New Learning Compact Institute, A Conversation with Dr. Jose Moreno

New Learning Compact Institute, A Conversation with Dr. Jose Moreno: Video automatically transcribed by Sonix

New Learning Compact Institute, A Conversation with Dr. Jose Moreno: this mp4 video file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.

Jose Moreno:
Hi, good afternoon. This is Jose Moreno from California State University, Long Beach, where I work with students and faculty and certainly a national level with multiple institutions on advancing institutional equity, diversity, and inclusion efforts. And certainly how we do that through curriculum, through general education processes, and through faculty learning supports. I'm thrilled to provide a short video to provide some ideas and explore with you how institutional equity can and is likely to be advanced and accelerated through this New Learning Compact by engaging with our faculty as learners. I argue this in the sense that by engaging with faculty, two things will happen.

Jose Moreno:
One, we will recognize how valuable as we do with our undergraduate student bodies, how valuable it is to have a diverse set of learners in your classroom. And we also will notice that a lack of a diverse set of learners limits our ability to advance our collective work. As faculty, but in that setting, certainly as learners, as we see in our classrooms, if you don't have a diverse classroom, difficult to say, limits our possibilities as learners and in our pedagogy. So as we think of the new learning compact, I urge you all to really think of how this is tied to our faculty diversity efforts on campus. Faculty diversity, we know, enhances the teaching-learning process as well as knowledge development. But also learning-centered faculty approaches enhances our ability to benefit most fully from that diversity that we may see on campus.

Jose Moreno:
And hopefully this can advance again. Another argument, if not perspective on campus is a way shifting to faculty learning support as a way of thinking can advance our equity efforts. I'm going to share screen just to share some few slides with you so that we could see together the centrality of the work and provide some language that I think maybe helpful as we advance the work. Just a couple of key data points I want to highlight of why this really is important. We know through faculty surveys that discrimination is a source of stress and that there is a differential sense of discrimination on our campuses by race, ethnicity. This is a UCLA faculty survey from a couple of years ago and clear distinctions where women of color, in particular, feel a greater source of stress that comes out of discrimination they feel on campuses. And certainly, we see that across race, ethnicity, both across men and women. And then I think it's important to highlight that these same surveys that faculty are increasingly feeling it important that racial-ethnic diversity be reflected in the curriculum. And this is where we come in through these faculty learning supports. Is that in supporting faculty, we have to think about the pedagogy, but also their curriculum, but just a function of who they are and the nature of their interest and their experience.

Jose Moreno:
A diverse faculty produces a more diverse set of scholarship, reflective scholarship, and with that, the curriculum we use to inform and engage our pedagogy. So you see that faculty of color generally tend to feel strongly or more strongly or agree at a higher rate that a curriculum is strengthened when it's reflective of racial-ethnic diversity. So terms of overall, faculty do see the value of their role in this work of diversity. They feel that their role. Eighty-four percent report that their role is to enhance students' knowledge and appreciation for other racial-ethnic groups. Over 50 percent of faculty responded that they believe that faculty are not prepared to deal with conflict over diversity in the classroom, a central concern for those of us the faculty learning supports. Twenty-two percent of faculty report utilizing resources to integrate culturally competent practices. And this is especially important when this new learning compact that we have to emphasize the role of culturally relevant pedagogy is key to advancing student success on our campuses. But I would argue also key to advancing faculty success when they gain a diverse faculty or faculty of color, see that their learning center, their faculty learning center development support embrace them, think about their perspectives, the scholarly work, and engagement pedagogical spaces in their classroom. Then, just as with students in the classroom, faculty feel validated and feel that much more engaged and a stronger connection to their campus environment, which advances the goal of faculty diversity and equity through recruitment, hiring and retention, and ultimately leadership.

Jose Moreno:
Only about a third of current faculty incorporate readings of racial-ethnic diversity in their classes. But over half of Black and Latino faculty do so again. Who our faculty do have a direct impact and in the reflection of what our curriculum may look like, just as a quick review, all of this is tied in my thinking about this to our scales of strategic engagement through the learning compact framework from the individual working your classroom as stakeholders, participants, leaders, designers to then community practitioners in context within our programs and seminars and how we must work from the individual working towards the leadership of our departments and directors of centers to the institutional engaging at the institutional level with community, but also folks who lead and are the voice of our staff or our faculty, I should say, and then those who govern our institutions. All of this then creates that ecosystem of systems and networks that shape learning across all levels. So advancing a learning-centered approach to this framework of strategic engagement and the scales will assure not just a culturally relevant pedagogical process, but a sustaining one that can be sustained to the ecosystem and that sustains its participants, which again advances our goals for equity for faculty.

Jose Moreno:
As well as for student success and just as a refresher, that that really was the new learning compact compared to previous ways, we had very disconnected systems as it related to pedagogy, uneven investments, change strategies did not involve frontline educators. And it wasn't tightwads national reform efforts, whereas the new learning compact integrates all of this work, particularly connecting professional learning to institutional strategies. And this is where the equity question comes in. If we are learning centers for faculty learning supports, develop this idea that that the centrality of the teaching and the very learning-centered approach is tied to culturally relevant pedagogy, then we actually can accelerate faculty sense of belonging and validation on the very campus that they're asked to teach students for success is signals to them that we're engaging in their learning process through a lens of success for them. Right. So culturally relevant pedagogy says it's an approach that empowers the student, in this case, the faculty member working as a student in the learning center, that it empowers our faculty from multiple backgrounds about their intellectual contributions, their social empowers them socially and emotionally and culturally and politically, so that the cultural reference that faculty of color may have is the reference point in the lived experience on campus and a lived experience that informs their knowledge, their teaching, the research and all that validated and impart important knowledge, skills, and attitudes in that learning space that we call faculty learning.

Jose Moreno:
CERP involves three main components that I would argue are relevant to the faculty learning process, as well as focus on student learning with the student. Is the faculty member in this context, the focus on their learning as faculty write that their learners, which nourishes our intellectual self, it develops. Students are the faculty members cultural competence. By learning across one another with one another, we develop different competencies from our shared lived experiences in our classrooms from multiple perspectives, and then it supports our critical consciousness that by talking, interacting with each other, we might develop an understanding of what it means to be a faculty of color on a particular campus, what it means to be a woman in a particular area of our campus, what it means to be white on that campus pushing for matters of equity. So that creates critical consciousness of the institution which can then tie us and leverage us to those institutional efforts for equity and diversity and inclusion which they create. That ecosystem that we're seeking also is culturally relevant pedagogy created, culturally sustaining pedagogy where we affirm the value of students or faculty, cultural lived experiences, and the centrality of plays. It takes us from the microbe, the individual right, the student, the faculty to the message, the department, the faculty come back to their department and they share this learning.

Jose Moreno:
And then from there, the department engages the institution, which is the systems approach that we're looking for in the national, I mean, New Learning Compact, which is this eco-systems approach to sustain that culture and with that equity, diversity, and inclusion through learning support of faculty. So is it a multivitamin for equity? Absolutely. It's an emphasis on learner-centered approach and it creates inclusive conditions for faculty, which creates validation and examines the conditions that faculty are in. And they're teaching and learning centers, faculty, and learning processes that require a reflective process and action on the conditions of the very diversity that they're seeing or not seeing in the very faculty support systems that they're engaged in. And it engages the context of the conditions of the faculty and their diversity or lack thereof, which can then create that critical consciousness to leverage efforts at the institutional level, to improve teaching and learning by improving the diversity of the environment of those who are teaching in that space. Lastly, some quick thoughts about the reflective elements of culturally relevant pedagogy or cultural-specific pedagogy by two articles that I have referenced here. One is about teachers in higher education and teacher educators. How do we define these reflective questions that I would encourage folks to ask as they design the learning center supports and then ask the participants in constructing that space? How do we define culturally responsive pedagogy in our own practice? How do we enact in our own practice? How do we navigate the role of being a culture responsive educator in higher education, where we're learning the faculty learning supports? How do we engage other folks? Right again to leveraging? And then another article here at Cal State, Long Beach, which is unpublished to this point.

Jose Moreno:
We just finished it up. A group of us developing called Constructive Faculty Learning Culture, Responsive Pedagogy also asks us to be instructors of the learning environment with the learner. Right. So the faculty that are there with us, can construct this work with us and it makes them much more powerful and sustainable is what we're finding at Cal State, Long Beach and about both. And being there about this position, right, and if we're doing construction, the dispositions of this environment become that much more salient and certainly that much more powerful and sustaining for that ecosystem that we're all seeking. I'm going to stop there. And just again, thank you that for listening to this 10 minutes of trying to share with you some thoughts about how the new learning compact and the frameworks can really help us advance institutional equity efforts and really can become that multivitamin for equity. Hope this is helpful and hope to see the great work happening on your campus.

Bret Eynon:
Thank you so much, Jose, that was such an interesting presentation. I'm here with José Moreno at Cal State Long Beach, and we're piggybacking on the fabulous presentation you did about professional learning and equity-focused educational change. It's really an honor and a privilege to have a chance to chat with you and to build on that excellent presentation. So we want to have just a few minutes to chat and to explore a few additional questions that I thought were really interesting in your work. And I want to start by asking you to. With the question of how does this look in practice, you've done such an interesting job of laying out the importance of equity-focused professional learning at some of the key principles to keep in mind. It would, I think, be really helpful for folks, if you could talk a little bit about what does this look like, what's an example? In your experience.

Jose Moreno:
Yeah, thanks. Thank you, Brett, I appreciate that you found the video helpful. It was it was nerve-racking to do it and in many ways nerve-racking, in part because what we're doing here is, I think, an example of what we're talking about, constructing what we think would be a good way to move in, getting folks to understand the value of not just the framework, but the intent of the framework. Right.

Jose Moreno:
So in many ways, it's both nerve-racking when you could construct, but it's also coming because you're doing it in the community. And so when you do things by yourself and you package something, you have no idea whether it's really going to resonate. But when you're able to do it in conversation and context and purpose construct, then while nerve-racking, you also know that there are people that can work to make it fulfill its intent. So in that way, I feel good that you feel good that it looks like it'll be something helpful to folks. And so for us, that was the process. And the example I provided is one that I have on the slide. There is the work at Cal State, Long Beach that I've been fortunate to work with colleagues and our teacher education program. We have like many of these good opportunities to come through external grants of people who just worked their hearts out to get outside money. And so we had a title five grant and it really we looked at we needed to expand a pipeline for next teachers to by looking at the data. We wanted to improve the pipeline of Globish to produce more. But we also said we want to build capacity, so we want to also impact the faculty.

Jose Moreno:
To the teacher educators, if you will so that all teachers who graduate from our program can be prepared to teach the Latin context. So we embarked on this idea by working with key faculty who work in cultural relevant pedagogy because we knew that was central to what we want to teach your educators to have as as as a pedagogical practice. So we thought, you know, if we want faculty to our teacher, educate our teachers to be credentialed with this knowledge base, who's going to teach it to them? And we can't depend on just one class to do it. So shouldn't we, if we believe in that practice, have our faculty have an idea of what this practice is if we can? And so that way they could model it. So what we did is first in the design, we had about five to seven of us together as a team. We decided, OK, what is culturally relevant pedagogy to us based on our own literature, understanding how we're supposed to be the experts. So we have discussed together and we had different understandings and we delve into the literature together. And then through that we constructed what we commonly believe to be cultural pedagogy and its tenets.

Jose Moreno:
Then we said, you know, let's use this model and inviting a cohort of teacher educators. And we did the same thing with them. We said, look, here's what the literature suggests, but what to you is a culture of pedagogy. So that was key. But underlying all of it was introducing everyone into data. And that is why was it important that we're in the room together to improve in our professional practice? It's not simply to prove ourselves. It's in a community space to improve the education of our teachers. We're going to go out and teach. So so the data is showing that the discrepancies of the gaps, the difficulties in the pipeline, but also that we as a community are all both responsible for that data, but also responsible for transformation. So so it was the use of data as a foundation and then to the construction that's been key for us. We're now in our second cohort and now we're seeing syllabi shift. We're seeing faculty asking to be a part of the work instead of kind of having to get incentivized. They're now asking, how can I be a part of that?

Jose Moreno:
It's been quite powerful.

Bret Eynon:
That's great to see a little more. That's I think that's really interesting about the kind of the key genesis and the role of construction in the seminar. How does that play, if you could see a little more about how that has played out over the course of the seminar, you know, as people are working on redesigning their courses and then trying things out with students, help us understand that a little more.

Jose Moreno:
Yeah. So what we did, by the way, we also involved, which is the framework is so powerful when you look at it at the work that we've done, because it actually wasn't formed in many ways. But the framework is... The framework was being constructed. Right. It was actually quite simultaneous. So that's why I could speak to how how how substantive this framework is in its practice is we first the team together that could construct the design. And then we actually were transparent to the community as they came in. At first, it would provide some stipends to the grant for faculty to come. And then we said, here's what we're doing. Here's our framework. And so we've done it ourselves. And so we think it'll be helpful. And then you let us know. So we presented the data overall, and that was my part of it, is to present the data of gaps in our teacher education program, but also the demography of teaching. And in California, the demography of change among students, the practices that we have found helpful, and then just really thinking what's the purpose of education with them? In other words, their enterprise. So we then set them up into conversation groups to then reflect on that data and say, what does that data mean to you? How would you interpret the data differently? If you have a teacher, educators, teachers in your classroom, they are prepared to teach credential students.

Jose Moreno:
What are you training them to do? How are you training them to be? And so many folks who don't see it, who often might shy away from that because they don't want to indoctrinate students, they can't begin to. Unearth for themselves and their remarkable conversations because they would like to engage with each other if they unearth for themselves. I won't necessarily call it implicit bias, but that they unearth that they have an implicit bias and that they do have a purpose. They've never been explicit even with themselves. So it's pretty powerful. And then we just have them report out together in the community and then everyone processes it together. We also had them go through exercises, as we often do in anti-racism work, of exercises, of the privilege of people identifying their different intersectionality, of identity, of who they are and who they believe they are and who we believe they are. And so they went through the process as we asked them to ask their students to do as we had done for ourselves. So so that was quite helpful to us without asking you to do anything we haven't done ourselves. Yeah, yeah.

Bret Eynon:
That's so interesting. And, you know, it seems like, you know, as I'm listening.

Bret Eynon:
Part of what's striking to me is this is particularly powerful and potent, this approach in working around equity issues, but it also is applicable to almost any kind of powerful professional learning, the way in which you reflected your respect for the knowledge that people were bringing in you, as you, you know, prompted them to think about themselves and their role and their classes and what their purpose was. And then you kind of engage them in this collective community process of trying to design change and supporting each other in that effort.

Bret Eynon:
And that it seems to me, you know, I can say it's maybe particularly powerful around culturally responsive pedagogy, but that also would be helpful if you're talking about how do we accelerate remediation or how do we redesign our capstone courses or how do we improve STEM education? These are like fundamental powerful approaches.

Jose Moreno:
It is, as you were speaking and I would say that this was an explicit part of a naming. But there's this great concept by the sociologist Eduardo when he said, well, I think I believe he named his book After the Racism Without Racists. Right. So in a world where everyone we've now internalized the rhetoric of equity, we've internalized the rhetoric of diversity and inclusion and its value. The question is, how do we determine if we're actually implementing and exercising that value? And for me, mostly we do that through data. Right. You say well, you say that you're focused on equity as an institution, yet you still only have three black faculty on your campus. And you have three, 10 years ago when you said you were launching a diverse faculty initiative. So the question becomes that no one will take responsibility for that, because what are you calling us, a racist institution? Are you calling me racist? What if we're talking about gender? If we're talking about class? So so that concept of racism without racists really says to us, you know, it's not the individual, it's not an individual, it is systemic racism or systemic sexism. It really is an institutional culture that if you're not deliberate and intentional in community, then then you'll continue to repeat the very history that you're trying to undo. So so that concept for me, I think, really helps me understand how to better engage in this understanding that basically good equity-minded practice is what we would call good teaching is what it would look like if we lived in an equitable world.

Jose Moreno:
But that said, through the inclusion of data on the onset, through being explicit with the intent and the mission, we are creating what we would call an anti-racist pedagogy and with our teacher educators and they themselves are understanding and that is a threatening as a tool of a threat to them, but really as a tool. And I hate to get kind of fatalist about this, but it's very liberatory now. People can be in a place to say, you know, OK, this is where I'm at. And if you're saying that that's a good place to be, I'm going to trust you. I'll go with you there. So that's where we did hope to go back to an initial question just then. Faculty were willing to ask others in our cohort in that court to visit their classroom, to observe, am I how am I doing in my practice? Take a look at my syllabi and my is my syllabi looking like it? It's a kind of syllabus that reflects the pedagogy through the curriculum and the structure of the course of assignments that can promote this culturally relevant pedagogy. So it really did create and construct this community of learners. And because it's institutional, we evolved. The dean is the associate dean and the dean, the co-director of the project. And so so just like with the framework; individual, community, institutional. And so now we're leveraging that to create the ecosystem at a college level and certainly for our department and studies and then the College of Education and Teacher Education.

Jose Moreno:
But now we're taking it hopefully even further. So creating this micro-ecosystem is going to hopefully become the macroeconomist. Excellent...

Bret Eynon:
We could talk for hours, I say, and I look forward to doing that in another context and maybe we even find a way to record more and share more. You know, I think we should stop here and thank you so much for all your good work that you're doing and for sharing that good work. And for helping people around the country think about the work that they're doing.

Bret Eynon:
Thank you so much.

Bret Eynon:
Thank you. Thank you. It's a pleasure. And just remember, everybody, disaggregate your data, show the data and engage the data, which we practice and construct the analysis together. And we can do good things for the citizens in higher education.

Bret Eynon:
Thank you so much, Professor Moreno.

Jose Moreno:
Thank you, Brett.

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