Strong Foundations
The Pedagogy of Discomfort as an Agent of Change: Outcomes from Student Reflections on Diversity and Social Injustice
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Shane McIver
The emergence of phrases such as ‘fake news’ invite increased scrutiny of factual reporting and the media. Naturally, the media is highly influential given its ability to shape ideas, values and beliefs. University students often look to the media as an additional learning resource, to identify patterns, current trends and information relevant to their areas of academic interest.However, there can be an unnerving dissonance between positions presented by the media versus findings from academic investigation. Negative media examples might range from obvious and incendiary reporting fostering racism and discrimination through to equally damaging covert messages. This reporting might directly oppose fact, yet be adopted through general acceptance and social conditioning. This presentation reports outcomes arising from a research project where undergraduate students ultimately questioned their own values, attitudes and beliefs when comparing media portrayal versus evidence across a diverse range of subjects, including sexualities and identity, the needs of refugees and asylum seekers, justice and injustice, plus other examples that typically evoke strong reactions based on unexamined opinion. In alignment with Boler’s (1999) pedagogy of discomfort, critical thinking and informed inquiry displaced preconceived and often narrow perspectives with an increasing awareness of appreciating an alternative and deeper understanding, without slipping into defensive anger, blame, or guilt as part of that experience. Accordingly, the dynamics of a pedagogy of discomfort will be discussed, as well as the underpinning role of reflective practice, given the combination of the two tended to catalyse radical shifts in awareness and personal empowerment.
Gamifying Diversity in the Classroom: Making Explicit the Value of Alternative Perspectives
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Micah Gideon Modell
Collaborative group work is a popular student-centered method in part because diversity of perspective leads to better solutions (Humes & Reilly, 2008). Studies have shown that heterogeneous teams can outperform homogeneous ones both in the classroom (Cen, Ruta, Powell, Hirsch, & Ng, 2016; Hoffman, 1959; Hoffman & Maier, 1961) and the workplace (Van der Vegt & Janssen, 2003). However, found that, when allowed to self-select, stronger students gravitate to one another, leaving the rest to muddle through together (2004). Furthermore, Tucker (2005) found that, while students preferred self-organized teams and these tended to result in reduced conflict, this came with relatively mundane solutions, while instructor-formed teams exhibited high levels of destructive conflict. They achieved the best results when students were allowed to choose teams while working within diversity-enhancing constraings based on personality test results (Tucker & Reynolds, 2006).The author built upon this work, by developing a method of calculating the differences in student demographics to render a ‘diversity points’ score. The instructor would subsequently require that a minimum diversity point threshold be met by each group. This method was implemented as part of a web-based collaboration support platform and employed in classrooms over the course of a year and a half in conjunction with in-class discussions of the value of group work – with particular attention paid to diversity.
Identity Texts: Promoting Multiple Identities in Formal Educational Settings of Refugee and Migrant Background Children
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Georgia Fountoulaki, Argyro Maria Skourmalla, Sevasti Paida
The current reality in Second Language Acquisition (SLA) classrooms is characterized by super-diversity. Students in today’s classrooms compose a multilingual and multicultural total with different needs, expectations, interests, and constraints. These super-diverse classrooms give teachers a multidimensional role. In order to respond to the new reality, scholars searched for ways and methods in which to exploit their students’ full potential. To that Cummins (2001) supports that students’ performance in the classroom is improved when students feel that their identity is valued in the teaching process. This paper presents an identity text activity that inspired and developed from the researchers’ participation on a post-graduate course Language Education for Migrants and Refugees. We applied the activity in two learning environments: a multilingual-multicultural formal educational setting in Athens, a multilingual class in a general education school, and in a formal educational setting in a DYEP class in the island of Chios. The activity’s aim, which focused on producing multimodal “products” that students create and “invest their own identities in producing them”, was to give them opportunities to participate, to come forward their dual identities and the students to discover who their classmates are. Students were encouraged to share their thoughts using any means and language available to them. The final part of the paper suggests some creative activities that were based on students’ identity texts and encourage the development of the multiple languages/identities that exist in these classrooms.
