Focusing on Diversity and Civic Callings: A Graduate Teaching Assistant Training

Jake Simmons
Shawn T. Wahl
Stephen Spates

Rationale

Over the past few decades, colleges and universities have worked to increase efforts toward fostering diversity among the student body. Primarily, these efforts have manifested through the active development of diversity and inclusion programs that often share a core set of three goals and functions. Each aims to 1) develop more diverse oncampus learning communities through which culturally specific knowledge is fostered and shared, 2) devise a means of developing more “inclusive” cultural experiences through which students learn about and respect cultures other than their own, and 3) facilitate community engagement initiatives designed to make significant efforts toward recruiting and maintaining faculty and students that represent the diversity of the student body.

However, as colleges and universities continue to spend significant resources on improving these efforts, there are still significant deficiencies. On the surface, NCES data suggests that recruitment efforts have been rather successful over the past fifteen years, in the sense that more Students of Color are attending colleges and universities (NCES). However, recruitment does little for students without effective retention through noncosmetic inclusion initiatives. For example, even as Black student enrollment more than doubled from 1990 to 2013 from 1.1 million to 2.5 million students (NCES), six-year graduation rates are at an abysmal 20.8% (NCES). Comparatively, White students are graduating at a rate of 43.3% (NCES). One primary reason for this systemic discrepancy is that inclusion efforts that focus on students from historically marginalized groups do not necessarily result in a climate in which cultural experiences are supported through relational partnerships with university faculty and administration (Hendrix & Wilson, 2014; Roy, 1995; Simmons, Lowery-Hart, Wahl, & McBride, 2013; Simmons & Wahl, in press). There are significant power-laden social and educational constructs that limit the effectiveness of diversity and inclusion programs in developing productive educational experiences for the diverse body politic that comprises college and university campuses. The 2015 events at the University of Missouri that resulted in the resignation of the president and chancellor, as well as other administrators at universities, lay the injustices in inclusion initiatives bare across the nation. Students of non-normative, often intersecting identities, including race, ethnicity, nationality, gender identity, sexuality, and (dis)ability, need more from their universities, and communication faculty may be able to lead the way in this effort.

The following unit activity aims to develop better relationships between instructors and students at the classroom level. It specifically focuses on establishing a diversity-based framework for graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) to demonstrate and facilitate cultural competency within the classroom. This framework is best established through the communication in higher education course, and should prepare GTAs to more adeptly address diversity in the classroom.

The focus on GTA training in Communication Teacher is well established in presence and quality, yet it is somewhat limited in frequency. Bruss’s (2009) essay focused on effective email communication for new GTAs and Young and Bippus’s (2008) essay provided a model for assessing GTA training. We expand upon this trend by addressing diversity training for GTAs that offers graduate teaching assistants an opportunity to undergo a unit based diversity training that guides them in praxelogically developing communication strategies for developing and improving relational partnerships in the classroom.

The Activity

This unit training takes place over a period of four weeks and consists of three overlapping components: reading, reflection, and articulation. Our calendar is based on one graduate course per week. For the first three weeks, students will read and discuss six communication essays that focus on diversity. Instructors should assign two readings per week. Second, at the beginning of the first week, students will begin reflecting on classroom experiences by capturing memorable teaching moments through diary methods. Students will continue to keep the diary through the end of the fourth week. Third, students will articulate their knowledge through the construction of a communication inflected, diversity focused teaching philosophy. This philosophy should be turned in and discussed during the fourth week of the unit. The aforementioned training unit schedule is recommended. However, the schedule can be adjusted depending on department and training needs.

Readings

1) Foeman, A. K. (1991). Managing multiracial institutions: Goals and approaches for race-relations training. Communication Education, 40, 255-65.

Foeman’s (1991) essay provides a framework for race-relations training that helps readers to discern between didactic, experiential, and groupwork models of training. Students should discuss the implications of each model of training including the strengths, weaknesses, and interplay among each model.

2) Simmons, J., Lowery-Hart R., Wahl, S. T., and McBride, C. (2013). Understanding the African-American experience in higher education through a relational dialectics perspective. Communication Education, 62, 376-94.

This essay employs relational dialectics to feature the concerns of African-America students on college and university campuses. Relational Dialectics provides strategies through which instructors may address concerns voiced in the classroom.

3) Lindeman, K. (2011). Performing (dis)ability in the classroom: Pedagogy and (con)tensions. Text and Performance Quarterly, 31, 285-302.

Lindeman’s essay focuses on the classroom as a critical site of identity negotiation from the perspective of a marginalized student. This essay provides students with both applied and theoretical examples of how marginality functions in the classroom.

4) Hao, R. N. (2011). Rethinking critical pedagogy: Implications on silence and silent bodies. Text and Performance Quarterly, 31, 267-84.

Hao’s work provides a critique of how instructional communication scholars tend to privilege a Western construct of verbal deliberations of voice in the classroom, particularly when speaking against oppressive actions.

5) Heinz, B, (2002) Enga(y)ging the discipline: Sexual minorities and Communication Studies, Communication Education, 51, 95-104.

Heinz’s (2002) essay argues for the incorporation of GLBT issues in the college communication classroom as a disciplinary goal and offers specific guidelines for this incorporating.

6) Warren, J. T. (2001) Doing whiteness: On the performative dimensions of race in the classroom. Communication Education, 50, 91-108.

Warren’s (2001) essay frames whiteness within the dimensions of performativity by ethnographically analyzing public performance within the entry-level communication classroom.

Reflection

The goal of this component of the training is to teach students about developing a critical sensibility in the classroom through praxis. Baxter (2004) argues that a critical sensibility is a type of dialogue that obligates participants to “critique dominant voices.” (p. 16). In order to develop critical sensibility as an ethical component of classroom teaching experiences, we suggest that students document and reflect on intercultural experiences in the classroom through diary methods. Diary methods are a wellestablished qualitative approach to documenting memorable messages and to better understand self-behavior (McBride & Wahl, 2005; Ellis & Smith, 2004). Students should be instructed to keep a diary over a period of four weeks to document the dynamics of diversity in communication in the classroom. Working with Ellis and Smith’s methodology, students should “write diary entries that include one behavior that failed to meet and one behavior that exceeded their expectations for themselves that day” (p. 102). Slightly altering Ellis and Smith’s approach, we suggest that instructors ask students to describe the teaching context in which the behavior occurred, to indicate between whom the communication context occurred, and the instructor’s reflection upon their handling of the context.

Articulation

In 1938, Craig Baird published “The Educational Philosophy of the Teacher of Speech” in The Quarterly Journal of Speech. Far from the contemporary model of today, Baird’s essay argued for a philosophy of instruction that should focus on “individual needs and capacities,” be “adapted to individual differences”, “provide for social integration”, and function as “a reconstruction of the world” (pp. 547-52). Further, Brann, Edwards, and Meyers (2005) found that instructors with a progressive teaching philosophy received higher ratings in perceived character and caring than instructors with a transmissive philosophy. With relationships as significant factors to retention and inclusion, caring plays a fundamental role in the classroom dynamic. Additionally, the development of a teaching philosophy is a well-established part of GTA training (e.g., Gaia, Corts, Tatum, & Allen, 2003, Young & Bippus, 2008). However, the diversity based teaching philosophy has garnered little or no attention. We propose that students draw from the provided readings and the resulting cohort discussions and conversations and the teaching diary they have kept regarding teaching experience, in order to develop a philosophy of fostering diversity in the classroom.

Debriefing

It is essential to discuss the implications of the training as a means of fostering the complex nature of diversity in college and university contexts. First, ask students to respond to the training through guided discussion. We suggest instructors ask students to consider the complexity of diversity in the classroom. We suggest four sets of questions to guide the conversation.

1. In relationship to the guided readings, what topics, if any, were the most informative for you as a GTA? How might addressing intersectional identities, or the intersection of multiple diverse identities, complicate these issues for you as a GTA? Were any action statements or future steps taken to help students develop conversations about diversity outside of the classroom?
2. What topics, if any, emerged in your diary that challenged your personal values? How did you mange discussion of these topics in the classroom? How does the notion of critical sensibility play into this potential conflict?
3. Did any student share a personal experience related to diversity that was challenging for you, as a GTA, to address? How, if at all, did you address this interaction? How, if at all, would you address this situation in the future?
4. Did any tension emerge among students in the classroom regarding topics of diversity? How did you handle this? What, if anything, would you do differently in the future?
5. What major themes emerged in your teaching philosophy? How, if at all, does your philosophy challenge typical cosmetic articulations of diversity such as those that appear on university and corporate websites?
6. What additional topics emerged that might require additional training and/or resources?

Appraisal

The primary goal of this unit is to build upon a disciplinary foundation fostered by intercultural communication pedagogy through graduate students training to improve diversity and inclusion efforts in classroom contexts. Different GTA cohorts require different training needs. Therefore, we suggest a flexible training within the guided framework. This approach serves as a means for students to take ownership of diversity concerns in their classroom and campus communities. This commitment fosters a communication lead effort to improve diversity and inclusion programs in wider university contexts. However, this training need not be limited to new GTA’s and adjuncts—instructors and full-time faculty can benefit from the aim of this training. Further, graduate students who choose to work in their respective professional fields outside of academia will have better knowledge of the inter-workings of diversity and inclusion programs in organizational contexts beyond academia.

References

Baird, C. (1938). The educational philosophy of the teacher of speech. The Quarterly Journal of Speech, 24, 545-53.

Baxter, L. A. (2004). Relationships as dialogues. Personal Relationships, 11, 1-22.

Brann, M., Edwards, C., & Myers, S. A. (2005). Perceived instructor credibility and teaching philosophy. Communication Research Reports, 22, 217-226.

Bruss, K. (2009). ‘You've Got Mail’: Addressing effective E-mail communication in new graduate teaching assistant training. Communication Teacher, 23, 162-66.

Ellis, J. B. & Smith, S. (2004). Memorable messages as guides to self-assessment of behavior: a replication and extension diary study. Communication Monographs, 71, 97-119.

Foeman, A. K. (1991). Managing multiracial institutions: Goals and approaches for race- relations training. Communication Education, 40, 255-65.

Brann, M., Edwards, C., & Myers, S. A. (2005). Perceived instructor credibility and teaching philosophy. Communication Research Reports, 22, 217-26.

Gaia, Corts, Tatum, & Allen, (2003). The GTA mentoring program: An Interdisciplinary approach to developing future faculty as teacher-scholars. College Teaching, 51, 61-65.

Hao, R. N. (2011) Rethinking critical pedagogy: Implications on silence and silent bodies. Text and Performance Quarterly, 31, 267-84.

Heinz, B, (2002) Enga(y)ging the discipline: Sexual minorities and Communication Studies, Communication Education, 51, 95-104.

Hendrix, G. K. & Wilson, C. (2014). Virtual invisibility: Race and Communication Education. Communication Education, 63, 405-428.

Lindeman, K. (2011). Performing (dis)ability in the classroom: Pedagogy and (con)tensions. Text and Performance Quarterly, 31, 285-302.

McBride, C. & Wahl, S.T. (2005). To say or not to say: Teacher communication boundary management. Texas Speech Communication Journal, 30, 8-22.

Roy, A. (1995). The Grammar and rhetoric of inclusion. College English, 57, 182-195.

Simmons, J., Lowery-Hart R., Wahl, S. T., and McBride, C. (2013). Understanding the African-American experience in higher education through a relational dialectics perspective. Communication Education, 62, 376-94.

Simmons, J. & Wahl, S.T. (2016). Rethinking diversity and inclusion efforts in higher education. Communication Education, 65, 232-235.

United States Department of Education. (2016). Fast facts. National Center for Education Statistics. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/

Warren, J. T. (2001). Doing whiteness: On the performative dimensions of race in the classroom. Communication Education, 50, 91-108.

Young, S. L. & Bippus, A. M. (2008). Assessment of graduate teaching assistant (GTA) training: A Case study of a training program and its impact on GTAs. Communication Teacher, 22, 116-129.