Undergraduate Diversity Course Research Articles

Messing with the Master Narrative: The Challenges of Challenging Meritocracy in Undergraduate Education “Diversity” Coursework

Higher education is working to diversify the undergraduate curriculum to support critical thinking and promote racial justice—pressing work, particularly at predominantly white colleges and universities. To support students’ critical thinking, we need to better understand their awareness of systemic inequities as they enter and exit undergraduate diversity courses. To inform the development of undergraduate curricula, we use iterative comparative analysis of students’ written work to investigate patterns in their thinking regarding issues of systemic inequalities in U.S. public schools before and after an undergraduate diversity course. We examine patterns in student language as they make sense of systemic inequities using course data that centers historic and systemic inequities in U.S schools. We find that students consider these data within their already-held narratives of meritocracy and individuality, resulting in troubled text regarding the role of race and class privilege, and the responsibility/culpability of systems versus individuals in educational attainment.

“This is Not Normal”: Talking Trump in Undergraduate Diversity Courses

Aim/Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative study was to understand how faculty members teaching undergraduate diversity courses at liberal arts colleges in the southern United States addressed the outcome of the 2016 presidential election in their classrooms. Background: Humanities and social science faculty teaching undergraduate diversity courses faced the decision of whether, and how, to address the 2016 U.S. presidential election in their courses. Diversity courses represent a compelling context for examining this event, as instructors must routinely tackle charged and controversial topics and such courses have become the subject of debates around purpose, course content, and instructional methods. Methodology: This study draws upon one-on-one, semi-structured interviews with 38 faculty members teaching required undergraduate diversity courses at three predominantly White liberal arts colleges in the southern United States. Contribution: Understanding faculty members’ approaches to handling a critical political event sheds light on how faculty in multiple contexts might prepare for difficult dialogues in their classrooms. This study can serve to prompt reflection about how campuses engage with contemporary controversies in an era of reduced public trust in higher education and skepticism that free speech is a fundamental value of higher education. This study also offers a contribution to understanding how faculty members’ and students’ social identities including race and gender influence the dynamics of classroom discussions about contemporary controversies. Findings: Drawing upon the curricular processes detailed in the multicontextual model for diverse learning environments, findings from this study address faculty members’ personal post-election reactions, concern for minoritized students, decisions whether to disclose their political leanings, and their attempts to promote multiple perspectives, civility, and disciplinary connections to the political climate. Recommendations for Practitioners: Faculty members, educational developers, and administrators can use this study to consider how to address challenging and controversial events in the classroom and how to protect academic freedom to teach about and learn from these events. Recommendation for Researchers: Researchers can advance understandings of how contemporary controversies and discussions of the political climate play out in college classrooms by investigating faculty and student experiences in multiple disciplinary, institutional, and regional contexts. Impact on Society: Higher education institutions in the United States face increasing public scrutiny and calls for greater accountability. Professors, in particular, are often caricatured as partisan ideologues intent upon indoctrinating students to particular political positions. A better understanding of how faculty members consider and approach discussions of a critical event may help shed light on the reality of many college classrooms and the self-reflective approaches to handling controversy faculty members may espouse.

“When You Tell a Personal Story, I Kind of Perk up a Little Bit More”: An Examination of Student Learning From Listening to Personal Stories in Two Social Diversity Courses

This article explores the role of personal storytelling about social identity-related experiences in two diversity courses that were informed by social justice education pedagogies with a focus on race/ethnicity and racism. The two courses included racially diverse groups of students in two undergraduate diversity courses at two Northeast universities (a social diversity and oppression course, and a race/ethnicity intergroup dialogue course). Participants describe a variety of learning outcomes after listening to personal stories. Findings also indicate that students across identities value storytelling, describing it as engaging, enjoyable, and integral to their learning. This underscores the value and impact of face-to-face, synchronous learning as a valid, transformative, and critical educational method in diversity courses.

Assessing the Effectiveness of Undergraduate Diversity Courses Using the Multicultural Experiences Questionnaire

The Multicultural Experiences Questionnaire (MEQ) is a validated and easy-to-administer tool for assessing individuals’ multicultural competencies (Narvaez & Hill, 2010). The current study examined the utility of the MEQ for assessing the impact of undergraduate diversity courses. A total of 137 students in six university-designated diversity courses participated in this study. The survey was administered in the first and the final week of the semester. Results of a mixed design ANOVA analysis showed students scored significantly higher on the survey at posttest. The MEQ is a valuable tool for higher education institutions interested in assessing the effectiveness of their diversity curriculum.

The Impact of an Undergraduate Diversity Course Requirement on Students' Racial Views and Attitudes

The findings from this study show that students who were about to complete their undergraduate diversity requirement, compared to those who were just beginning it, exhibited significantly less prejudice and made more favorable judgments about Blacks. These opinions were shown to be significantly related to the chances that students would become acquainted or have serious discussions with students of another race or ethnic background. The educational value of diversity-related curricular initiatives are discussed.