Step 2: Calling on Students in Equitable Ways

Inclusive instructors looking to cultivate equitable participation think carefully about the ways they structure discussions. One way instructors include a variety of voices in the classroom discussion is by carefully choosing the students they call on to participate. Timothy Patrick McCarthy intentionally calls on students from different groups to promote equitable seminar discussions, even if he needs to wait for students from underrepresented groups to raise their hands. It’s worth the wait. “For a class like this,” explains McCarthy, “where we are talking about issues of equity and equality and race and gender and difference and power and inequality and all of these things, there is nothing more important to a classroom dynamic than making sure that there's an equitable contribution.”

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

Takeaway Tips

Establish the norm (or some equivalent) that all students wishing to participate raise their hands for you to call on them.

Elevate the voices of students from historically marginalized groups. 

Consider writing notes or creating a visual marker of student participation. See the resources for guidelines to participation mapping, one way to track student participation. 

Observe participation patterns in your class, noting in particular how those patterns correlate with your classroom's demographic makeup. Be prepared to make changes to your discussion strategies if you find inequitable patterns.

Related Resources

An article from Life Sciences Education outlines a wealth of practices that promote greater equity in classroom participation. 

Mapping classroom interactions is one way to track student participation and “can be used to consider various dimensions of diversity and their influence.”

Designed to help educators create more inclusive classrooms, Teachly is a technology tool that can help you map classroom interactions. 

Reflection Questions

Does your current facilitation style promote equitable participation? What more could you do? 

How might you incorporate McCarthy’s strategies for calling on students in equitable ways into your own practice?

While McCarthy’s focus on equitable conversation is particularly important for his course content, carefully managing discussions so that students from all groups feel comfortable speaking is important across disciplines. Students learn best when they hear from all of their classmates, not just those who feel most comfortable speaking up. In the next video, we’ll see a technique that brings in new voices even when there are few volunteers. 

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