Inclusive Teaching in the Writing Classroom

The CAS Writing Program Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Committee was formed in December 2018, in response to recent ongoing conversations in the program concerned about issues of gender, race, ability, and other dimensions of equity. The committee focuses on issues of equity and inclusion affecting both current and prospective faculty (e.g. regarding current faculty, faculty climate, retention, unconscious bias, and training and hiring) and also curriculum and students (e.g. employing universal design and inclusion principles, inclusive classrooms, developing best practices for teaching racially/linguistically-diverse student populations, defining definitions of writing excellence, and increasing access to excellent, inclusive, equity-based pedagogy, and inclusive course offerings, and reading lists). Read more about current committee work in the Writing Program here.

The mission of the CAS Writing Program is to support all BU students to “acquire writing and communication skills and more general habits of mind essential both to their full participation in the intellectual life of the university and to their future personal, professional, and civic lives.” To support this mission of including and supporting all students, we hope to raise awareness about the need for our language choices in all our internal and external communications to be as inclusive, nondiscriminatory, and affirming as possible.

While some organizations produce checklists and other audit/self-editing tools for their community members’ use, we do not seek to be so prescriptive; rather, we align ourselves with the suggestion of UNH’s Bias-Free Language Guide that the best ways to use their (or any) language guides are as tools “to think critically and reflectively about the terms and phrases that many people use regularly in conversation and writing” and “to encourage thoughtful expression in terms that are sensitive to the diverse identities and experiences in our community.” 

We can offer the following recommendations. After a review of existing inclusive language guidelines published by a range of sources (e.g. government agencies, higher education institutions, publications, and organizations), we have identified the following four guides as especially comprehensive and useful sources to support inclusive writing practices:

• • University of New Hampshire (2015): Bias-Free Language Guide
  • East Harlem Tutorial Center: Anti-bias Language
  • IWCA: Pronoun Choice
  • APA: Sexuality, Ability, Gender identity, Pronoun choice

While we see decisions about how to use the guides and implement their recommendations as best left up to individuals themselves, we recommend that instructors refer to these guides to support the use of inclusive language in all their teaching and administrative work. Specifically, instructors should check the guides when creating documents such as syllabi and other curricular materials, publications, emails and other web communications, and administrative and committee documents. 

• Accessible Approaches to the Writing Classroom
• Choosing a Diverse and Inclusive Set of Texts
• Community Building in a Remote Environment
• Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in Remote Teaching Environments
• Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion Reading Lists and Online Resources
• Effective Collaboration with Writing Centers
• Equity in Writing Assessment: Alternative Grading Approaches
• Expectations for Academic Writing in the American Classroom
• Facilitating Discussions
• Integrating the Writing Center into the Writing Program
• Leveling the Playing Field for Class Participation
• Notes for Inclusive Syllabi: Diversity and Land Acknowledgment Statements
• Providing Feedback
• Responding to Multilingual Students’ Writing
• Strategies for Conferences and Tutoring Appointments with English Language Learners
• Student Presentations and Strategies for Audience Engagement
• Teaching the Hidden Curriculum
• Teaching Writing for Critical Language Awareness
• Whose History Matters? The Importance of Co-Conspirators
• WR 112: Intercultural Literacy, Race, Racism, and Antiracism

In addition to these resources, all Essential Lessons offer notes about best practices for inclusive classrooms.

• Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis. Edited by Kristine L. Blair and Lee Nickoson, WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2018.
• Inoue, Asao B. Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies: Teaching and Assessing Writing for a Socially Just Future, WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2015.
• Inoue, Asao B. Labor-Based Grading Contracts: Building Equity and Inclusion in the Compassionate Writing Classroom, WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2019.
• The Linguistically-Diverse Student: Challenges and Possibilities Across the Curriculum (Special Issue). Across the Disciplines, vol. 2, edited by Ann Johns, 2005.
• WAC and Second-Language Writers: Research Towards Linguistically and Culturally Inclusive Programs and Practices. Edited by Terry Myers Zawacki and Michelle Cox, WAC Clearinghouse and Parlor Press, 2014.
• Writing Assessment, Social Justice, and the Advancement of Opportunity. Edited Mya Poe, Asao B. Inoue, and Norbert Elliot, WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2018.