Abstract

Many college instructors begin their careers without knowing or using instructional best practices. During their careers, few will make drastic changes to their original teaching choices on their own. To respond to the needs and skills of increasingly diverse students, college instructors must not only improve their teaching practices, but also make them more inclusive. The study data comes from interviews about instructional vies and practices with 25 college faculty teaching undergraduate and graduate courses at an Eastern US university. This article first describes the mechanisms through which most teaching changes occur. Teaching changes can be typical or deliberate. Typical teaching changes usually encompass small modifications that suffice most needs but leave the instructor’s teaching views and practices intact. Deliberate teaching changes are more intentional and drastic modifications that alter the instructor’s views and practices of teaching. A model is presented next, to explain the mechanism through which college faculty can effectuate deep changes to their teaching to make it more inclusive. This model emphasizes the need for faculty to engage in reflection on their teaching to produce deliberate and inclusive teaching views and practices. 

Keywords

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