A Focus on Pedagogy 2026

Across Teaching, Theory, Technologies & Times

–

Strand Call: Race, Cultural Belonging, Skills and Assessment

–

As universities struggle to shore up undergraduate enrollment in an era marked by the twin forces of post-pandemic learning and the rapid technological advancement that informs students’ expectations and learning practices, several teaching imperatives have escalated in visibility and in institutional urgency. That is, in order to meet the moment, universities have once again placed an emphasis on systematic assessment, often framed as measurable outcomes, and transferrable skills.

Instructors are routinely directed to change their pedagogical strategies in order to produce measurability and to make plain the material’s real-life appeal.

These transactional formulations of pedagogy are not new but in the contemporary moment, they are also unfolding against other backdrops which, depending on where you are in the world, range from the concerted recruitment of students of color and first-generation students, to an acknowledgement of indigenous cultures and knowledge.

The conflation of these forces invites questions about how these imperatives impact students’ experience with racial and cultural belonging: what are the implications for these practices for these student? Do these imperatives invite instructors to produce a cultural or racialized way of knowing and seeing? Does a focus on assessment and transferrable skills reify existing cultural and racial harm within universities? Alternatively, do these foci open up spaces of possibility for the production of decolonial and anti-racist knowledge?

–

University of San Francisco

–

Since 1855, the University of San Francisco has dedicated itself to offering a daring and dynamic liberal arts education in the Jesuit, Catholic tradition. As a community, we empower and hold accountable our students, faculty, librarians, staff, administrators, alumni, and community partners to be persons for and with others, to care for our common home, including the native lands on which our campuses reside, and to promote the common good by critically, thoughtfully, and innovatively addressing inequities to create a more humane and just world.

We seek to live USF’s mission by nurturing a diverse, ever-expanding community where persons of all races and ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations, genders, generations, abilities, nationalities, occupations, and socioeconomic backgrounds are honored and accompanied.

We are committed to educating hearts and minds to cultivate the full, integral development of each person and all persons; pursuing learning as a lifelong humanizing and liberating social activity; and advancing excellence as the standard for teaching, scholarship, creative expression, and service. Inspired by a faith that does justice, we strive to humbly and responsibly engage with, and contribute to, the cultural, intellectual, economic and spiritual gifts and talents of the San Francisco Bay Area and the global communities to which we belong..

MoreLess