OD Resource 4 - Programmatic Linguistic Diversity Teaching Initiatives - Courtney WootonLinks:
https://osf.io/za3uj/This digital poster offers participants interested in programmatic inclusive teaching initiatives an overview of one program’s long-term efforts to support faculty professional development and develop curricular changes.
Mason has the most diverse student population of any four-year college or university in Virginia, with its students coming from over 130 nations and speaking over 80 languages. Linguistic diversity--the diversity of languages and the variations within a language (e.g. Black English, Chicana English, accented English)—is a significant component of our students’ experiences and campus culture. Linguistic justice is an orientation to language that acknowledges that standard language is a myth and that privileging some forms of English over others is tied to the racialization of English speakers’ identities and replicates forms of systemic racial oppression (Lippi-Green 2011; Alim, Rickford, and Ball 2016). Thus, linguistic justice is an important part of inclusive teaching at Mason’s campus and serves as one type of inclusive teaching development that can occur within a program.
The digital poster describes how presenters from Mason’s Composition Program built a scaffolded approach to helping its approximately 100 faculty - term, adjunct, and GTA - engage with linguistic justice scholarship and develop approaches to linguistic diversity that support Mason’s students and their in-progress curriculum revision process building on this work.
