Teaching and Pedagogy Information from SSWR DSC’s Teaching Blog
Tips & Tricks for Beginning Instructors
Below you will find a few resources with tips for new graduate student instructors.
Pedagogy Resources
Critical Pedagogy Resources
About the book: “This book centers equity in the approach to trauma-informed practice and provides the first evidence-based guide to trauma-informed teaching and learning in higher education. The book is divided into four main parts. Part I grounds the collection in an equity approach to trauma-informed care and illustrates one or more trauma-informed principles in practice. Chapters in Part II describe trauma-informed approaches to teaching in specific disciplines. In Part III, chapters demonstrate trauma-informed approaches to teaching specific populations. Part IV focuses on instruments and strategies for assessment at the institutional, organizational, departmental, class, and employee levels. The book also includes a substantial appendix with more than a dozen evidence-based and field-tested tools to support college educators on their trauma-informed teaching journey.”
About the book: “Indigenous and decolonizing perspectives on education have long persisted alongside colonial models of education, yet too often have been subsumed within the fields of multiculturalism, critical race theory, and progressive education. Timely and compelling, Indigenous and Decolonizing Studies in Education features research, theory, and dynamic foundational readings for educators and educational researchers who are looking for possibilities beyond the limits of liberal democratic schooling. Featuring original chapters by authors at the forefront of theorizing, practice, research, and activism, this volume helps define and imagine the exciting interstices between Indigenous and decolonizing studies and education. Each chapter forwards Indigenous principles - such as Land as literacy and water as life - that are grounded in place-specific efforts of creating Indigenous universities and schools, community organizing and social movements, trans and Two Spirit practices, refusals of state policies, and land-based and water-based pedagogies”
Teaching Critical Thinking: Practical Wisdom by bell hooks
About the book: In Teaching Critical Thinking, renowned cultural critic and progressive educator bell hooks addresses some of the most compelling issues facing teachers in and out of the classroom today. In a series of short, accessible, and enlightening essays, hooks explores the confounding and sometimes controversial topics that teachers and students have urged her to address since the publication of the previous best-selling volumes in her Teaching series, Teaching to Transgress and Teaching Community. The issues are varied and broad, from whether meaningful teaching can take place in a large classroom setting to confronting issues of self-esteem. One professor, for example, asked how black female professors can maintain positive authority in a classroom without being seen through the lens of negative racist, sexist stereotypes. One teacher asked how to handle tears in the classroom, while another wanted to know how to use humor as a tool for learning. Addressing questions of race, gender, and class in this work, hooks discusses the complex balance that allows us to teach, value, and learn from works written by racist and sexist authors. Highlighting the importance of reading, she insists on the primacy of free speech, a democratic education of literacy. Throughout these essays, she celebrates the transformative power of critical thinking. This is provocative, powerful, and joyful intellectual work. It is a must read for anyone who is at all interested in education today.
Undoing the Grade: Why We Grade, and How to Stop, by Jesse Stommel
About the Book: “Grades and assessment are elephants in almost every room where discussions of education are underway. This book examines the what, why, and whether of grades: When do they fail? What harm do they do and how can we mitigate that harm? Can we construct more poetic, less supposedly objective, models for assessment? What is ungrading? The word ‘ungrading’ means raising an eyebrow at grades as a systemic practice, distinct from simply ‘not grading.’ The word is a present participle, an ongoing process, not a static set of practices. Ungrading is a systemic critique, a series of conversations we have about grades, ideally drawing students into those conversations with the goal of engaging them as full agents in their own education. This book represents over 20 years of thinking and writing about grades. The work of ungrading is to ask hard questions, point to the fundamental inequities of grades, and push for structural change. There are lots of places to begin this work. This book offers a handful of jumping off points, pedagogies and practices to explore to make assessment more equitable.”
You can also learn more about the book and the concept from Jesse Stommel’s blog posts here.
“The Academy” with Dr. Derrick Hudson from the Decolonize Everything Podcast
Available on apple podcasts here, amazon music here, and audible here.
About the podcast episode: “Should we get rid of the whole idea of tenure? How is the academy a tool of capitalism? In this episode of Decolonize Everything Dr. Derrick Hudson joins Rebecca in the studio for a conversation about higher education and the institutionalization of learning, wisdom, and knowledge.”
Inclusive Classrooms
Below are resources for cultivating inclusive online and in-person classroom spaces.
The NAME Steps: How to Name and Address Anti-LGBTQIA2S+ Microaggressions in Social Work Classrooms
This report from McInroy et al. (2019) was developed to support colleagues in better recognizing and intervening in microaggressions toward LGBTQIA2S+ populations. The guide introduces the NAME Steps (notice, acknowledge, make space, engage) with more detail and examples for application. It also outlines steps and strategies to enhance comprehension and includes a list of references and resources for further learning and study.
This report from Craig et al. (2015) provides data and information from 1,018 students from 51 states and provinces. The report highlights that “forty-four percent of students reported limited inclusion of LGBTQ content in classes, yet 64% indicated some degree of support for their LGBTQ identities in their programs. One-third reported homophobic experiences in programs, yet many (63%) were aware of ‘out’ LGBTQ faculty. Overall, students reported fairly low levels of self-assessed practice readiness with specific subpopulations (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender), with participants reporting the highest (somewhat prepared) self-assessed readiness with gay populations and the lowest (not well-prepared) self-assessed readiness with transgender populations. Participants suggested lower readiness for their non-LGBTQ colleagues. Implications for social work education are discussed” (p. 2).
Guidelines for Affirmative Social Work Education
A guide for creating social work educational environments that support lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning students, faculty, administrators, and staff.
Guidelines for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming (TGNC) Affirmative Education
A guide for creating social work educational environments that support TGNC identities.
Teaching Philosophy and Teaching Philosophy Statements
CSWE
The Council on Social Work Education has several resources for both new and experienced educators. Check out their list here!