by Mitchell Lorenz, Instructional Developer, Reinert Center
Recently, a group of faculty from various departments here at SLU sat down to discuss culturally responsive teaching and academic dishonesty. It was a pleasure to join this community of practice, which will meet several times throughout the year as an extension of our Culturally Responsive Teaching Institute. This initial meeting provided several interesting insights about how theoretical applications of culturally responsive teaching interact with the reality of being in the classroom.
The book “Cheating Lessons,” by James Lang, provided a focal point for the discussion. Lang (2013) suggests four environmental pressures that increase the likelihood that students will feel compelled to cheat: an emphasis on performance, high stakes related to the outcome, extrinsic motivation, and low expectations of success. Performance emphasis and high stakes seemed to resonate strongly with the faculty present, leading to a fruitful discussion that included the sharing of challenges and course design elements that have been effective in practice.
When discussing emphasizing performance, it quickly became clear that a focus on student performance goes hand in hand with offering high-stakes assessments.
This discussion reminded me of an early teaching experience I had teaching Cognitive Psychology. I had given students small group work in class, instructing them to begin with a simple concept (e.g., “apple”) and then imagining other ideas that seem related (e.g., “fruit,” “red,” etc.), then imagining more ideas related to those ideas. My vision for this was an activity with no “right” answers and no grade, providing very low stakes for students to apply their own thoughts. After five minutes, I noticed not many groups were writing. Finally, a student asked if their first idea “was right.” Even in this scenario, my students were concerned with what I wanted as the instructor. They believed there were stakes, even though I viewed this as a no-stakes activity. It was then I realized that I never told the students my intentions or what purpose I had for this activity.
Multiple participants shared similar stories about the difficulties they’ve had convincing students that low-stakes assignments are actually low-stakes. This is especially relevant to Culturally Responsive Teaching, as students from cultures that emphasize formal, high-stakes learning experiences may assume any course activity is high-stakes. Some ways that were shared to encourage recognition of low-stakes assignments included starting them in-class with group discussions or using small-group work with ungraded components. While “group work” as a general solution to the high-stakes equation may seem intuitive, some students may feel a lack of comfort with these activities, especially if they are accustomed to individuated learning. These students might not feel comfortable with informal group-work situations that would be considered lower stakes in U.S. academic culture (Chavez & Longerbeam, 2016). Alternate options, like providing ways for students to contribute to the discussion outside of class, may help lower stakes assessments be seen as low stakes while enhancing the level of comfort for students with different cultural backgrounds. Additionally, as noted in my example, transparency about your intentions with activities and assessments can go a long way to helping students recognize the intended stakes (Shapiro, Farrelly, & Tomas, 2023; also relevant is the Transparency in Learning and Teaching (TILT) project – https://tilthighered.com/).
In a large class, with hundreds of students, it may feel challenging to offer low-stakes assessments due to the sheer number of students. In a series of anecdotes, faculty shared how the discipline in which they teach may also affect expectations about class behavior. For instance, one class may be more readily associated with expecting lively participation while another course may be associated with low-interaction lectures. Further complicating things is the interplay between the classroom environment and students’ own cultural assumptions about academics. Solutions discussed included smaller, more frequent quizzes or assignments with prompts unique to the class. These solutions are reminiscent of recommendations made by Lang (2013) for reducing academic dishonesty.
A final concern that was raised was related to students who perceive grades as the means through which their progression in the course is demonstrated. If students believe grades, the most explicit measure of performance, is the only important metric for demonstrating how far they’ve come in the course, or even in their overall education, then they may focus their efforts on the grades themselves, rather than learning. Faculty present noted these perceptions can be influenced by how the instructor presents assignments but also the cultural assumptions about the classroom. In this instance, addressing the perception itself may help alleviate the grade-pressure amongst students. You might ask yourself: am I framing my assessments through a lens of learning or with a focus on earning points (performance)? Toward the end of the discussion, the group circled back to what had been learned and there was a realization that most of the suggested “solutions” were related to helping students perform better, demonstrating the ease with which a performance focus can become like a reflex, even for faculty.
This Culturally Responsive Teaching Community of Practice will meet again in November and twice in the Spring. I have no doubt that the discussions, reflections, and collaborative brainstorming will foster more interesting insights across these meetings.
Resources:
Chávez, A. F., & Longerbeam, S. D. (2016). Teaching across cultural strengths: A guide to balancing integrated and individuated cultural frameworks in college teaching. Stylus Publishing, LLC.
Lang, J. (2013). Cheating Lessons. Harvard University Press
Shapiro, S., Farrelly, R., & Tomas, Z. (2023). Fostering International Student Success in Higher Education. TESOL press.
TILT Higher Ed. (2023, October 19). Transparency in learning and teaching project. https://tilthighered.com/
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