Implementing a student-centered and critical classroom requires special attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion in the broadest sense. Attention to these concepts should permeate throughout the Backward Design process and be considered in the reading selections, learning activities, assessment structures, and classroom management practices. Attention to diversity, equity and inclusion should be central not only in the course design but also in the interaction with students and the management of learning communities (Trevino, Carlson, & Chapman, 2015). Instructors should practice continual reflection in their own interactions with students to ensure that an inclusive approach is being implemented, while also closely monitoring student-to-student interactions in the classroom to ensure the same.
It is essential, however, in working towards these goals of diversity, equity and inclusion that university institutions and instructors take on key accountability roles and avoid placing the burden for providing diverse perspectives on students, most often students of color. While students themselves should be engaged in being attentive to diversity, equity and inclusion, as Quaye and Harper (2007) suggest, “Accountability for culturally inclusive curricula and pedagogy is necessary in order to shift the onus from students to faculty”. Part of this accountability requires instructors to first be able to recognize inequity in the classroom or the topics studied, and in their own reactions to those topics (Tanner, 2009). It also requires instructors to learn and practice cultural competence, or “to escape those constraints and to build awareness of their own cultural assumptions, stereotypes, and expectations of what is the norm, so that they can effectively teach those who do not share their own cultural terrain” (Tanner & Allen, 2007). They must also ensure that this attention goes beyond mere inclusion of buzzwords, but instead is reflected deeply in the design and practice of teaching. In designing this unit, I have attempted to fill this accountability and include diverse perspectives, highlight the role of lack of equity in different practices, and to design activities and assessments that are inclusive of diverse student abilities and backgrounds. I have also incorporated teaching strategies which have been shown to encourage an inclusive learning environment: active learning, culture as an asset, learning communities, being explicit about diversity and exercising cultural competence (Klump & Nelson, 2005).