Breaking out of the box

Faculty Development

Using Cultural Teaching Autobiographies to Create Inclusive Learning Environments

This is a self-paced course delivered in an online asynchronous format. You are encouraged to go at your own pace, working through the materials and activities included. We all know learning is not linear. This course has been designed to encourage you to circle back to ideas, explore (again) existing / new thinking, and engage in a community of practice. We learn best through stories and from each other.

“Stories are our primary tools of learning and teaching, the repositories of our lore and legends. They bring order into our confusing world” (Edward Miller, Storyteller Agency) 

Book on a desk

Faculty Learning Outcomes 

Through guided story telling and cultural auto-biographies, by the end of the module/course / study abroad experience, participants will be able to:

  1. Identify their own cultural identity and the key ways in which this way of moving through the world may influence both: how they perceive and interact with others and how others interact with them – as this relates to preparing students for intercultural exchanges / study abroad experiences
  2. Demonstrate an ability to think critically about how their cultural identity is shaped, both positively and negatively, situated in a historical context and through a social-justice lens, and the possible impact this may have on how they perceive / interact with others, and how this translate to their teaching
  3. Identify the ways in which prior learning experiences have privileged / silenced some voices / epistemologies and the effects of this privilege / silence on interactions in classroom
  4. Identify examples of their own unconscious bias, how these biases were formed and their possible effects on their teaching
  5. Critically evaluate their own values and beliefs in relation to media / social representations of different cultural groups and how this impacts their teaching
  6. Through engagement in story circles and personal reflection, and relationship building, reflect on what they have learnt during the course / module and how they will integrate this new knowledge into their identity/way of moving through the world, as they interact with students in their teaching