Inclusive pedagogy: Teaching techniques or sociopolitical commitment? Insights from Amdo Tibet

• In Event: Strengthening Inclusion in Pedagogy

Proposal

Introduction

Institutions of higher education in the US increasingly articulate commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) (Paul & Maranto 2021) and the notion that students deserve to feel like their identities and perspectives ‘belong’ in the classroom (Addy et al. 2022). Many of these same institutions also express concern over what to do with library holdings and other materials that may be steeped in - or even advocate - discriminatory worldviews (Fornwald et al. 2021). This recalls questions at the crux of liberal arts education that must be revisited given the increasingly multicultural composition of many classrooms: of which identities and perspectives should educators be inclusive?

The literature on inclusive education initially engaged questions of access and universal design for learning whereby students’ with diverse abilities might attain equitable outcomes in the classroom (Fornauf & Erickson 2020, UNESCO 2001). More recently, however, educators’ use of “inclusivity” has grown to include students’ diverse social identities and perspectives (Liasidou 2012). Despite this expansion of ‘inclusivity’ to include cultural and ideological diversity, however, scholars writing on the topic today – often in the form of pedagogical how-to books (e.g., Addy et al. 2022) – often avoid the potentially controversial implications of their claims: Are there identities and perspectives, say that of a misogynist or white supremacist, that are legitimately excluded from recognition or tolerance in educational spaces? And what actually constitutes ‘inclusion’ of diverse ideas and abilities – tolerance, recognition, reward, or something else?

Analytical Framework

This comparative project explores empirical manifestation of different social groups’ perspectives on DEI: I probe not only how values, namely inclusion, are conceptualized by educators (and students) but also how such ideas are invested with meaning. To do this, I compare (yet to be collected) qualitative data produced by educators at predominantly white institutions of higher education in Midwest USA with (already collected) data from supplemental Tibetan educators navigating minoritization in China.

What exactly constitutes inclusive education and practices is not always clear (Florian & Black-Hawkins 2011), as educators within the same institution can hold different ideas about both the goals of inclusivity and what constitutes evidence for its existence (Florian, 2009). My project clarifies and complicates the question of which forms of diversity are justifiably included in classrooms by analyzing ideas and practices present in vastly different contexts. On one hand, I probe the frameworks Tibetan educators employ to make sense of (and sometimes refuse) the ‘inclusion’ of diverse identities and perspectives that may vitiate their specific ethnolinguistic pursuits, which, importantly, are sometimes framed in the language of Human Rights. For example, I analyze how minoritized Tibetan educators, concerned about younger generations’ waning Tibetan-language literacy, police the ‘inclusions’ of Chinese vocabulary and norms in Tibetan classrooms and how they navigate the sociopolitical implications of language mixing (Roche 2018). On the other hand, the practices and perspectives of faculty and students at American universities suggest the inclusion of diverse languages and cultures may be fundamental to educational justice. Comparing perspectives of these groups will clarify the sociopolitical complexities and stakes of ‘inclusion’ in contexts characterized by increasing multiculturalism, forcing educators to question, with Nussbaum (1997), if ‘multiculturalism is bad for women’. Ultimately, I use empirical data to explore which group(s) bear the moral burden of including diverse identities and perspectives and the potential justifications for a more ‘exclusive’ pedagogy in circumstances characterized by minoritization.

Methods

The first stage of ethnographic field work was completed with Amdo Tibetan educators at supplemental (or ‘shadow’) education programs designed for students who experience ethnolinguistic minoritization in Chinese public schooling. During 2018-2019, I conducted approximately 50 days of participant observations and 99 interviews that probed supplemental educators’ (and students’) frameworks for conceptualizing what is educationally valuable and how it should be inculcated. I code interviews and observation data to analyze what content and (language) practices are worthy of ‘inclusion’ in their ethnically-specific program and the ways in which such practices are recognized as legitimate, exploring perspectives on the inclusion of Chinese and global norms that are often precisely those threatening to displace their own. In the forthcoming US-based research phase, I focus on analyzing university students’ and educators’ perspectives on controversial topics and ways whereby diverse identities and (potentially) colonizing and/or dehumanizing perspectives might be authentically ‘included’ in educational spaces. Interview questions range from those that explore interlocutors’ opinions about ‘What should happen to library books that promote eugenics?’ to those that probe how educators attempt to simultaneously maintain a ‘safe space’ and a classroom where authentically diverse perspectives are welcomed. Findings will be analyzed using and will speak to one of the intractable debates at the heart of education practice and theory: does ‘inclusive pedagogy’ necessarily entail Critical sociopolitical commitments or can it be legitimately understood as teaching techniques that improve how students feel in school?

Findings and Significance

While data from the US have yet to be collected, Tibetan interlocutors evinced complex perspectives on the question of ‘how much diversity’ they were willing to tolerate and reward in classrooms. Findings from the most ‘Tibetanized’ (Zenz 2014) supplemental program reveal that while educators do not universally disparage or exclude the use of Chinese language or norms, they maintain strict protocols for and limits on the inclusion of Chinese language and norms in classrooms. Moreover, interlocutors often distinguished their educational approach from that of Chinese people, who they claimed pursue schooling primarily for individualized and instrumentalized purposes. Such discourse and practices are, in one sense, undeniably skeptical of ‘diversity’ and therefore exclusive. However, educators also readily encouraged their students to learn Chinese and even study in ‘inner China’, demonstrating their relative openness to Chinese cultures if such circumstances were characterized by ‘autonomy’ and ‘altruism’ - that is, when students had an authentic choice to engage diversity and were doing so for unselfish reasons. Thus, the ‘policing’ of legitimate diversity by this minoritized group, when compared to perspectives found at American institutions, will shed light on the transnational applicability of DEI values and how these, too, may oppress already-minoritized populations in the Global South.

Author

• Andrew David Frankel, Denison University