Step 3: Intervening Selectively to Enhance Equity and Understanding

Instructors can easily take up too much space in the classroom as highly-educated experts. This dominance can be particularly pronounced if they also hold a lot of privileged identities. Timothy Patrick McCarthy knows that he is a big presence in the classroom and, for this reason, intentionally steps back during discussions to make room for student voice. When he does step in, he highlights the knowledge that students create as a group: “There are times where three or four or five students will say something, and there's something happening in those responses that I want to seize on right away to make sure that we hold that there or we see it as emerging.”

Profiled: Timothy Patrick McCarthy, Lecturer on History and Literature, teaches "Stories of Slavery & Freedom" to 16 students at Harvard College.

Takeaway Tips

Though you want to avoid interjecting too often, be sure to correct major factual errors so the whole class doesn’t walk away with misconceptions.

To lift up student thinking, underscore particularly insightful comments or comments that make you personally think about a reading or an idea in a new way.

When you see that students may be missing an important point or piece of information, start by asking questions to help guide them, rather than immediately filling in the missing pieces yourself. 

Related Resources

The Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation at Carnegie Mellon University provides valuable considerations for Teaching Across Cultures, which can be helpful as instructors reflect on the ways that their identities influence their teaching. 

In another Instructional Moves video, Professor Todd Rakoff describes how he responds to students when he sees a need for additional reasoning or an expanded response.

This tip sheet from the Harvard Business School focuses on the art and science of questioning, listening, and responding.

Reflection Questions

Timothy Patrick McCarthy notes that he takes up a lot of room in the classroom. What kinds of “room” are you taking up in your classroom right now, how, and why?

When might you step back during class and lift up student perspectives, or otherwise create room for students’ voices to flourish?

Intervening in discussion infrequently and intentionally shows students that they contribute to the learning happening in the classroom. In the next video, we’ll see a specific activity that McCarthy uses to center student voice in his course. 

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