Whitney Clay: Welcome to the West Valley College TEACH Center podcast.
Michelle Francis: TEACH stands for training educators advocating change.
Whitney Clay: I'm Whitney Clay, Instructional designer.
Michelle Francis And I'm Michelle Francis, Professional Development Coordinator and Instructor in Child Studies.
Whitney Clay: At the TEACH Center, we support faculty as they cultivate excellence in teaching and learning and welcome their students with engaging pedagogies.
Michelle Francis: In this podcast, we discuss hot topics in teaching and learning. We interview educators about what they are doing in their fields, and we talk to learners about what inspires them.
Whitney Clay: Welcome to the first in our series of three episodes about academic rigor with our guest, Dr. Shamini Dias. In episode one, you will learn what rigor is. In episodes two and three. You will learn how to practice academic and ethical rigor to promote equity and deep learning by using high impact practices in your classroom policies and assessments.
Michelle Francis: So, we are excited to welcome Dr. Shamini Dias to the TEACH podcast today. Dr. Dias founded the Preparing Future Faculty Program at the Claremont Graduate University and is currently the director of Transdisciplinary Curriculum and Special Projects. Whitney and I first met Dr. Dias when we attended a session she conducted on Equitable Assessments, and I was incredibly impressed by her passion. She made a connection to our work here with TEACH when she talked about reframing the assessment conversation instead of focusing on academic dishonesty and consequences. Dr. Dias advocates for centering the discussion around deep learning and student motivation.
Michelle Francis: Dr. Dias, welcome to the podcast.
Shamini Dias: Thanks, Michelle. I am so glad to be here. This is my passion place.
Michelle Francis: We love your passion. So, we've been talking a lot at Teach about the concept of rigor and the often negative impact it has on our students. So what does rigor mean to you?
Shamini Dias: So, this is a word I've given a lot of thought to. It's a kind of fascinating word. And we use it so much. You know, we talk about academic rigor, research, rigor, the rigor of argument and assignments. And because I am a seven-year tech geek, I love the origins of words to help me kind of grapple with them. And so rigor has a very interesting story. It comes from proto Indo-European with the meaning of stretch or justice. It's kind of a sobering thought, right? This is where we get the word rigid. Or worse still, rigor mortis. And then it entered Latin with meanings that kind of broadened out numb, stiff hearts. But when it came into English around the mid 14th century, it took on also the meaning of harsh and severe in dealing with people. And that meaning has been with us since the 14th century, is pretty well embedded. And it's followed us into education and in two ways. And this is, I think, the complexity and the problem with rigor. Faculty are concerned with rigor from a teaching perspective. And because we collectively, probably if you scratch the surface, really mean high standards excellence. And that's not surprising that I can be passionate about my subject, my discipline, and I want my students to excel in it. So we speak of rigorous discipline and rigorous assessment, but then the dark side comes in and the dark side is, you know, and I know many faculty who are concerned with this dark side of rigor is that rigor as a concept is a very stress inducing and inequitable place. We are concerned that students encounter rigor not as, hey, here's a way to build excellence, but it's like this unyielding force, compliance, perfectionism, test and teaching processes rules. So in the operationalizing of our notion of excellence, we go to the dark side and, you know, you hear things like a got a weed out those who are not good enough. So this notion of rigor, you know, is it is unjust in how we have operationalized or implemented rigor. It is unjust also, just from what learning science reveals about how the brain and body together learn. And then it is doubly unjust because it impacts different populations. So then we're getting into the social justice of rigor when it comes to learning. So I guess my last thought on what rigor means to me, I like to think of rigor, surveillance or a kind of a dance. A question I often get asked is if I'm going to do all this social emotional learning and empathizing, then am I going to compromise my rigor? As if it's an either or. And I think of it as a balance or a dance between my response to what about ethical rigor that we talk so much about academic rigor and we forget with ethical rigor, they are both linked together for students to be able to stretch because I do one, my students just stretch, but I want all of them to reach excellence. So ethical rigor allows me to ensure I support them together. Academic rigor means I know what the high standards are, and it's clear to my students. So that's kind of my long answer about rigor. And it goes all the way back to Proto-indo-european that meaning of rigor, of stretching. But with the added layer of I have a responsibility to support the stretching. Maybe then we'll have truly rigorous education in a very positive socially just way.
Michelle Francis: So there's how I hear you saying there's a dark side to rigor and there's a light side where we're actually stretching students' thinking. And I think that's a different way to look at rigor. I like that vision of ethical rigor, stretching students in a way that responds to who they are and what they bring to the classroom.
Shamini Dias: Yeah, we don't have to make a choice between letting, oh, I got to let my standards down in order to do equity work. In fact, that's taking a deficit view. Oh, they're not good enough, you know, So I'm going to just drop my standards and it's totally wrong. We need to hold the standards, but build the pathway to get there. You know, in Hope research, Richard Snyder's work, the construct of hope, he says what makes it truly hope and not just kind of optimism is that the hope is a vision of what could be and a pathway or pathways to get there. And you think of Africa in that frame. What could be? I'm using Carol Dweck, Right? Not yet, but what could be. But without the possibility. That's just wishful thinking. And you give up and certain students, depending on how much they have been prepared or what circumstances of their life are manifesting at that moment. They don't have a pathway if we don't provide it. And so the light side of rigor, its excellence, is that balance.
Whitney Clay: Next, join us for episode two for the conversation with Dr. Dias continues with a focus on rigor in classroom policies.