A Critical Multimethodological Approach for Advancing Equity in Teaching and Learning

Thursday, January 5, 2023
2:30 PM - 3:20 PM
Zoom

Presenters: Deepa Oommen, Ph.D., and Ivana Guarrasi, Ph.D., and Sachi Sekimoto, Ph.D., Communication Studies

This paper proposes a critical multimethodological approach to advancing equity in teaching and learning. In spring 2022, the Department of Communication Studies administered a survey to assess the Department’s equity initiatives and commitment to social justice as embodied in the curriculum and faculty-student interactions. Seventy students participated in the study. Of these, 45 (58.4%) students were undergraduates, and 25 (32.5%) students were graduates; 49 students were white (63.6%) and 21 students were non-white (23.9%); 25 students were first-generation (32.5 %) and 46(59.7%) were non-first-generation students; and 16 were cis-gendered males (20.8%), 51(66.2 %) were cis-gendered females, 2 (2.6%) were non-binary and 1 was genderqueer (1.3%). This demographic data revealed that our participants inhabited multiple identity spaces and that the intersectionality of their identities determined their lived experiences.
Based on these findings, we suggest that presuming an essentializing subject position by embedding differentiation and categorization into equity assessment beyond the embodied, situated particularities of student identities limits possibilities of critical inquiry. In this context, we highlight how a critical multimethodological approach helps in understanding the complexity of human diversity and difference as situated in the embodied conditioning acts of subject formation, rather than exclusively relying on discursive, essentializing notions of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and dis/ability often embedded in traditional categories of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives. Classification and categorization practices are always political and represent vested interests.
Collaboration among the faculty members and the differences in their respective theoretical and methodological positions helped pinpoint those tensions and contradictions in our work that became productive in designing a qualitative follow-up study on equity assessment and for advancing equitable practices in the department. Each method and approach illuminated different aspects of understanding the complexity of human diversity.