Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Today’s Diverse Classroom
Thanks to Donna Duffy of MCC for forwarding the following summary of the MCC Summer Institute session Session 3-D: Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Today’s Diverse Classroom.
Presenters: Kristen A. Peterson, Assistant Professor of History and Women’s Studies Coordinator; Joy N. Miller, Assistant Professor of Psychology. Both are at Pine Manor College.
The presenters began by asking us to acknowledge our own identities and to recognize what we bring to our classrooms. Through the use of a student comment, they emphasized the importance of context. The student noted that: “When I am in the US I am Black and then a woman. When I go to Haiti, I am a woman first.” Kristen and Joy suggested that we need to identify how our own identities and the identities of students may be shaped by the environment of the classroom.
They discussed the need to create active dialogue and to provide opportunities for self reflection on classroom discourse. An effective approach they use in their interdisciplinary course on the psychology of race, class, and gender involves role play situations with debriefing discussions. What are the explicit and implicit behaviors observed? How do we interpret body language in classroom settings?
Kristen and Joy showed a video from their course in which students role played different reactions to a question about international adoptions and then discussed their reactions to the activity as a class. The video demonstrated that students had developed a language for discussing difficult identity issues and had altered many of their more rigid attitudes.
The role plan/debrief activity is a powerful approach for confronting issues but can generate high levels of emotion and discomfort in everyone involved. Kristen and Joy suggest the importance of faculty knowing their own social identities and developing the flexibility to help students find their own voice and identity in the context of the classroom.