Volume 4
Introduction To The Fourth Volume
Special Issue on the Experiences of Faculty Engaged in the New England
Center for Inclusive Teaching (NECIT) During the Spring 2005 Semester
In the spring semester of 2005, seven faculty and staff members at Rhode
Island College became the first Center for Inclusive Teaching class at this
institution. The group met weekly throughout the semester to explore the
meanings, implications and struggles related to "inclusive teaching." The
participants were selected from a pool of applicants who had replied to a number
of announcements about the opportunity. Each group member was off-loaded one
course during the semester.
According to the New England Center for Inclusive Teaching (NECIT),
"The Ford Foundation provided funding for NECIT faculty development
seminars to convene at seven New England institutions during the Spring 2005 and
Fall 2005 semesters. The seminars linked effective teaching to an understanding
of student diversity."
Rhode Island College was one of the seven campuses to be designated as a
NECIT site. This special volume of Issues in Teaching and Learning, the
College's e-journal, contains six essays that emerged from participating faculty
members' experiences.
The RIC NECIT group read several published accounts of professors' struggles
and rewards associated with inclusive teaching and then analyzed the issues
raised. Simultaneously, the group members made connections to their own
experiences with inclusive teaching, in part with an eye on developing a
product of their work together, to share with colleagues and the wider college
community.
The deliberations produced some common themes: Ph.D. programs generally do
not teach doctoral candidates how to teach, or even much about pedagogical
theory; RIC's faculty development programs have been helpful in promoting
inclusive teaching, but participation is not widespread; and for many faculty
members, the road to inclusive teaching has been mostly an individual process
of discovery.
As the seminar members explored their experiences, they decided to share
"pedagogical autobiographies" with the RIC community. Each participant agreed
to show how her or his life path connected to successes and challenges as an
inclusive instructor, with an attempt to propose some theoretical explanations
of the process and student outcomes.
As the group members shared their early drafts, some common experiences
emerged: everyone was a minority group member of some sort; religion (for some,
not their own religion) played a substantial role in their early development and
their later conceptualization of inclusive teaching; most came from working class
backgrounds and had international origins or experiences. The biographies also
tell very different stories and, collectively, do not coalesce around a single
theory of inclusive teaching. But all of the authors in this special volume of
IT&L make it clear that there is no end point: each person viewed her/himself
as a work in progress, especially since student populations keep changing, as do
each academic field and the global pedagogical knowledge base.
The articles in this special volume of IT&L demonstrate quite clearly that
the group members came away from the NECIT experience with greater clarity and
commitment to the goal of making their classes places where all students can and
do participate, in large part because their voices are heard in a safe and
supportive environment.
Mark Motte
Dan Weisman
Co-editors
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