Breaking down silos: Teaching for equity, diversity, and inclusion across disciplines

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to present specific teaching strategies, classroom activities, and service learning assignments that can be adapted across disciplines to meet equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) focused learning objectives. In order to identify promising practices for teaching EDI, this collaboratively authored paper follows the thread of our common strategies, activities, and approaches through our different disciplines and across the different contexts in which we teach. As we wrote together about our common commitment to EDI, the specifics of our disciplines fell into the background as we focused on four core objectives for teaching EDI: Awareness, knowledge, skills, and action. We present promising practices for raising self-Awareness, increasing knowledge, developing skills, and inspiring students to action. We hope that our collaborative process can be used as an example for other scholars and educators looking to transcend disciplines and effectively integrate EDI into their classroom.