Small Teaching Toward Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Linguistics
Organized session at the 2022 Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America
January 8, 2022
Washington, DC
Adjusting one’s pedagogical approach in order to improve student learning is a regular part of a scholarly teacher’s reflective process: try a new strategy that addresses a pedagogical goal that you have, evaluate its effectiveness, and make adjustments for next time. This process can feel overwhelming if an instructor attempts a large-scale overhaul of their courses or pedagogical approach. The small teaching approach offers a way to draw on cognitive theory to make incremental curricular or pedagogical changes in face-to-face (Lang 2016/2021) and online (Darby, 2019) environments.
The goal of this session was to introduce the concept of small teaching as a way for linguists to promote justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) in our classrooms. Over the past five years, there has been a significant increase in explicit conversations focused on identifying and addressing issues related to JEDI within our discipline. The Linguistic Society of America has supported these discussions through statements on race and racial justice; a webinar series; workshops, organized sessions, and plenary addresses at the annual meeting; and intentional work by committees and special interest groups, such as the Natives4Linguistics special interest group, CEDL, COZIL, and COGEL. This session continues these conversations and those from the 2021 organized session on Scholarly Teaching in the Age of COVID-19 and Beyond, and puts JEDI at the center of our practice.
Video presentation
Due to technical difficulties during our session, we have re-recorded our presentation, which will be available here shortly.
Documents and Resources
Supplemental information from the session, including a PDF of our slides
Session proposal submitted to the Program Committee of the Linguistic Society of America
Scholarly Teaching in Linguistics 