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If key constituencies around a college or university campus committed to furthering equity-based teaching, what specific actions would make up their strategy?
A new report titled Equity-Based Teaching in Higher Education: The Levers That Institutions Can Use for Scaling Improvement outlines one range of possibilities. The heart of the report is a set of 15 recommendations addressed to five groups of readers — institutional leaders, centers for teaching and learning, deans and department chairs, faculty, and students. Together, the recommendations constitute a playbook for colleges and universities pursuing equitable student outcomes.
The playbook begins with a detailed proposal for an ecosystem framework. It defines equity-based teaching as a commitment to designing learning experiences that address the root causes of inequity in education to effect long-term institutional change and to improve outcomes for Black, Latine, Indigenous, and Low-Income (BLILI) students in particular, and all students in general.
The playbook was developed by The Equity-Based Teaching Collective, a group of scholars committed to advancing equitable teaching in higher education. They are composed of principal investigators and team members across American University, Florida International University, and the University of Connecticut.
Below is a sample of the recommendations from Equity-Based Teaching in Higher Education. In the full report, each of these is outlined in detail and includes illustrative examples and resources.
Cultivate a teaching innovation culture for faculty
Institutional leaders can operationalize change through a complex interplay of social forces, where routines and practices are legitimized, ultimately altering institutional values.
One example is working with faculty governance structures to improve tenure, promotion, and reappointment centered on equity-based teaching (EBT). Teaching excellence, including EBT, can be uplifted in these reward processes.
Galvanize efforts for broad-scale equity-based teaching
College and university leaders can identify key stakeholders committed to EBT and provide the structure, resources, and rewards to work across efforts to synergize and elevate EBT across the institution.
That can include developing authentic partnerships with community members and groups to reframe how we view community knowledge, support community-driven issues, and transform the university.
Build capacity for EBT through a multi-pronged teaching development approach
Centers for teaching and learning (CTLs) can support faculty capacity to engage in EBT conceptions (e.g., beliefs, attitudes, understanding, knowledge) in conjunction with skill or product development.
For example, the Gonzaga University Center for Teaching and Advising uses a DEI checklist that centers on self-reflection about equitable teaching practices. The self-reflection asks faculty questions about course curriculum/content; instruction, assignments, and assessment; teacher/student interactions; and personal and professional development.
Create a culture of EBT development in community
CTLs can support a culture of EBT by fostering communities for different stakeholders. CTLs can become involved in faculty orientation programming, help departments build faculty learning communities and provide training for middle academic leaders across departments.
Faculty learning communities are low-risk settings in which faculty can innovate and experiment with teaching, share their teaching experiences, and provide and receive feedback. The communities, also known as communities of practice or professional learning communities, can be departmental or cross-discipline.
Develop an asset-based professional development culture of EBT
Deans and department chairs can support the faculty’s iterative learning about EBT by fostering peer collaboration, scaffolding faculty scholarship of teaching and learning, supporting faculty engagement in workshops and faculty learning communities, and ensuring that graduate education includes a focus on EBT.
One way is by developing a peer-based model of professional development that builds a culture of constant dialogue about EBT. For example, Salem State University’s Faculty Fellows for Diversity and Inclusion Program developed the Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Teaching to Transform Initiative. Faculty in the initiative revise courses to center equity-based teaching goals.
Garner buy-in for EBT improvements with internal and external stakeholders
Deans and/or department chairs who wish to improve EBT but lack the faculty consensus to do so can leverage accreditation standards and professional/disciplinary associations that elevate EBT and focus on equity in student success. These external bodies can be good motivators for EBT improvement because disciplines are well respected and accreditors must be addressed.
For example, the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges (AMATYC) has taken equity-oriented positions with recommendations for institutional leaders and faculty to improve conditions for adjunct faculty teaching math, oppose anti-Asian racism, support distance education, and improve student success in developmental math courses. In these ways, AMATYC can be an important resource for math departments.
Improve your own EBT
Faculty can improve their EBT practices by approaching student understandings as assets, doing self-reflective work, and acknowledging and addressing the aspects of the teaching and learning experience for students that are not transparent or known, particularly for BLILI students. Students have their own forms of knowledge and lived experiences as well as their diverse identities, communities, and histories that inform what and how they learn.
Invest in and uplift your EBT successes
For EBT to be valued and rewarded, faculty should provide evidence of EBT improvement. This goes beyond showing the attendance of a workshop by providing evidence that EBT was used (e.g., via observation), that coursework was changed to be more equitable (e.g., examples of student work), and that student outcomes improved and are more equitable.
Use academia’s data-driven environment to your advantage by collecting qualitative and/or quantitative information about your students to reflect the impacts of your EBT course changes and improvements.
Students serve as a role model for equity
Students serve as important catalytic change agents for EBT. Students model their behavior after their peers, become involved with activities based on their proximal peers, and respond to feedback from peers.
In this way, students can support equitable practices in college courses, improve the classroom climate, train other students to engage in equitable ways, support students who experience bias, and block and redirect students who are harmful.
Students often serve in valuable roles that influence peer learning, such as teaching assistants, peer tutors, peer mentors, and peer-assisted learners. Therefore, they also need training, support, and development in implementing EBT.
Figure 4. Additional Ecosystem Actors
Students contribute to curricular improvement efforts and teaching training
Beyond sharing their voices as data for improvement, students can actively engage with their departments, advocate for needed changes, and ensure that faculty and departmental leaders hear other student voices. The more that students can be centrally integrated into EBT and curricular improvement efforts, the more likely these efforts are to succeed.
Other actors in the equity-based teaching ecosystem
In many higher education institutions, teaching improvement initiatives start with working one on one with faculty. Yet, decades of literature on EBT improvement show that the problem lies in an ecosystem that does not center the nurture of EBT as its goal. The full higher education ecosystem is highly complex and includes many actors. Communities, the state and federal landscape, disciplines, higher education associations and related businesses, and funders all play significant roles in EBT improvement in higher education.
Read or download Equity-Based Teaching in Higher Education playbookEditor’s note: The material in this article is excerpted and adapted from Equity-Based Teaching in Higher Education: The Levers That Institutions Can Use for Scaling Improvement, which was written by The Equity-Based Teaching Collective.