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Teaching Diversity Relationally
Engaging Emotions and Embracing Possibilities
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Book Description
Teaching Diversity Relationally: Engaging Emotions and Embracing Possibilities offers process-oriented guidance for negotiating the psychological and relational challenges inherent in teaching about race, privilege, and oppression. Grounded in the philosophy of Transformative Education and incorporating psychological theories, the authors present concrete strategies for effectively teaching diversity and social justice courses.
The authors develop an intersectional social justice framework for Transformative Education that emphasizes five emotional-relational pillars of successful teaching for diversity: cultivating reflexivity and exploration of positionality; engaging emotions; fostering perspective taking and empathy; promoting community and relational learning; and encouraging agency and responsibility. They provide guidance on how to prepare for social justice education that fosters the growth of learners and educators by addressing intersecting levels of engagement—intrapsychic (within individual students and educators), relational (between students, between faculty and students), and group dynamic.
Teaching Diversity Relationally follows the developmental arc of a diversity course across a semester, exploring how students respond as the course moves into deeper content material and more intense discussions. The authors describe the psychology behind these responses, and offer best practices for different points in the semester to facilitate learning, manage class dynamics, build connections among students, and prevent faculty burnout.
Teaching Diversity Relationally addresses the teaching process in diversity courses. The authors' companion text, Unraveling Assumptions: A Primer for Understanding Oppression and Privilege provides the foundational content for university courses that can be expanded upon with a range of disciplines. Unraveling Assumptions offers an introductory exploration of power, privilege, and oppression as foundations of systems of inequality and examines complexities within meanings and lived experiences of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, disability, and social class.
Table of Contents
1: Purpose, Postulations, and Positionalities
Section One: Foundations
2: Transformative Education: Purpose, Process, and Psychology
3: Psychological Pillars of Transformative Education: Emotional and Relational Processes
Section Two: Transformative Education Across the Arc of a Semester
4. Before You Begin: Proactive Planning for Effective Transformative Education
5. The First Week(s): Establishing a Relational Learning Community
6. The Beginning Arc: Establishing Foundations
7. The Middle Arc I: Holding Emotional Intensity and Struggle
8. The Middle Arc II: Facilitating Brave Conversations (aka Difficult Dialogues)
9. The Middle Arc III: Promoting Empathy and Hope
10. Endings and New Beginnings: Encouraging Agency and Sustaining the Journey
Section Three: Considering Contexts and Conclusion
11. Considering Contexts: Geography, Institutional Nature, Student Diversity, Faculty Rank
12: Final Thoughts: Our Hopes for Your Future
Author(s)
Biography
Grace S. Kim is Clinical Associate Professor in the department of Counseling Psychology & Applied Human Development at Boston University.
Roxanne A. Donovan is a licensed psychologist and Professor of Psychological Sciences jointly appointed in Interdisciplinary Studies at Kennesaw State University.
Karen L. Suyemoto is Professor of Psychology with affiliations in Asian American Studies and Critical Ethnic and Community Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston.
Reviews
By centering emotional and relational dynamics in the classroom from a social justice perspective, Kim, Donovan, and Suyemoto engage the reader in a conversation about teaching diversity and transformational learning. More specifically, the authors personally invite those who have been hesitant to participate in this work, as well as those who have been doing this work for years, to join the conversation. The ongoing dialogue between the authors and their readers makes these discussions especially approachable, interactive, and humanizing. All faculty who read this book are certain to find new ways of thinking about their teaching and learning, their students, and themselves.
Tara L. Parker, Chair, Leadership in Education and Professor, Higher Education, University of Massachusetts Boston
An excellent thought-provoking publication that challenges educators to transform themselves to transform their pedagogy! This work is timely and essential given the shift in the sociopolitical climate, as state legislators approve bills that prohibit the study of critical race theory in education settings. With a social justice lens, this book inspires pedagogical strategies to be informed by relational, developmental, and emotion-focus processes and are critical in education reform.
Tiffany R. Williams, Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, Tennessee State University
Teaching Diversity Relationally intersects the fields of clinical psychology and critical studies to advance an anti-racist education with a focus on social justice and grounded in the pedagogy of being human, in relationship and vulnerable. The text is an invitation to a collegial conversation of care and connection framed around the developmental arc of the academic semester and the educator learning "how" to do this work well and with heart. It is a text that partners with the reader, educators and leaders, to lean into their vulnerability toward their liberation in justice-centered teaching and learning practices to cultivate a parallel liberatory process for our students and ultimately our society.
Wendi S. Williams, Dean, School of Education, Mills College