Diversity, Inclusion & Engagement in Education

 A pedagogy is inclusive only when there are a diverse group of people equally engaged with biases discarded. Inclusive pedagogy can just be useful when we have radical educators who are intentional about teaching in an inclusive environment.  According to Katherine Philip diversity can be difficult if not well managed with intentions to bring innovations and development.

I believe having a diverse community does not mean that it is inclusive.  However, the community can only be inclusive when there is an intention to embrace each other’s difference regarding ideas and collaborate in enriching a healthy diversity. 

Inclusive pedagogy makes a pedagogy engaged and not static. I remember reading through the book known as “Teaching to Transgress” by Bell Hooks she laid emphasis on strategies on how to teach in an inclusive classroom which was also mentioned by Georgetown which includes getting to know the student, active commitment to the process of self-actualization for both the students and teachers to be empowered. These self-actualization process means to be aware of your biases, also give your student ground rules to help in structuring conversations.

Hooks emphasized that the learning ability of student is so diverse, and so there is a need for educators to be flexible. This is very achievable if the educator is fully aware of the various theories of learning ( experiential, critical race theory, feminist, transformative, socio-cultural e.t.c) and adopting these theories into the classroom makes teacher grow in the process.  In my home country, we don’t have racial diversity in education, but we have other forms of diversity instead in which one of it includes various learning styles, however one thing I think most educators in my home country fails to do is to be flexible in their ways of teaching.

As an educator learning through experience is mainly significant to me because it serves as a learning process and also a product.  I remembered during my undergrad in Nigeria almost all courses taken were taught through the banking system and there were no much experience attached to the learning ; so I only learned it for grades, I had no idea on how to practically apply this knowledge. Therefore, I believe firmly in both creating experience for the learners, allowing the learners to make their own experience that gives birth to new knowledge from their experience.

Most importantly, I found inclusive pedagogy as a very interesting topic and also challenging.  It is interesting because it creates a relationship and produces freedom for both the learners and the educator. While challenging because it can be so demanding in term of individual conscious effort to teach to transgress and the feedback from the learners might not be encouraging. There is a need for the learner to realize that he or she needs this knowledge, if the learner cannot come to this realization then it might look challenging to achieve an inclusive pedagogy.

However, as an educator, I still ask myself the question of how can one genuinely differentiate if the skill learned by the learner will be for a long term or short term period? The reason for this question is that even after teaching learners a particular skill in a program, one cannot fully determine if the learner will attain 100 percent of the ability even after several years of the program. When does one stop follow-up? What if there is no trust between the learners and the educator and so the follow up done did not efficiently yield because the learners give untrue feedback to get more grant. As an educator, how can one address this issue?