Centering Race and Culture in Higher Education Pedagogy: A Review and Vision for the Field

• In Event: Toward an Equity-Minded Pedagogy and Praxis

Abstract

The increasing racial diversity in college classrooms requires instructors to teach in more culturally relevant and inclusive ways. Yet there are limited reviews of how pedagogy that centers race and culture emerges in higher education specifically. The purpose of this paper is to review this literature and conceptualize a higher education-specific pedagogy that centers students’ racial and cultural identities. I find higher education scholars have contributed distinct values to the larger literature. Yet, as a field, we need to better conceptualize a higher-education specific pedagogy that centers students’ racial and cultural identities by: (a) grounding pedagogy in subject-matter learning, (b) focusing on students’ specific racial and ethnic identities, and (c) identifying the racial/ethnic composition of participants, classrooms, and institutions.

Author

• Jillian Ives, University of Connecticut - Storrs