or junior professor receive any level of instruction on how to instruct, the absence of dialogue on
this issue is particularly problematic for women, racial minorities, and women of color who can face
great risks precisely for teaching about contentious subjects with a consciousness that they were
often hired to introduce.
So while teaching has only begun to receive attention in the instruction of faculty and still
occupies a secondary status relative to one’s research agenda, the challenges for women of color
teaching racialized or gendered subjects can be quite threatening to their existence in the university.
These questions are of particular concern when we evaluate how attempts to diversify departments
particularly by hiring faculty of color and women who are trained in ethnic and gendered politics
can result in unseen obstacles that may prevent these faculty from achieving success, and even more
importantly can impede the achievement of a more engaged classroom experience that promotes
both faculty and student survival.
I explore some of these obstacles encountered by women of color as teachers in the
university. In particular, I examine some of the unique intersections of race and gender and
pedagogy (including class content) between faculty and students that have been documented
through ongoing literature and that come to bear upon women of color in the classroom. I then test
these dynamics through a focus group, a student survey, and a comparison of faculty course
evaluations all conducted on the campus of the University of Colorado at Denver in 2005. The
results both confirm some of the concerns raised in the literature, and open new questions about
student receptions of faculty particularly when an “engaged classroom” is employed.
developed and popularized by Paulo Freire (1993). Rather, as bell hooks suggests," Progressive, holistic education,
'engaged pedagogy' is more demanding than conventional critical or feminist pedagogy. For unlike these two teaching
practices, it emphasizes well-being. That means teachers must be actively committed to a process of self-actualization
that promotes their own well-being if they are to teach in a manner that empowers students…Like Freire, [this]
approach to knowledge called on students to be active participants, to link awareness with practice. [The] focus on a
holistic approach to learning and spiritual practice enabled me to overcome years of socialization that had taught me to
believe a classroom was diminished if students and professors regarded one another as 'whole' human beings, striving
not just for knowledge in books but knowledge about how to live in the world" (p.14-15, 1994). Maher and Tetrault
(1994) have also described this practice as the development of a “feminist classroom,” and Goodman (2001) describes
it’s implementation as including elements such as peer learning, information gathering, assignments that offer students
an opportunity to succeed, and activities such as experiential exercises, experiments, and participant observations that
decrease student resistance and stimulate new ideas.
2
Convention