Equitable teaching for cultural and linguistic diversity: exploring the possibilities for engaged pedagogy in post-COVID-19 higher education

ABSTRACT

While the impacts of COVID-19 on higher education are still unfolding, it is clear that the disruption caused by the pandemic has provided a warrant to re-consider existing teaching and learning practices. We provide a reading on whether existing teaching and learning practices should be retained or whether new practices can and should emerge through the lens of culturally and linguistically diverse migrant and refugee (CALDMR) students. These students already experienced significant educational disadvantage before the pandemic moved teaching and learning online. Drawing on findings from an Australian study that explores the experiences of both university students and staff, we question whether these experiences offer hope for what bell hooks calls engaged pedagogy – as a form of university teaching and learning that is more caring, more student-centred and collaborative, and more exciting.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• culturally and linguistically diverse migrants and refugees
• engaged pedagogy
• higher education
• care

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Equity cohorts are formally identified in Australia as students from Indigenous, low-socioeconomic (low SES), and rural and remote backgrounds; CALDMR students are no longer an identified equity cohort in government policy or funding but they are often captured in universities’ equity practices under the low SES category.

2. We note Tesar’s (2020) commentary on the idea of “post-COVID”; he writes “‘Post’ is an interesting predicament because it is clear that we cannot be – anytime soon – post Covid-19. It is likely that we will carry Covid-19 with us for a very long time, and not necessarily in a linear progression. As such, it may mean a very long, unclear and messy transformation” (p. 558).

3. The Refugee Education Special Interest is a group of people from the community, higher education, vocational education and school sectors in Australia who have an interest in supporting educational opportunities for students from refugee backgrounds: http://refugee-education.org/.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Centre for Student Equity in Higher Education [2020/27].