities to foster high-level learning.
Critical and Socially-Conscious Thinking. In my classrooms, I challenge students to understand and disrupt gendered, racialized, classed, and other social inequalities and power dynamics. I believe that post-secondary educators have a responsibility to graduate critical and civic-minded thinkers who can help make the world a more equitable place. This includes (at times unsettling) individual and collective reflection about our own social positioning and how the dominant culture has shaped our ways of understanding the world (through social norms and stereotypes). In both small and large classes, I have fostered critical reflection on the topic of sexual violence by using a compilation of news clips to highlight patriarchal stereotypes about sexual violence that blame victims and exonerate perpetrators. I have then used examples from my research in which women’s descriptions of their own experiences of sexual violence reinforced these stereotypes and worked to minimize and justify men’s sexual violence. These strategies helped students reflect on how the dominant culture can and has shaped individual attitudes and our common ways of understanding sexual violence in Western society (e.g., as normal and acceptable male behaviour). Students have reported to me that these strategies supported their thinking about gendered sexual violence in a new way.
Accessibility and Inclusivity. I emulate what I teach about social justice by ensuring an accessible and inclusive learning space for students with diverse backgrounds, social positions, and learning needs. I apply the principles of Universal Instructional Design by crafting clear and engaging lecture content and accessible PDFs of all course materials that can be read using assistive technology. In my large undergraduate course, I frequently used Mentimeter (an online interactive tool) for students to ask anonymous course questions. Many more students engaged in this process compared to raising their hand. In a weekly seminar, students and I created mutually agreed upon ground rules to foster a trusting space for courteous dialogue and diverse perspectives. I reminded students of these co-created rules during particularly sensitive seminars. Engaging students in this process also offered them more control and responsibility over the learning environment (a key feature of feminist and learner-centered pedagogy; Shrewsbury, 1997; Weimer, 2013). Given that discomfort and vulnerability can be productive in learning about social justice issues (Kishimoto & Mwangi, 2009), I create a trusting space with my students without compromising critical and socially-conscious thinking. For example, during guest-lecture discussions, I have provided students with empathic but firm feedback when their comments unintentionally reinforced rape myths or other social injustices. The professors of these classes later commented on how, in addition to fostering critical and socially-conscious thinking, this allowed students to feel “safe to engage without being critiqued for an error.” These processes have shown my deep commitment to equity, diversity, and inclusion, and have ensured that all my students have equal access to learning.
Active and Collaborative Learning. Finally, I use active and collaborative learning activities to enhance students’ critical thinking and application skills. By actively contributing to the learning environment, students are better equipped to grow as critical and civic-minded thinkers and to apply their learning to the real world. I incorporate active and collaborative activities in both large and small classrooms. In my large undergraduate course, I incorporated many small- group activities in the lectures. For example, students formed small groups and participated in a desert survival exercise to practice effective teamworking skills and consensus decision-making (adapted from Human Synergistics International, 2019). Students were highly engaged, and I witnessed the teams applying course content to practice and think critically about teambuilding. In a lecture about attitudes, attributions, and persuasion, I used an exercise to help students identify their own attribution biases. Using Mentimeter, we tallied the number of traits that students reported were only true in some situations (rather than always or never true) for their professors versus for themselves (inevitably obtaining a higher tally for students’ self-reports). I used this to highlight our propensity for the Fundamental Attribution Error. In a seminar, I used an in-class debate in which students used research articles to support positions that they did not necessarily agree with. Their positions during the debate were much more developed and nuanced compared to our large group discussion about the articles before the debate. In lectures about qualitative and feminist research methods, I gave students hands-on experience analyzing authentic focus group transcripts and participant photos from my own PhotoVoice research about women’s campus sexual violence safety concerns. Students reported to me afterwards that having a chance to interact with real qualitative data clarified their understanding of the processes and challenges involved in qualitative research.
In sum, in both large and small classes with diverse students, I am dedicated to social justice and transformative learning that will remain with students long after they leave my classroom. By actively reflecting on social inequalities and power dynamics and participating in hands-on learning, students do not merely memorize content in my classroom—they grow as critical thinkers able to apply their socially-conscious knowledge and skills outside the classroom. I am committed to equipping students with the skills needed to succeed in research and society. My approaches to teaching are based on scholarly research and I remain committed to teaching excellence and improvement.