Lessons we still need to learn on creating more inclusive and responsive classrooms: recommendations from one student–faculty partnership programme

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article presents recommendations regarding how to create welcoming and productively challenging classrooms for a diversity of students. These recommendations emerged during the pilot phase of a student–faculty pedagogical partnership programme in 2007 and remain relevant in 2017. To situate the recommendations, we evoke definitions of Whiteness, racism, and culture and briefly review key ideas from literature centred on inclusive and responsive classroom practices. We describe the genesis of the partnership programme at a college in the Mid-Atlantic United States and the methods used to document conversations with students from underrepresented groups on campus and with the faculty and students who piloted the programme, all of whom participated in a research project approved by the College’s ethics board. The majority of the article focuses on the set of eight interrelated recommendations for developing inclusive and responsive classrooms generated by the faculty and student participants in the partnership programme.