learning

I have been organising about my travel and accommodation to this year’s Institute for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) this year. I will be travelling to Indiana to present and attend the annual in person board meeting. This led me to reflect of past ISSOTL conferences and to remember to powerful keynote speech delivered at ISSOTL22 in a snowy Kelowna. Here are my thoughts at the time:

Opening Plenary – Beyond Inclusion: Education for Participating in and Shaping Democratic Futures by Bryan Dewsbury (Florida International University)

Dewsbury engages and holds the audience with the sincerity and conviction with which he speaks. His words clearly come from his own lived experience which he generously shares with his listeners. He draws us into his journey and the insights he has gleaned from his first days at university as a student through his many years as an academic who gradually found the value and importance of a focus on teaching.

Dewsbury began by sharing how important he regarded the upbringing he received from his parents in Trinidad and Tobago, where he was born. His parents empowered him by allowing him to be free to envisage a future for himself based on his own values. “The world is there for your taking – be what aligns with your values.” Dewsbury believes this advice from his parents gave him permission to dream and find meaning in this world in ways that mattered to him. As the first in his family to attend university, his parents also acknowledged they had taken him as far as they could in his educational journey. From there on, he needed to attack and encounter the world through his own values. He received a scholarship to Moorehouse College, a significant Historically Black College in the United Sates. As a new student coming from another country and being unaware of the history embedded in his institution, he encountered all the difficulties thrown up by his lack of social capital and the stereotyping he received, but he did not have the words to express and name what he was experiencing. He hesitated to seek help because he did not want to be perceived as an imposter. Eventually he discovered that education equips people with mechanisms to extract meaning in the world. It is through his education and with the strength he gained from his parents support that Dewsbury could overcome disadvantage.

Dewsbury spent a significant amount of time sharing his early experiences. It seems that these experiences had a deep enabling effect which later allowed him to approach teaching first year students with the high degree of empathy he outlines later in the speech. According to Dewsbury, empathy and sincere openness are of major importance for creating diversity and inclusion in higher education.

Dewsbury took a critical and questioning lens to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) “issues”. He asked what is the goal of inclusive education? He felt many times universities do not know what they are asking. Before talking about strategies for inclusion, there is a need to ask bigger questions – Why do you exist as a university?; What do you contribute to the good of society? Sometimes universities need major and brave overhauls of institutional practice. How does university prepare people to participate in society? In a practical way, it prepares students for future jobs. But through university, students can also realise how they can live with present day and future generations with kindness.

Dewsbury identified three components of university participation which prepare students to live well in society. First, university participation can be dialogic. There is power in dialogue, in conversing with the intent to learn something new, an action which is by definition inclusive. Second, university involves problem posing and solving. Society is by nature experimental. Mistakes are made in societies but the question can be asked – can we make a better decision? This is like scientific analysis. Third, university develops critical consciousness, enabling people to become hyper-aware of how power operates in society. What can be learnt from history about developing power structures?

Dewsbury shared with great fondness an introductory subject he taught early in his career. It is this through teaching this gateway subject, which was one avoided by many of the ambitious academics in his department, that Dewsbury discovered the profound value of teaching with empathy and openness. Dewsbury taught this gateway class as an open gate – inviting students to come as you are, and mean it. Through this subject, he gives practical examples of the the components of university participation mentioned above.

The power of dialogue Dewsbury put a strong focus on dialogic group work in this class. This involved not so much ‘what’ activities. but ‘who’ activities. Who is with you in your class? Group work enables students to have personal dialogue that is not possible when everyone is facing the teacher at the front. Dewsbury would start by sending surveys to students to get some background, so that he could ‘socially engineer’ groups that could dialogue from different life experiences. He then structured exposure to diversity within class, starting with setting cultural norms around group work by distributing a set of guide posts for respectful communication, such as respect silence. An early group activity was to discuss the guide posts – i.e. which do you think you will have problems with and why? Dewsbury’s aim for students participating in dialogic group work was that when they left the class, they’d had a quality, authentic experience that helped their future life.

Problem posing and solving / Critical consciousness In the class, Dewsbury emphasised cultural story telling, including truth telling. It is important for students to understand that we tell these stories to learn – to identify errors of critical consciousness made by authorities in the past and think about what errors we are making now. And to dialogue around how can we move toward solving them?

For me, it was surprising that the subject Dewsbury described was Introduction to Engineering. It didn’t strike me as a science subject! This was a result of Dewsbury’s approach that can be applied across all disciplines. He was committed to a dream of a class that was conversational and formative. He believes that if you train the mind in a certain way, you don’t have to cover a lot of ‘content’. Start from a position where you assume students can do the work, then cultivate their minds. Through delivering this subject, Dewsbury realised that students don’t learn with theory alone – context is just as important. If you don’t understand the context, the motives of each student, you just move past each other.

Dewbury offered some final advice while recognising that often educators want to do great things in class, but may then go back to universities with broken systems:

Whatever you are designing in your classes, think about how it connects to a more peaceful society.

How can you design a system where people can be their best selves?

Move away from coverage to training minds.