Скачать или смотреть Socioeconomic Equity in the College Classroom

As a college professor, you’re naturally concerned with social justice. We all agree that, since they are engines for socioeconomic mobility, it is necessary for our colleges and universities to be fair, just, and equitable places.

We often think of fairness and equity in terms of race, gender expression, and sexuality. What we often don’t think about is socioeconomic justice. To some degree, this is because we expect college students to fit a certain mold—one that replicates the social habits, or habitus, of the middle or upper-middle class dominant culture.

Here is what socioeconomic inequity might look like in your classroom.

A student keeps their camera or microphone off because they don’t want you to see they live in a crowded small apartment with members of their extended family.

A student doesn’t have reliable Internet access at home because they live in a rural area or an urban wifi desert. They have difficulty doing research or writing online.

A student can’t afford expensive textbooks or software subscriptions.

A student may need to work. They may not have the time to do extensive amounts of reading, or may hand assignments in late. They may even Zoom into class on their phone from their job. Taking an unpaid internship in their field is out of the question.

A student needs to travel home on weekends, or even during their week to help their family with childcare or other tasks. They are not able to attend a required weekend lecture, conference, trip, or other extracurricular activity.

A student’s written work does not use standard American English. English may be their second language. Their grasp of sentence structure is weak, and they have many malapropisms and misspellings. Their perceived shortcomings may lead them to plagiarize.

A student is facing homelessness after the dorms close for the semester, or even during the semester. The worry consumes their every waking moment.

So, what can we do to make our classrooms more socioeconomically equitable?

Do not require students to keep their cameras or microphones on. Use the text chat and annotation features.

Provide both synchronous and asynchronous modalities so students can make up work or log on when they can. Make sure your course materials fit both modalities. Remember a large file of a taped lecture is not equitable; “chunk” your material and provide multiple modes of representation.

Do not use remote test-proctoring services.

Be flexible on deadlines.

Use Open Educational Resources.

Familiarize yourself with the resources your campus has available for students facing emergencies and exigent needs.

Learn anti-racist grading practices, such as those discussed by Asao B. Inyoue. Provide space for students to use multiple forms of expression to show their mastery.

Remember that the purposes of universities has long been to reproduce the elite. To achieve true social equity, we need to disrupt these practices.