WORKSHOP: Inclusive Instruction: Integrating Diverse Voices in Your Classroom

Abstract

In this workshop attendees will:
1) Identify systemic racial issues inherent in academic research and how to research marginalized voices within this system.
2) Describe the importance of including diverse voices in their own research and teaching.
3) Integrate ideas and strategies from the Finding Diverse Voices in Academic Research guide into their instruction.

Information provided will be applicable to all disciplines from humanities to sciences as this topic is universal. In groups, attendees will critique current practices, experiment with several guided activities, and work together to advance critical inquiry in the classroom.

This workshop is important because academic scholarship often suffers from a lack of diverse authorship, and this can be seen in course syllabi and student research assignments. Addressing oppressive practices in publishing and academia is necessary for progress. The existing monolith of privileged voices and the systems that oppress diverse voices is a challenge for teachers. In order to address this issue, librarians created the Finding Diverse Voices in Academic Research subject guide to help all classrooms address an overlooked topic.

We will begin the workshop by explaining the impetus and methodology of creating the guide. In our library instruction sessions, we noticed students asking questions about diversity in authors of scholarly sources. Students want representation of their identities in scholarship while ensuring that they are getting authoritative authors and sources. This guide details existing systems that hinder diverse representation in scholarly research as well as strategies to find diverse authorship. Additionally, resources were collected that detail the importance of countering the existing privileged narrative in academia. This workshop will facilitate group conversations on how attendees can teach and apply the advice of their peers to their practices. Throughout the workshop, participants will be asked to consider their own teaching practices and what voices they are representing in their classrooms. To encourage interaction, participants will describe what narratives they are underscoring in their instruction through inclusion or exclusion of specific voices. We will also give advice on how to work with a library instructor on creating discipline-specific resources. Attendees will be able to use this workshop to either inform themselves of existing oppressive structures or include the information into regular research and instruction. The guide we created includes activities that can be used in an instruction session to encourage students to think about oppression in scholarly publishing, expert voices in research, and re-think the sources that they use. This session will give attendees the standards they need to acknowledge oppressive issues in scholarship and publishing.