Embedded Files
The first experience of a class is often the syllabus so as faculty we need to interrogate that document to see if we are truly welcoming students into our classroom community, treating them with equity and respect through our tone, and ensuring access to all of the course resources and opportunities. Some faculty begin their classes by inviting students to co-create the syllabus, making modifications to an initial draft and finding a way to share in the crafting of everyone’s responsibilities within the class. Faculty also need to consider whether their syllabi reflect who they are as human beings and how they want to be seen by the students in the class. All of this reflection shows good consistency with our university mission and the collaboration that is an integral part of the Antioch learning environment. Here are some resources to help you make decisions about the tone of your syllabus as well as whether or not you want to include specific statements around such topics as diversity and labor.
Your syllabus is often the first opportunity to introduce you and yourself and your course to your students. As they read the syllabus, students should be able to get a sense of how you will interact with your students: both what you expect from them and what they can expect from you.
Matthew Cheney suggests that “We get used to a bureaucratic academic language that we often just inherit” and recommends that we avoid language that signals we don’t trust students.
“Faculty can use syllabi to demystify the implicit norms and ambiguous processes that characterize college such as how to be a “successful” student. Syllabi can welcome [students] into a classroom where they will be cared for, and validate their pursuit of a college degree and ability to be successful. They can send the message that while students need to work hard in college, faculty are there to support and work in partnership with them. Finally, syllabi can affirm the belonging of racially/ethnically minoritized students in higher education by representing their experiences in the course materials and by deconstructing the presentation of white students and white experiences as the norm.” (Center for Urban Justice: Syllabus Review Guide)
What research has found about the importance of syllabi:
Students notice when the tone is welcoming or condescending. The tone used on a syllabus often influences students' perception of how faculty will teach the course and support their needs (Harnish et al., 2011).
“Students who read less friendly syllabi may believe that their professor does not expect them to be successful, which can create a self-fulfilling prophecy” (Slattery et al., 2014).
When students perceive the syllabus as welcoming and friendly they view the instructor as a partner who enjoys teaching (Harnish et al., 2011).
As part of being inclusive and welcoming to students, we can think critically about the language and tone we use in our course policies. Rather than thinking of the syllabus as only a contract, we can envision it as a document that reflects what you hope students will experience in and remember from your class.
You may choose to include on your syllabus statements that affirm the identities of your students. The samples provided on this page are intended to be examples. If you see language in the samples that reflects your intended tone/culture, pedagogy, and commitment to equity you could copy and paste them or use them as a jumping off point. At AU in accordance with our long tradition of social justice we believe that creating a culture of diversity and inclusion in an educational community can benefit all community members. The syllabus provides opportunities to support that goal. For example, faculty may note gender pronouns on a syllabus, affirming transgender and gender non-conforming community members; ensure currency with language, and avoid terms that might be offensive or dehumanizing. These steps can alert your students to your values, and the values of the university, invite conversation about these important issues, and provide a social justice framework to the class.
This resource is not offering a one-size-fits-all template that can be copied and pasted onto all instructors’ syllabi. Instead, your syllabi should reflect your personal approach as an instructor, keeping in mind the goal of creating a classroom culture where students feel welcomed, validated, and supported.
A democratic hallmark of the multicultural education movement has been to call attention to the reality that schools in the United States serve a highly diverse range of peoples and groups, each with their own evolving forms of cultural knowledge and tradition, and so socially just forms of education should be responsive to this diversity and seek always to find ways to ensure it is included and represented as much as possible in syllabi and curricula.
If the students we teach hail from different economic class statuses and have diverse racial or ethnic backgrounds, if they maintain a wide array of gender identities, sexual orientations, or have varied religious faiths, if they possess an amalgam of many different forms of intelligence and abilities, and possess primary literacy skills in various languages, then the organization of classroom learning must work continually to honor that diversity in responsive ways.
To do so not only helps to maximize minoritized students’ sense of belonging and success through their educational coursework, but it can also assist courses (and their instructors) by drawing upon these differences as available knowledge assets within the learning community, thereby helping to challenge stereotypes and reduce implicit biases amongst class members through the promotion of multiple perspectives. This has the additional benefit for students that they can learn to find educational value in and through their representative differences and so become better prepared for the cultural variability of the ever-evolving heterogeneity of the global world.
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