At a glance
This project marks a starting point for the Institute of Embodied Pedagogies, a tri-campus cohort of faculty, staff, and… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2020-2021
- Mini
- Awarded
- $3,000
- Funding partners
-
- Services and Activities Fee (SAF)
- UW Resilience Lab (UWRL)
This project marks a starting point for the Institute of Embodied Pedagogies, a tri-campus cohort of faculty, staff, and graduate students that explores a diverse range of techniques for conflict resolution, community building, critical reflection, resilience, belonging, empowerment, and institutional change. The program emphasizes didactic skills that utilize the movement of bodies to facilitate learning, which increases student retention and instructor self-efficacy.
“Educators have few opportunities to collectively generate strategies with peers to create more inclusive and just academic environments,” write Sears and Moon, “and they rarely get to practice what they do or say in difficult situations involving oppression and privilege.” The Institute, still in its beginning days, aims to remedy this gap in pedagogy.
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is requesting a Resilience and Compassion Seed Grant to develop and pilot an institute that will promote the adoption of anti-racist and equity lenses through the use of embodied pedagogies. The institute will advance the University’s 2022-2026 diversity blueprint goals, particularly Goal #2, which commits the university to taking intentional action to “recruit and support a diverse body of undergraduate, graduate, and professional students...and increase its capacity to serve students from communities that are underrepresented in higher education.” UW instructors often lack the skills to address issues of equity, facilitate the exploration of challenging social issues related to power and privilege that have a disproportionately negative impact on communities of color, and to create inclusive learning environments that support underrepresented students.
Without training in creating inclusive classrooms, instructors may inadvertently create learning environments in which some students do not feel like they belong. Embodied pedagogy is a set of didactic tools that use the movement of the body to facilitate learning. Research shows that embodied pedagogies, as well as other interactive theater practices, can increase audience awareness of key social justice issues and enhance instructors’ knowledge and sense of self-efficacy. Learning to use embodied pedagogies, particularly in the service of advancing equity and inclusion, is difficult work. Educators have few opportunities to collectively generate strategies with peers to create more inclusive and just academic environments, and they rarely get to practice what they do or say in difficult situations involving oppression and privilege.
“Advancing Equity through Embodied Pedagogies” leverages Resilience & Compassion seed grant funding to design, develop, and pilot an Institute of Embodied Pedagogies in Autumn 2022 with a tri-campus cohort of faculty, staff, and graduate students. The pilot will explore concepts and tools used around the world for conflict resolution, community building, critical reflection, resilience, belonging, empowerment, and institutional and social change and will provide participants with embodied pedagogical strategies they can use to build more inclusive and equitable classrooms. Participants in the pilot will be invited to become part of an ongoing community of practice focused on embodied pedagogies. The CTL will use feedback from the pilot to refine the concept with the goal of launching an annual institute to cohorts of 30 participants. The long range goals of the project are to build an annual Institute and a sustainable tri-campus community of practice that uses anti-racist, equity-minded, embodied pedagogical strategies to improve the classroom experience of every UW learner.
Project goals:
- Collaborate with leading experts in embodied pedagogies to design an embodied pedagogies curriculum that provides participants with opportunities to:
- Critically reflect on our intersecting social identities and their relation to systems of power and privilege in our everyday lives.
- Foster respectful community dialogue and analysis of discrimination, racism, power, and oppression and how these dimensions operate structurally and in our lives.
- Practice embodied pedagogies as a way to challenge power, privilege, and oppression.
- Practice interventions and responses to problematic situations involving oppression and privilege
- Pilot institute and establish the community of practice in December 2022
- Refine the pilot and officially launch the Institute for Embodied Pedagogies in Summer 2023
This project leverages and builds upon CTL’s successful Theater for Change (TfC) program. Rooted in the theories of Augusto Boal and Paulo Freire, TfC helps instructors create collective spaces that promote engagement in difficult dialogues, critical thinking, and taking action for change. Partnering with departments across UW, TfC has engaged thousands of community members in intersectional, critical dialogue on a range of issues, including racism, heterosexism, policed bodies, classism, and ableism.
The pilot will be organized by CTL staff and led by TfC director, Tikka Sears, and CTL graduate assistant, Carolina Nieto. CTL will design application processes that invite UW faculty members, staff educators, and graduate students who have teaching and/or leadership responsibilities to apply. The program will invite individuals who are committed to engaging in dialogue across interpersonal differences of identity and experience and to increase individual and collective awareness around social justice issues. Participants will not need previous theater or anti-oppression training but will need to be open to both. With an eye toward broadening program impact, the CTL will prioritize applicants who teach significant numbers of undergraduate learners. Participants must commit to 26 hours of participation and effort during the four days of the pilot institute. Participants will be invited to remain engaged with the cohort through the Community of Embodied Practice, which will continue to meet monthly to share resources and practice leading and facilitating embodied pedagogies.
We are requesting $5000 in Resilience & Compassion Grant funding to fund three accomplished embodied pedagogy practitioners external to the CTL. These collaborators bring a variety of disciplinary expertise and experience to the institute.
Sustainable Development
This project seeks to create learning experiences that align to at least three of the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals.
Goal 5
Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.The pilot institute will provide participants opportunities to explore strategies useful in identifying and interrupting some of the ways in which women are marginalized, targeted, and under-represented in political and economic decision-making processes.
Goal 10
Reduce inequalities within and among countries. The pilot institute will provide participants opportunities to engage in intersectional, critical dialogue on issues, identify personal and systemic patterns of behavior, and interrogate how we unconsciously replicate oppression in our everyday interactions. Such work is a necessary step in reducing inequality and discriminatory behavior and policies.
Goal 16
Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels. The proposed project will lay the foundation for a sustained, interdisciplinary, and multicultural community of practice positioned to scale the impact of the pilot.
Tikka Sears
Project lead
- tikka@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Staff
- Affiliated groups
- Center for Teaching and Learning
Penelope Moon
Team member
- penmoon@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Staff
- Affiliated groups
- Center for Teaching and Learning
Request amount and budget
Measure the impacts
CTL will conduct a combination of pre-, mid-, and post-pilot assessments, as well as embodied and creative formative assessments, to measure project effectiveness and identify areas for adaptation and refinement. External collaborators will be expected to provide written evaluations to help the CTL iterate toward the Summer 2023 institute.