Brescia Faculty Institute

Our Faculty Institute Days offer professional development related to teaching and learning for all Brescia instructors, including contract faculty and instructional staff. 

Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Curriculum and Pedagogy: Embedding Anti-racism and Decolonization

This BFI was a full day workshop about equity, diversity, and inclusion in curriculum and pedagogy.

Embedding anti-racism and decolonization in curriculum and pedagogical practices has become more than a moral imperative, it has become a moral and institutional necessity. In all aspects of academic success such as research, curriculum, teaching, and administration, anti-racism and decolonization is needed in a foundational way to ensure that the creation and sharing of knowledge meets the needs of a diverse Canadian campus culture and global context and creates inclusive and safe classrooms. Educators need to be equipped with the skills and understanding of how to respond to inequities and practice reflexive pedagogy that is diverse in content and approaches to knowledge creation.

This workshop provided participants with foundational understanding, skills, tools and resources to address challenges and barriers equity-deserving groups face in the classroom by:

• Understanding racism and systems of oppression
• Working toward allyship
• Understanding social identities and intersectionality
• Anti-racist and Decolonial practices in curriculum and pedagogy
• Navigating difficult conversations on race in the classroom
• How to embed anti-racism and decolonial frameworks in your syllabus

Outcomes for participants will include being able to:

1. Recognize Inequity
2. Respond to Inequity
3. Redress Inequity
4. Create and Sustain an equitable, anti-racist, and inclusive learning environment

The workshop was facilitated by Dr. Nicole Kaniki and Ladan Mowlid.

Dr. Nicole Kaniki is the Director of Senomi Solutions, a diversity consulting company that supports institutions and organizations to embed equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) best practices for culture change. She is currently also the Director of EDI in Research and Innovation at University of Toronto where she supports EDI efforts across the institution in research practices. Dr. Kaniki is the former Special Advisor on Anti-racism to the President of Western University, and has over six years of experience in research administration and EDI roles. She holds a MSc Kinesiology, and a PhD Health and Rehabilitation Sciences from Western University. She is also currently completing a MA Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Western doing research in Black Feminist Narratives in the Academy. Dr. Kaniki has a passion for social justice and uses an anti-racism and decolonization framework in her EDI work.

Ladan Mowlid is a Higher Education and EDI scholarly-practitioner with experience working in both corporate consulting and at public and private post-secondary institutions. Currently, she is the Senior EDI Program Associate at Ivey where she leads a new initiative that aims to introduce and prepare Black high school students for an academic pathway into business school and eventually a career in business. Ladan holds a Master of Education in Higher Educational Leadership from Mercer University and is currently pursuing her Doctor of Education at the University of Bath where she is researching the professional identity of EDI practitioners at Canadian research institutions.

We expect tea, coffee, water to be available for participants, but due to COVID-19 pandemic restrictions we are not able to provide lunch for attendees.

Below is a link to materials used in the workshop and videos of the presentations:

View Materials & Presentations