Educators are now welcome to gain professional development pertaining to anti-racist practices at George Mason University through the school’s Transformative Teaching cohort program.
The program’s origins date back to the 1990s, when Dr. Elizabeth DeMulder – currently a professor in the GMU College of Education And Human Development – joined Professor Hugh Sockett’s Institute for Educational Transformation. That version of the program ran from 1991 to 1999, when the institute was incorporated into the college as the Initiatives in Educational Transformation program.
By 2014, the program was converted into a hybrid program – partly online, partly in-person – called “Transformative Teaching,” by DeMulder and her colleagues, Dr. Jenice View and assistant professor Dr. Stacia M. Stribling.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the program’s in-person elements became difficult, but online instruction had proved effective, so they decided to move the entire program online. This new version of the Transformative Teaching program begins this summer and is currently taking applications.
The program will begin with two courses this summer and will continue for two years until May 2022.
“It sounds like it’s a new program but it actually has roots in several programs that I’ve been involved in all along, and Stacia’s been involved in most of that time,” DeMulder said. “But it’s considered a new program now. And over the course of that 25 or so years, it became more and more evident to us that we needed to have a stronger focus on social justice and anti-racism in particular.”
The program incorporates the work of Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, author of the bestselling book How to Be an Antiracist, and his conception of anti-racism, DeMulder said.
