This approach may be the most directly student-centric among the critical pedagogies, as it is predicated on the cooperation between instructors and students “to create a supportive and open environment that fosters social justice and allows each individual to be fully present and feel equally valued.”^[1] The foundational notion is that our social identities impact how we teach and learn, and that accordingly self-awareness is essential to both endeavors. Course content should represent diverse perspectives, which the instructor should also model. To support the diverse student body, activities and assignments of many types are used, with a focus on emphasizing what each student brings to the class and the ways in which each student’s lived experience contributes to the learning. To promote an inclusive classroom, guidelines for interactions are established (and explained) on the syllabus, and may be amended by the students themselves early in the class. In general, instructors try to make the path to success as clear as possible by explaining the purpose of assignments and what students must do to succeed at them.^[2] Research shows that inclusive pedagogy contributes to a sense of belonging among all students and thus to their success.^[3] Inclusive pedagogy is closely related to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), which foregrounds learner agency and focuses on reducing barriers through curricular design.

If you are curious about implementing inclusive pedagogy in your classroom, you should expect first and foremost that you will need to take a long, hard look at how your background informs how you have taught to date, and of course how that may have impacted your students’ learning. From personal experience, we can say that this process is not necessarily a pleasant one, as it does reveal biases and assumptions we would all like to believe ourselves free from (for more see the piece by McIntosh listed below). Secondly, this approach also demands that you cede some control in the classroom to make room for the newly included perspectives. Lastly, expect to rethink classroom activities and assessment with an eye to encouraging engagement by “atypical” students and demonstrating to them the path to success. One practice we have used in our own classes is to have the students self-assess their own participation. “Participation and Engagement” is typically worth 15-20% of the overall grade in our language courses. Instead of setting arbitrary criteria for participation, we ask the students to set personal goals for what successful participation means to them and how they will stay engaged with their coursework throughout the semester. They then assess how well they’ve been meeting their goals at the mid-semester mark and at the end of the semester. We use their self-assessments as the final grade for “Participation and Engagement” so that they have true agency over their learning process and outcomes.

Resources

Binder, Amy J., and Jeffrey L. Kidder. The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today. University of Chicago Press, 2022.

Baker, Sally, Joel Anderson, Rachel Burke, Teresa De Fazio, Clemence Due, Lisa Hartley, Tebeje Molla, Carolina Morison, William Mude, Loshini Naidoo and Ravinder Sidhu. “Equitable Teaching for Cultural and Linguistic Diversity: Exploring the Possibilities for Engaged Pedagogy in Post-COVID 19 Higher Education.” Educational Review 74, no. 3 (2022): 444-459. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2021.2015293

Hogan, Kelly A., and Viji Sathy. Inclusive Teaching: Strategies for Promoting Equity in the College Classroom. West Virginia University Press, 2022.

McIntosh, Peggy. “White Privilege and Male Privilege: A Personal Account of Coming to See Correspondences through Work in Women’s Studies.” Wellesley Centers for Women (1988).

Rovai, Ana and Joanna Pfingsthorn. “’Good Foreign Language Teachers Pay Attention to Heterogeneity’: Conceptualizations of Differentiation and Effective Teaching Practice in Inclusive EFL Classrooms by German Pre-Service Teachers.” Languages 7, no. 162 (2022): 1-19. https://doi.org/10.3390/languages7030162

Timus, Natalie, Michelle E. Bartlett, James E. Bartlett, Suzanne Ehrlich and Zakaria Babutsidze. “Fostering Inclusive Higher Education through Universal Design for Learning and Inclusive Pedagogy – EU and US Faculty Perceptions.” Higher Education Research and Development 43, no. 4 (2024): 473-487. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2023.2234314