Teaching for Diversity Online

Abstract

Existing gaps in teacher education programs impact programs' ability to provide teachers with effective teaching practices for use in diverse classrooms. Higher education institutions attempting to address culturally relevant pedagogy through online courses struggle to create meaningful learning opportunities for students especially when they do not have opportunities to work with diverse populations outside of class. This chapter discusses the challenges a higher education faculty member and her doctoral assistant faced when teaching an accelerated 10-week online course titled Educating Diverse Populations. The asynchronous nature of the online course and the optionality of the online group chats disrupted the process of class dialogue and interactions normally found in traditional face-to-face courses. However, reflecting on a variety of autobiographical resources and participating in weekly discussion posts assisted students to better incorporate culturally relevant pedagogy into their teaching practices.