On Oct. 11 and 12, Bryan Dewsbury. Ph.D., will visit campus as part of the Focus on Teaching and Learning Pathways to Deep Learning series, co-hosted by the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE) and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness (IE). Interested individuals may register online.
Bryan Dewsbury
Dewsbury has a compelling personal narrative about how he fell in love with teaching and became engaged in research about what he terms “deep teaching.” While his field is biology, his approach to engaging all students applies across disciplines, as demonstrated by the recently published “Norton Guide to Equity-Minded Teaching,” which he co-authored, and his 2020 PLOS ONE paper, “Inclusive and active pedagogies reduce academic outcome gaps and improve long-term performance.”
Dewsbury will give a keynote address on Wednesday, Oct. 11, from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the Peter Graham Commons, 114 Bird Library. In this talk, the role that a liberal, inclusive and equity-minded higher education can play in creating and sustaining a socially just society will be reexamined. The behaviors, attitudes, mindsets and strategies that create classrooms where students are prepared to be active participants in an evolving democracy will be considered. Strategies for participants’ own relearning and consideration will also be discussed.
For faculty interested in experimenting with his approach, Dewsbury will lead a workshop the following day. “We Teach Students-Balancing Content and Civic Building in Inclusive Instruction” will be held from 2 to 4 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 12, in the Lundgren Room, 106 Life Sciences Complex.
Bryan Dewsbury is an associate professor of biology at Florida International University where he also is associate director of the STEM Transformation Institute. He is the principal investigator of the Science Education And Society program, where his team conducts research on the social context of education. Dewsbury is a fellow of the John N. Gardner Institute and the RIOS (Racially-Just Inclusive Open Science) Institute.
In addition to co-authoring the book referenced above, Dewsbury is the author of the upcoming book, “What then shall I teach? Rethinking equity in higher education.” He is the founder of the National Science Foundation-funded Deep Teaching Residency, a national workshop aimed at supporting faculty in transforming their classroom to more meaningfully incorporate inclusive practices. Dewsbury conducts faculty development and provides support for institutions interested in transforming their educational practices pertaining to creating inclusive environments and, in this regard, has worked with over 100 institutions across North America, the United Kingdom and West Africa.
Pathways to Deep Learning is a collaboration of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence and the Office of Institutional Effectiveness as part of the Focus on Teaching and Learning series.
