How does it feel & why does it feel this way?

During focus group conversations, participants first shared their expectations about the coming semester and then reflected on how they felt about their attempts to make their teaching more transformative. Participants described a range of emotions that varied from excitement to nervousness to real fear. Jessica, for example, stated her enthusiasm for the planning stages of her course and syllabus creation: “Doing the syllabus stuff, I’m always excited about that, always excited.” But, as she continued, she revealed that the actual class sessions ahead of her inspired her to feel “nervous, anxious, [and] scared.” Later in the focus group session she reaffirmed feeling this way, stating, “Yeah, I’m nervous.” Another interviewee reported that though she had labored for an entire semester crafting her syllabus, the thought of sharing it with others nevertheless made her feel “kind of anxious.” Such comments indicate the tremendous pressure our participants placed on their respective commitments to inclusive and anti-oppressive praxis.

That faculty members dedicated to this work would feel such pressure is not unusual given stakes that could not be higher. The thought of failure is devastating in the pursuit of inclusive, anti-oppressive pedagogies designed to overturn systemic discrimination and racism, to advance equity and social justice, and to transform our classrooms, academe, and society to become more equitable and socially just.

Respondents’ answers in the focus group interviews provided some clues on what it meant to fail in pursuing anti-racist pedagogy. Several faculty members suggested failure meant losing control of what happened in their classrooms. This resonates with Hodges’s (2006) study of faculty fears toward pedagogical change, which argued that most concerns surrounded perceptions of loss, including loss of control. In the first round of interviews early in the semester, Jake, who had recently joined the faculty, recounted how he had confronted this reality in a previous class after he had screened a video that discussed police violence. He recalled, “After that, the classroom was just complete silent [sic]. Then, I don’t know how to—what to do with it. I realize I’m just— maybe I’m not there yet.” In this description of a classroom moment, Jake understood the students’ silence to reflect his inadequacies as a teacher. Of course, there could be many other reasons for the silence, but because this work is inherently personal and unsettling (Brookfield, 2019; Tuitt et al., 2018), Jake’s reflection was focused upon his own failure and his desire to do better for his students. Jessica similarly admitted that much of her anxiety stemmed from awareness that her teaching would likely lead to “difficult conversations” in the classroom and that “those can go totally awry.” Whether it be awkward silence or an angry exchange between students in the classroom, our participants suggested that they considered both examples as evidence of their own failure and that the careful forethought they had put into their courses and class sessions was insufficient.

Respondents further suggested that failure could mean being revealed in front of the classroom as impostors, lacking in expertise. As Renee, a white female faculty member, acknowledged, “I feel so backwards sometimes … when I’m learning things and doing things in diversity inclusion, like, ‘That’s a thing?’ ” Renee’s feelings are in concert with findings by Tuitt et al. (2018), who explained in their essay that teaching with attention to inclusive pedagogy essentially requires white faculty to re-envision core beliefs of the teaching context:

We acknowledge that engaging in this work is often difficult for most educators to translate into practice because their faculty preparation likely trained them to think of the classroom, and the knowledge constructed in that space, as race neutral. Thus, as we have discovered in our daily praxis as critical and inclusive pedagogues, much of what was learned about teaching (in the respective disciplines) has to be unlearned.

It is no wonder our participants so often reported feeling like novices in this work.

Relatedly, faculty also noted that their efforts to change their teaching in these ways resulted in making them more conscientious of their own positionalities and intersectional identities. In other words, their efforts to be more inclusive in their pedagogies forced them, in the words of Tuitt et al. (2018), to “bring their whole selves into the learning environment.” This was discomfiting, as Tuitt et al. (2018) point out, because it challenged Eurocentric norms of the academy that suggest faculty should remain disconnected from their students. As Jake, a lecturer from a minority group and an immigrant, stated, “Yes, and also, I feel… [it’s] hard to talk about this, still, in the classroom. Because every time I touch on the topic, I feel I’m from a minority background…. It’s a little tricky.” Meanwhile, Renee, a white tenured professor from a middle-class upbringing in the Midwest, revealed the following about her own experiences of bringing more inclusive pedagogy to her teaching praxis: “I sat in guilt, and maybe I still sit there.” In both cases, these instructors’ efforts to be anti-racist had made them more conscious of the white normativity that typically characterized their classrooms. For Jake, this had the effect of further emphasizing his own non-white racial identity in a way that made him feel more vulnerable in the classroom. In Renee’s case, she was left feeling a sense of white guilt that made her deeply uncomfortable.

Faculty members’ fears of failure also extended to concerns that their efforts to make their classrooms more inclusive could make their students feel uncomfortable, which could, in turn, lead to poor results in student perception surveys of their teaching. Such fears were more acute if participants lacked the protection of tenure or seniority. One interviewee acknowledged her anxiety that she would be perceived by students as attempting to “engineer conflict” through her efforts to be anti-racist and inclusive in her teaching. To mitigate such resistance from students, Jake explained, “I’m trying to make it as fun as possible so that students won’t feel pressured, and gradually they start to realize, okay, it’s nothing to be worried about.” Vasey and Carroll (2016) demonstrated that student evaluations of teaching are of real concern to faculty members even when they are not also focused on changing their pedagogy.

In addition to concerns of students’ evaluations of their teaching, participants also voiced much anxiety surrounding colleagues’ perceptions of the changes they had adopted to their teaching. This could be because only two of our nine participants had earned tenure at the time of the focus group interviews, and several had spent time in adjunct or non-tenure-track positions. For example, Jane, who was a full-time lecturer, had previously spent a number of years as an adjunct instructor and shared the extreme insecurity that was connected to that position: “Sometimes as an adjunct you feel like you’re flying solo a lot…. Because, especially in that capacity as an adjunct, you do feel a little bit more apart from the department, that fear of, okay, maybe I’m—I’m told I can do whatever I want, but what if I won’t know that it’s too far until it’s too far.” Jane describes the ambiguity that creates so much uncertainty. Faculty are often told that institutions care about diversity and inclusion, but there is still a sense that there is a point where one may go “too far.” That point is rarely clarified and often adjunct or non-tenured faculty comprehend institutional expectations by seeing what colleagues are doing. If colleagues do not seem to focus much upon inclusive pedagogy, it may seem especially risky to do so because of a fear of standing out. Brad, who also was a lecturer and administrator, shared a similar concern:

I’m kind of anxious. I think the students are okay. What I’m worried more about are my colleagues because it is so different. It’s like when you come and you get all these people’s syllabuses and they all look alike and a step to do something that drastic is kinda scary. Cause I do care maybe a little bit what other people think about it, but I know it’s the right thing to do. I’m anxious to see how the students—the student reaction to it.

Brad stated that he knew it was “the right thing to do,” and he was not afraid of the students’ reactions. Instead, his concern was that his more inclusive syllabus would look drastically different from his colleagues’ and because of this he may face repercussions.

Participants reported experiencing these discomfiting feelings throughout the period of the study; the feelings did not wane over the course of the semester. In fact, as participants became more involved in the work of transforming their teaching to be more inclusive, they reported that the feelings typically increased. As Jake stated at the end of the semester, “I want to bring up a lot of kind of tensioned topics and issues, but I haven’t made my decision yet because I don’t know where it will lead me to, and I’m not sure if I understand enough to really bring it up so that’s what I’m afraid about in my classroom.” Jake’s concern that he doesn’t “know where it will lead” him is based in the assumption that he doesn’t know enough and he is not ready to address issues of diversity and inclusion in his teaching. This concern was present despite the fact that he had just spent the previous semester endeavoring very diligently to make his teaching more diverse and inclusive.

How are people still motivated to do the work?

Despite the insecurities and fears, most of our participants found strategies that helped them continue to push forward. Again, many of these were inherently personal and based upon beliefs that what they were doing was worth the effort. Karen, who had taught for over three decades, described transformative teaching as part of how she saw her role as an educator: “To me, education is a vocation. I come from that worldview. Education is a vocation. If you’re going to be an educator, then you need to stay abreast of where your—who your students are, where they’re at, and what you can do to communicate your discipline to them. That’s a lifelong belief.” Karen believed teaching was a vocation and at its heart a student-centered rather than content-centered endeavor. She saw her job as bringing her content to where her students were, and, in that act, she had to take time to understand the perspectives and experiences of her students.

While Jane did not describe teaching as a vocation, she did focus on meeting students where they were as a way to motivate herself to do the hard work of inclusive teaching. She shared her belief that it only takes one student to make the challenges worth it:

I think whenever I am pushing through something that is difficult that I am changing, I ask myself to reflect back on the times where I’ve been successful in the past, or I’ve—maybe not successful’s the right word, but I’ve tried something and I’ve looked out, and I’ve seen. It only takes one student, and realizing that you’ve established that connection, you’ve validated their presence in the classroom. Then you’re just like, this is the right thing. I have to keep trying. I think that that’s all it takes. Of course, we’ve all done this many times. You don’t just have one case. It’s every time you at least have one person. That just motivates you to keep pushin’.

Jane’s belief that it only takes one student to make her work valuable allows her to continue to work through the discomfort. Her strategy for motivation is to imagine past students with whom she has connected, and she describes visualizing that connection: “I’ve looked out, and I’ve seen … and realizing that you’ve established that connection, you’ve validated their presence in the classroom.” The connection and validation that she knows is possible seems to be something that she reaches back to in order to find her motivation when things get difficult.

Similarly focused upon his connections to students, Antonio described his belief that teaching was a reciprocal relationship and that faculty inherently learned from their students. This view of teaching allowed him to step into the unknown in his teaching. In fact, he shared this with his students:

Like I tell my students, I’m not an expert. I have learned just as much as you—just as much from you as you learn from me … hopefully—I know I’ll learn a thing or two. You just have to be open to it. … I tell my students, “Cultural competence is a key word in my department. You don’t get a certificate at the end. It’s not an achievement. I call it an ongoing, life-long learning process. You don’t get a plaque or anything like that being culturally competent, but it’s something that you should continually strive for.”

Antonio tells his students that “cultural competence” is “not an achievement” but rather something worked for throughout your life. He also models this by making himself vulnerable by showing students he is still learning as well. His vulnerability allowed him to push through discomfort, and, probably more importantly, it modeled for students how they must allow themselves to be vulnerable learners as well.

Karen, Jane, and Antonio positioned their students at the center of their teaching practices. This allowed them to be vulnerable, to be learners, to see that their personal insecurity connected to this work was not the most important thing. With their teaching on the periphery and in relation to student needs, these faculty were able to overcome concerns of their own shortcomings and place their concerns instead upon the growth of their students.

What support was useful? What support was needed?

Throughout the course of the focus groups, faculty also discussed what helped them to feel supported in their efforts to practice more inclusive teaching. Again, certain patterns emerged from these conversations. Again and again, respondents suggested that the feelings of unsettledness and discomfort could not be avoided; however, they could be decentralized through certain support measures.

The most important support measure was providing a community of similarly committed faculty for those undertaking this work. Respondents suggested that such a community helped them to realize that they were not alone in their feelings of anxiety and fear and that, in fact, such feelings were not a shortcoming of the teacher but rather part of the work itself (Brookfield, 2019). As Antonio explained, a CTEL workshop focused on diversifying pedagogy had helped him to change: “I think just … getting past that fear of trying new things. Half of them will work; half of them won’t. At least I know I can try different things…. Whenever I try somethin’ new, I tell my students, ‘Hey, this may be great; it may be horrible, but we’re gonna try it.’ ” The attitude with which Antonio came away from this workshop—that he would accept that mistakes were an inevitable part of his inclusive pedagogy—embodies what Smith (2019) has called “one of the most crucial aspects of antiracist pedagogy.” What is more, in helping him to normalize mistake making, the workshop also emboldened Antonio to share with his students his vulnerability and accept that he would likely forfeit some of the power and prestige he had once been accustomed to holding in the classroom.

This community of like-minded colleagues further helped participants realize not only that they were not alone in their feelings of anxiety but also that, with practice and experience, they could learn to manage and overcome these feelings. Several faculty members, including Antonio in the quotation that opened this article, used the metaphor of “pushin’ ” to describe how they prevailed over the negative feelings to carry on with their efforts to be more inclusive in their teaching.

Our findings further suggest that, in supporting faculty in this work, it is important to help instructors reflect and recall the instances when their efforts—as uncomfortable as they might have been for them— had nonetheless helped them to connect with a student or to know that a student felt more welcome in their classroom. As described above, respondents repeatedly suggested that their ultimate feelings of support and validation came from such reflection and commitment to putting their students at the heart of their teaching praxis. Late in the semester, Jane reiterated her motivation to “keep pushin’ ” for the sake of her students, saying, “hey, my students need this.” Such reflection on the positive outcomes of the changes they had made and risks they had taken with their teaching seems to have helped steel faculty against the certain discomfort and unavoidable mistake making.