2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

This research presents insights from the collaborative ethnographic faculty-engaged research study of three engineering faculty members who strive to incorporate racially-equitable pedagogy into their teaching. The issue of race-based disparities in higher education, particularly in engineering, is a pressing concern in the United States. Many faculty developers are actively seeking ways to bridge this gap and foster racial equity, including workshops for culturally responsive pedagogy. Faculty development workshops and seminars are inherently constrained by limited time, limited connection to and responsiveness to each faculty’s context, and limited ability to explore effective interventions. This paper presents insights from a semester-long collaborative classroom ethnography that embedded in specific faculty classrooms and allowed for exploration of what worked to help them learn.

This paper draws on a broader project with multiple data sources including an embedded classroom ethnography, student survey responses, faculty weekly reflective meetings, and faculty pre-post interviews; we used the project as an intervention to guide engineering faculty in transforming their pedagogy and creating racially-equitable learning environments. Our three faculty participants exhibited varying degrees of engagement with good pedagogy, each with corresponding implications for racial equity. In this paper we reflect on the insights we can draw from iteratively experimenting with that intervention. In reflecting on the project, we draw on a few conceptual frameworks, including good pedagogy (e.g., Ladson-Billing's 1995 "good teaching"), learner-oriented pedagogies, equity pedagogy, dimensions of classroom practice, and pragmatism.

Our two key arguments are (1) Good pedagogy can pave the way for equity, including racial equity, and (2) An improvement in general pedagogy and efforts to improve racially-equitable pedagogy can happen concomitantly. While good pedagogy may not guarantee (racial) equity, bad pedagogy is more likely to perpetuate (racial) inequity. Effective pedagogy involves all students, including marginalized and students of color, and prioritizes “how much [all] students learn.” On the other hand, ineffective pedagogy tends to cater to privileged and academically-prepared students. We saw that when faculty members actively engage in good pedagogy that encourages student participation, e.g., even utilizing simple active learning techniques like "think-pair-share" (as seen with Faculty 1) and involving students in class activities (as a group and as individuals, as demonstrated by Faculty 2), they are more likely to promote racially-equitable pedagogy compared to those who rely on traditional slides and lecturing only. In addition, we consider the ways that faculty seniority, years of pedagogical experience, identity / positionality, and classroom context can influence the faculty learning trajectory and most likely strategy for promoting equity.

Therefore, to foster the transformation of engineering faculty and their classrooms towards racially-equitable, we advocate for simultaneous exposure of general and racially-equitable pedagogies or the initial emphasis on a good pedagogy. We recognize the complexity of learning and embrace multiple, subjective, and simultaneous pathways for improvement, and we note the challenge this may present for faculty developers who need to make workshop structures that fit larger populations. Thus, we advocate and call for simultaneous exposure (understanding good pedagogy while also engaging in praxis on racial equity), while noting that for some professors’ lessons on pedagogy will still come before a full understanding of racially equitable pedagogy.