The Professor, Pluralism, and Pedagogy: A Reflection

Abstract

This essay discusses concrete approaches for faculty to use when teaching a student body whose demographics and cultural backgrounds are significantly different from that of the professor. As a white political scientist from the north teaching at a historically black university in the south, this work is particularly concerned with the dynamics of race and gender. However, the lessons from this essay are applicable to all of us who need to construct space in which our students can challenge their own preconceived notions.

If the United States and other pluralistic democracies claim that our very strength is found in the sharpening of our individual interpretations against competing ideas to best approximate the truth, how can we replicate this process in our increasingly diverse classrooms? What might this dynamic look like when the professor at the front of the room is radically different in significant ways from the students he or she teaches? For our classroom this means that pluralism must be real. It does not preclude the search for truth and right, but it makes that search more complicated and authentic. We cannot merely construct truth in our own images; we must confront challenging contradictions. In the United States, this requires us to take seriously the competing arguments and frameworks presented by the Other, generally reflecting issues of race, class, religion, politics, sexuality, and gender. This article examines five elements that help ensure that this process of pluralistic discussion and discovery actually occurs in our university and college classrooms. More particularly, the essay examines the potential for classroom engagement in the area of diversity when we consider the factors of audience, grace, power, discomfort, and transformation.

[Supplementary materials are available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of the Journal of Political Science Education for the following free supplemental resource(s): Appendices 1 and 2 containing examples of midterm assessment tools and student evaluation forms.]

Keywords:

• diversity
• engagement
• pedagogy
• professor
• students

Acknowledgments

A version of this article was initially prepared for a conference entitled “Issues of Diversity in Educational Contexts in Non-Apparently Diverse Environments” held at Mississippi College School of Law, Jackson, Mississippi, May 2008. Another version has been adapted and used as part of a larger conversation based on the teaching of the African-American Freedom Struggle in a talk entitled “Pedagogy, Power, and the Education of Citizens” that I have given to community college faculty and high school teachers in workshop settings. Finally, this article was presented at and benefited from comments from the 2010 Teaching and Learning Conference diversity track, sponsored by the American Political Science Association. I would like to thank Jackson State University's Center for University Scholars for their consistent conference support.

Notes

In fact, I have higher student evaluations in my current position as a white professor with 96% students of color, than my previous one, as a white professor with 85% white students. A discussion as to why I believe this to be the case is beyond the scope of this article. It perhaps has very little to do with me and my teaching skills.

New technology has greatly assisted with this approach. I use an electronic gradebook app called Gradebook Pro, which allows me to quickly e-mail each student all submitted assignments with grades, missing assignments, and attendance (including excused dates, unexcused dates, and tardies). Students are immediately confronted with the reality of where there grade stands and how far into the semester their grade represents (e.g., 65.4% with 92% of the grades submitted and 70% attendance). A cursory examination of the introduction of this intervention has demonstrated my class grades have improved overall in the semesters since I have adopted this technology. Unlike course management portals (e.g., Blackboard) where students must seek their grades, my grade report goes to them directly. This provides a reality check for the less assiduous students who may engage in “magical thinking” about their course performance.

Honesty compels me to once again reiterate—I am white, in Mississippi. This variable could explain much of the above. Since I have no other white colleagues in my department, I have no way of controlling for this very powerful variable.