Centre for Learning and Teaching

Pedagogies (Teaching Approaches and Practices)

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Book a Consultation

Tereigh Ewert
Senior Educational Developer
(Anti-Oppressive and Transformative Education)
Tel: (902) 494-3808
Email: tereigh.ewert@dal.ca


Historically, many efforts to create more inclusive classrooms were directed towards adding more content to diversify the voices, worldviews, and perspectives represented in the course. As we evolve our understanding of what creates equitable and just learning spaces, we realize that how we teach is equally (or more!) important than what we teach. While simultaneously diversifying our content, we also adopt and implement pedagogies (teaching approaches and practices) that:

  • remove barriers
  • amplify natural aptitudes and build on students’ experiences and expertise
  • empower students to become expert, resourceful, successful learners
  • develop in students (and ourselves) the skills to question and challenge how social power inequities are replicated in our learning and in fields of study
  • validate students’ lived experiences and recognize their capacity to be teachers as well as learners.

Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP) are two pedagogical approaches that, particularly when implemented together, give us the tools to transform our students’ learning, significantly improve their success, and teach “the whole student.”

Removing Barriers: Universal Design for Learning (UDL)

At its essence, UDL recognizes that there is no “average learner” and that variability among learners is the “rule, not the exception” (Todd Rose, Centre for Applied Special Technology, or CAST). Starting with that premise, UDL asserts that if we design and teach our courses accounting for this variability, and with the purpose of removing barriers to learning, we give “all students the opportunity to succeed.” (Universal Design for Learning: How it works)

The three principles of UDL require that we provide multiple means of:

  • Engagement (the “why” of learning, relating to motivation)
  • Representation (the “what” of learning, relating to in what forms content and materials are provided)
  • Action and Expression (the “how” of learning, relating to how students are able to engage in, and demonstrate, their learning, and is often connected to assessment).

To learn more about UDL, visit the CAST UDL Guidelines.

For UDL information and resources that pertain specifically to higher education, visit UDL on Campus.

The CLT is offering all-Faculty retreats to facilitate the uptake and implementation of UDL across all of Dalhousie University. For more information, contact Tereigh Ewert (these retreats are co-facilitated by Les T. Johnson, Senior Educational Developer [Online Pedagogies] and Tereigh).

References

CAST (2018). Universal Design for Learning Guidelines (Version 2.2). Retrieved from http://udlguidelines.cast.org.

Morin, A.  (2014). What is Universal Design for Learning (UDL)? Accessed September 21, 2021  from https://www.understood.org/articles/en/universal-design-for-learning-what-it-is-and-how-it-works.

Challenging Systemic Racism and Oppression: Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP)

“Culture is a dynamic system of social values, cognitive codes, behavioral standards, worldviews, and beliefs used to give order and meaning into our lives as well as the lives of others…because teaching and learning are always mediated or shaped by cultural influence, they can never be culturally neutral.” (Gay, 2018)

Each of us bring our cultural selves into every space we occupy, and these are revealed through expressive behaviors such as thinking, relating, speaking, writing, performing, producing, learning and teaching (Gay, 2018). By looking critically at our courses and curricula, we can identify and rectify those elements that privilege some expressive behaviours while disadvantaging or discriminating against others.

Five Pillars of Culturally Responsive Pedagogy (CRP)

As CRP practitioners, we:

  1. develop socio-cultural consciousness in ourselves and our students by being critically self-reflective, removing barriers for equity-denied communities, affirming cultural identities, and recognizing the cultural assets all students bring to the classrooms;
  2. attend to our moral responsibility to be agents of change, holding high expectations for all students, and with our students, collectively disrupting inequities;
  3. select resources that represent diverse voices, interrogate our culturally-bound belief of what is “valid” knowledge and how it is represented, and we take a multi-dimensional approach to design;
  4. identify cultural bridges, build these bridges among the students, instructor, and content, and recognize the plurality in ways of knowing and learning;
  5. design curricula that are culturally affirming and validating, modify our instruction and curricula for equity, and deconstruct the “white” or colonized syllabus. (Pirbhai-Illich, Pete, and Martin, 2017)

References

Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. 

Pirbhai-Illich, F., Pete S., and Martin F. (2017). Culturally responsive pedagogy: Working towards decolonization, indigeneity and interculturalism. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.