Engaging Equity Pedagogy in Virtual French Courses

Abstract

Engaging Equity Pedagogy in Virtual French Courses Jerry L. Parker Teaching online is a labor of love that allows career educators to further develop their skills as technological artists. 2020 reaffirmed that diversity in our teaching is an absolute must if we want to ensure an equal, equitable, and fair education to all students. Best practices advise that teachers constantly re-adjust their teaching strategies, methods, and approaches to accommodate students from all races, socioeconomic levels, genders, and exceptionality groups. By doing so, they create and re-create learning spaces driven by acceptance and respect that is conducive for all. In French language and culture courses, the question of how to engage diverse groups of learners has never been fully answered. This article seeks to contribute to the conversation by viewing language teaching through the lens of critical multicultural education with a specific focus on instructional practice. I argue equity pedagogy as a best practice for teachers who seek to provide students of French with an equitable learning experience and maximize their success. I also argue that equity pedagogy is particularly relevant at a time when generalized distance learning has become the norm and will forever alter best practices of technology integration in all areas of education. Equity Pedagogy The term "equity pedagogy" was created by James Banks, father of the multicultural education movement. Banks (Introduction) observed that although it is convenient for teachers to replicate the same teaching strategies in each unit of a course, when teaching diverse groups of learners, it is important to engage all students with the course content by utilizing a number of different teaching strategies that facilitate academic success for everyone. Equity pedagogy stands on the notion of "equity," which means giving individuals specifically what they need to be successful, as opposed to "equality," which means giving everyone the same tools for success. Equity is person-centered and varies by the individual. To engage equity pedagogy denotes that a teacher is constantly using various teaching techniques, strategies, approaches, and methods that facilitate the academic [End Page 87] achievement of students from diverse backgrounds. This is in response to the fact that students come to the classroom with specific cultural frameworks, various learning styles, and numerous ways of showing their intelligence. Teachers ideally want to capitalize on all possible ways for students to succeed by presenting information to them in various ways and by assessing their understanding in an assorted number of manners. As suggested by Adams ("Toward"), instructional strategies for fostering student engagement in a virtual environment are critical to the learner's strategic ownership of the knowledge. By varying techniques, strategies, approaches, and methods all students are afforded the opportunity to learn content in a way that makes the most sense to them. While some students may be challenged by the fluctuating of teaching styles, everyone is allowed the opportunity to show their understanding via their preferred style at some point. Challenging the students' learning is likewise productive in the long term because as they evolve emotionally and cognitively, they are also learning to think in different ways and further understand what does and does not work for them. Designing effective instruction goes beyond systematically executing various steps within an instructional design model (McLeod). Among a host of considerations, effective instructional design should take into consideration the theoretical bases in which it is grounded. Understanding learning theories is important because they direct attention to variables that are crucial in helping all learners to succeed. Equity pedagogy, among many things, is rooted in the belief that it is more effective to integrate multiple learning theories into the class to provide students with a wide variance in their learning of the content. At the surface level, equity pedagogy is best engaged via a consistent alternation between three main learning theories: behaviorism, cognitivism, and constructivism. The following section will provide a summary of these three approaches. Theory to Practice When designing any world language course, the central focus should always be on integrating the 5Cs (Culture, Communication, Connections, Community, Comparisons) in the best way possible as suggested by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. Each lesson needs to be built around Culture...