Collaborative learning as an anti-ableist and inclusive teaching practice
This semester I teach two sections of Social Psychology, which is a capstone for Psychology Program. Teaching this course allows me to continue working with both of my research questions. Specifically, I am exploring how collaborative learning can increase accessibility to learning and students’ engagement and experimenting with integrating disability into curriculum and teaching.
I designed this course as an interactive and collaborative space in which students can actively engage in exploration of social psychology from critical perspective. Specifically, the class examines and challenges traditional cognitive-experimental approaches in social psychology from a critical social psychology perspective, including disability that is frequently left out even within critical perspectives. Therefore, I expanded the traditional curriculum of social psychology and disability became integrated in various topics of social psychology (e.g. research methods, self and identity, etc.) as well as it became a topic covered along the other social categories, such as race, gender, and class. So far, students have been always very interested in any topic related to disability and particularly its intersection with other aspects of identity. The students are quite fascinated to explore the parallels between disability, ableism and disableism as well as other types of societal oppressions that constitute self and identity, but have been traditionally explained as a composite of innate and individual characteristics. Being able to assist students in this process of discovering social nature of our subjectivities is extremely exciting and rewarding.
The high stake assignment that I am implementing in this class is a staged paper on ‘Social Self’. In this project students have an opportunity to develop un understanding of self and identity as socially constructed through and by social discourses and other social practices. Students start with a personal experience of a struggle or oppression of their own or somebody close to them. Gradually, they learn to apply discussed theoretical concepts to analyze a described experience and understand the dynamic, fluid, and social nature of our selves and subjectivities. This project consists of several short papers and collaborative class activities that support and prepare students for developing their final papers. Before submitting the papers, students have an opportunity to present their work in the form of presentations. (Oral presentation is a requirement of the course). The whole class provide each student with feedback and further suggestions that the students have chance to incorporate in their final drafts.
(I experimented with this approach to presentations and final papers in the Fall II semester. Having an opportunity to present the work in progress rather than a final product seemed to significantly decrease students’ anxiety around presenting in front of the whole class. This format created a learning space in which students not only presented their work but also practiced their expertise and applied their knowledge to provide further support to their peers in accepting, collegial and collaborative manner.)
In terms of timing, students are submitting their first part of the project after the Spring break, and we will throughout the semester toward the presentations scheduled at the end of the semester. Students will submit their final papers during the week of finals.
I am looking forward to the feedback and support of DfA faculty group throughout this project.
Dusana
Reflective Post 3/30
I plan to implement my UDL activity in my ENG101 class. Currently, my timetable is as follows:
This semester: reformulate my low-stakes activity
Fall I: reintroduce my low-stakes activity in September/October; use this assignment as a scaffold for the high-stakes assignment that, will naturally, build on it. At present, I am working on the same research question; however, this spring and summer I will do more research to asses whether or not best practices in composition pedagogy have been updated and or revised, in order to continually address UDL inclusive teaching practices.
My colleagues on the DfA team are already providing invaluable support and creative inspiration. In truth, I couldn’t ask for a more generous and dedicated group of colleagues to work with. All we need to do is continue encouraging and motivating each other. The end result will be establishing more transformative pedagogical practices at LAGCC, which will continually raise our students’ levels of academic engagement.
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