Managing Tensions in Equitable Disciplinary Teaching

Abstract

As representatives of a discipline and gatekeepers to disciplinary communities, faculty have a powerful role in defining what disciplines are and who has access. In exposing students to disciplinary conventions, instructors may present disciplinary norms as inflexible, which may limit access or make disciplines feel unwelcoming. Students may be faced with reconciling their culture’s ways of knowing with disciplinary ways of knowing, and instructors may face conflicts between preparing students for disciplinary expectations and providing an equitable classroom open to non-dominant ways of knowing and communicating. This multiple case study investigates how faculty think about disciplinary norms and equitable pedagogies, whether tensions arise in their disciplinary teaching, and how they manage those tensions. Findings indicate that tensions created opportunities for reflection and led to changes in teaching indicative of double-loop learning. Departmental tensions suggest a paradigm shift in Earth Science teaching pedagogy, and institutional tensions suggest that the university is undergoing organizational learning. This study also indicates that tensions occurred at multiple levels (individual, departmental, discipline, and institution/university) which has implications for challenges in making learning environments more equitable. Existing and potential approaches for addressing these challenges are discussed.