Creating a Supportive Classroom Climate
As an instructor, you have the ability to conceptualize and shape specific aspects of an inclusive and supportive classroom climate while you plan your curriculum as well as when you move into teaching your courses. From your own experience, you have probably noticed how important the first day of any given course is in communicating to students how they will need to behave for the remainder of the term. Thus, Day 1 is your means to decide how welcome students will feel in the learning environment you create for them, how they perceive of you as a teacher and the approaches you take to teaching your course, how much they will get to interact with other students or you, etc.
For ideas how to intentionally plan your first day in class, see the following resource:
Lang, J. M. How to Teach a Good First Day of Class. Advice Guide. IN The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved from: https://www.chronicle.com/interactives/advice-firstday
On their Classroom Climate webpage, the Eberly Centre at the Carnegie Mellon University has summarized the importance of creating a supportive learning environment by describing “The teaching-learning process [..] as an inherently social act, and as instructors we need to be mindful of the quality of the social and emotional dynamics in our course, because they impact learning and performance. In fact, a well-established body of research has documented the effects of a “chilly classroom climate” on some students or groups of students, in particular women and other minorities (Hall, 1982).”
The following arguments further support efforts in intentional classroom management design and facilitation (Eberly Centre):
Climate regulates the circulation and construction of knowledge. For instance, in an inclusive climate all students are more likely to volunteer different perspectives and thus enrich discussions; conversely, if some students or groups feel that their contributions are not as valued as those of others, they will withdraw from the conversation. As an example, women in technical fields often report feeling undervalued compared to their male peers.
Climate engenders emotions that impact learning. In a productive class, the learning experience is characterized by excitement for discovery, joy, satisfaction and pride at one’s accomplishments. All these positive emotions have the effect of motivating students for further learning. Conversely, if the predominant emotions in a class are fear, shame or embarrassment for being wrong, or boredom and apathy about the content, these negative emotions will be highly demotivating to students (Ford, 1992).
Climate can channel energies away from learning or toward it. For instance, if gay or lesbian students feel it is not safe for them to be out in class, they tend to carefully monitor their participation for fear of inadvertently exposing themselves, limiting their engagement with the material. Conversely, in classes where they feel free to be themselves, they often capitalize on their personal experience of having challenged conventional assumptions by engaging with the material in creative ways (Renn, 1998).
Climate impacts student persistence. When the cumulative direct and indirect messages students perceive communicate that they are not as able as other students and don’t belong in the course, students are less likely to stay in the course, the major, and even in the university (Tinto, 1993).
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