Abstract
This literature review examines the research in the last 30 years in relation to university-required diversity courses, as well as highlights areas that have been understudied. Utilizing the social justice rationale for diversity, this review analyzes 25 quantitative and qualitative research articles that address university-required diversity courses. This literature review unpacks the mixed results from quantitative studies as well as analyzes the case studies presented in qualitative research. The results highlight that addressing student bias is an important goal and framework for these courses, but that the ability to shift quantitative measures of bias is not clear. I also argue that research examining student work produced in required diversity courses and course design for strategies is largely absent from the field of study.
Keywords
Introduction
Diversity initiatives in the U.S. education system are far from new, and there is an abundance of studies on strategies to address diversity in the university setting. In a recent literature review completed on diversity initiatives broadly construed, the four categories of initiatives—student support services, curriculum, administration, and policy—were analyzed critically to understand how these measures fall short (Patton et al., 2019). Such a critical evaluation of these approaches to diversity in higher education is greatly needed during a time when universities are searching for new ways to encourage equity—while at the same time often falling back on token inclusivity and representation in the university setting. Inspired by the above-mentioned work of Patton, Sánchez, Mac, and Stewart (2019), this research expands on their analysis of diversity initiatives at the university level not by addressing the broad scope of their research, but rather by taking a deep dive into one very specific and fast-growing arm of curricular diversity initiatives: the required diversity course. Required diversity courses are growing in popularity with approximately 60% of Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) member institutions reporting including diversity courses in their general education curriculum (Hart Research Associates, 2016). To get a sense of the field of research on required diversity courses, this literature review will focus on qualitative and quantitative studies conducted specifically on required diversity courses. With the number of universities using required diversity courses as a means of improving campus climate on the rise, understanding the impacts of these courses is important. Additionally, there are instances of college students themselves pushing for the inclusion of such courses. As a recent example at a state university, students at the University of Oklahoma organized a sit-in demanding (among other things) “shifting the one-time diversity training to a semester-long class taken by all incoming and transfer students” (Jacobo, 2020); the university launched a change to undergraduate requirements to include a new course in fall 2021 partially in response to these protests (Douglas, 2021). Given the increase of the presence of these courses on university campuses and their connection to student-driven activism efforts, a systemic review of the literature focusing specifically on required diversity courses is becoming increasingly necessary.
Analyses of research on these required diversity courses is somewhat underperformed. Modern meta-analyses and literature reviews of diversity initiatives (Denson, 2009; Denson & Bowman, 2017; Patton et al., 2019) provide an important starting place for this discussion, but none summarize distinct findings for required versus nonrequired diversity coursework. I argue that focusing specifically on literature on required, general education curricular diversity initiatives is desperately needed as universities adapt this method to address issues of campus climate and inequity. As mentioned above, more than half of AAC&U institutions report including a diversity course in their general education curriculum, student activism in recent years has called for these exact kinds of courses, and educational researchers have turned to required diversity curriculum as at least part of the solution to addressing issues of campus climate (Denson, Bowman, & Park, 2017; Engberg, Hurtado, & Smith, 2007). However, there are still many questions about these courses that remain unanswered, and a systematic review that combines our collective knowledge in the field of education surrounding these courses can help us to answer questions about the efficacy and impact of these courses, to support universities in implementing such courses in a way that benefits all students, and to understand the effects teaching diversity courses have on their instructors. I hope to contribute to this discourse on the research around diversity courses by conducting a critical literature review of the education research on required diversity courses. This will allow me to highlight some trends made clear by these articles, including the gaps in the ways these courses are often framed, what we see them actually addressing, and the lack of studies related to student work in such courses. This literature review is guided by the following questions:
Which aspects of these university-required diversity courses have been researched thoroughly, and which aspects have been understudied?
What does the literature in the last 30 years suggest about the framing, purpose, and effectiveness of university-required diversity courses for undergraduate students? What is the impact for stakeholders in these courses based on the answers to the previous questions?
How can the research literature support pedagogy and praxis for those of us teaching or coordinating such courses?
In this article, I will first draw on a critical education framework that understands the value of diversity courses as not pragmatically necessary for student success in the global economy (although, such insights are becoming increasingly necessary) but instead as crucial in the struggle to position universities as sites of resistance to racism and other oppressive, normalizing forces. Next, I will discuss the available research in two broad categories—quantitative studies (the majority) and qualitative studies. I will analyze the trends across these studies based on my research question and theoretical framing. I conclude this paper with a call for two interconnected approaches to required diversity course research. First, it is important to reexamine the ways that the learning in these courses is framed to think about the impact on marginalized students. Second, the research done on diversity courses should highlight student writing and assignments, as well as course content and design, as this has not been a primary focus of any of the available articles.
Conceptual Framework
Broadly speaking, a “university-required diversity course” is any course focused on diversity that undergraduate students must take to graduate. These are separate from elective courses that focus on diversity and usually have their own designation on student transcripts. This clarification is necessary because, although the content in such courses may be similar, students who elect to take courses focused on diversity will most likely reflect a different population than the student body at large who are required to attend diversity classes. The number of diversity courses required varies largely by institution, but typically one or two semester-long courses are required. Diversity courses are often embedded, meaning one course can be used to fulfill the diversity requirement along with other graduation requirements (Disch, 1993). In terms of course content, the literature reveals several aspects of diversity on which these courses usually focus. One consistency is that courses should address multiple kinds of diversity or oppression (e.g., race, class, gender, sexuality, etc.) that comprise the focus of the course and the learning outcomes (Bowman, 2010; Castellanos & Cole, 2015; Duffee & Bailey, 1991; Owens, 2005; Pickens, Bachay, & Treadwell, 2009). Another common attribute of these courses is that they provide opportunities for students to have interactions with social and cultural groups different from their own (Hurtado, Mayhew, & Engberg, 2012; Nelson Laird & Engberg, 2011). Finally, many of the studies reported opportunities for students to self-reflect in writing or group discussion (Chang, 2002; Duffee & Bailey, 1991; Nelson Laird & Engberg, 2011). As a framework for understanding what some of these common elements of diversity courses are attempting to target or achieve, Denson (2009) suggests that diversity coursework targets cognitive rather than emotional mechanisms, because the focus is on exposing students to new knowledge and perspectives. Unlike peer interventions that target emotional mechanisms through exposure to people of other identities, the type of bias targeted by coursework are attitudes and cognition rather than emotions and behavior (p. 809).
When arguing for the necessity of diversity initiatives in higher education, a variety of rationales have been used to justify their importance. While the educational/diversity rationale, which argues that diversity is beneficial for all students, is especially popular in the debate around affirmative action and its legal limitations, this study instead uses the social justice rationale. Although this rationale is most often applied to debates around affirmative action (Bell, 2003; Moses & Chang, 2006), I suggest in this research that this approach can similarly be applied to required diversity curriculum. The social justice rationale is a forward-looking, moral justification, which argues that we have a moral obligation, as a just society, to make sure that minoritized groups have access to higher education (Moses & Chang, 2006). In contrast to the arguments that focus on the educational benefits of interacting with diverse peers for all students, the social justice rational instead takes the view that supporting marginalized students can be an end of itself. Often, when universities or administrators refer to “all students,” they (sub)consciously envision white, traditional students (Castrellón, 2021). The social justice rationale, then, avoids relying on rhetoric that only frames the value of these courses in how white students are likely to benefit from interaction with diverse peers, an argument that is ultimately rooted in interest convergence, or how white interests can benefit from initiatives that benefit people of color (Bell, 2003, 2004). Drawing on this idea of interest convergence, Moses and Chang (2006) caution that “the reliance on the diversity rationale . . . distracts from the larger issue of social justice” (p. 9); relying on diversity for diversity’s sake can weaken the pursuit of social justice in higher education. Of course, the framing of required diversity components by higher education institutions is complicated by legal concerns—namely the establishment of the educational/diversity rationale in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke supreme court decision of 1978 (Moses & Chang, 2006). Although these are important legal considerations, this article is concerned specifically with how the research literature frames the purpose and outcomes of such courses. One question that follows from the debate around diversity versus social justice framings is what do educators and researchers consider success as a result of these courses?
This review takes this critical approach that views the purpose of education as disrupting oppression. In terms of applying this to university required diversity course settings, this means that my view on the purpose of these courses differs in significant ways from some of the language universities use to position them (Moses, 2010). My view of the purpose of university-required diversity courses closely aligns with the social justice argument of a forward looking, moral obligation on the part of universities to redress past wrongs and ensure equal access to populations who continue to be marginalized by higher education institutions. Given this framework, I approached my review to build understandings of the questions researchers have pursued related to these common university requirements and what questions remain unaddressed related to the justice-centered aims that are vital to fostering diversity and inclusivity in the higher education environment. In the discussion, I will return to the argument that the measures employed to discuss student outcomes display a general emphasis on improving (majority) students’ awareness of bias and reducing said bias. I believe that this framing, while important, lacks a crucial focus on how these courses can potentially increase access to higher education institutions afforded us by a social justice–based framing of these courses and research. I conclude this article by wondering what research that does follow this rationale might look like.
Method
In searching for studies, I first searched OneSearch 1 using the term “diversity requirement.” My interest in this systematic review is to focus on university-required diversity courses, which I (and others included in this study) define as courses required for all undergraduates as part of the general education requirements in order to graduate that also contain a significant emphasis on diversity (i.e., race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc.). To make sure that my search only yielded results that focused specifically on required diversity courses and not on any of the other abundant work on diversity initiatives more broadly, I used the limiter “requirement” to focus only on courses that were a requirement for graduation. Further, because this systematic review aims to learn what the existing research can tell us about the impacts of these courses as well as give insight into best practices in implementing such required curricular components, I limited my search to qualitative and quantitative studies in the form of journal articles, books, and book chapters. I excluded more public-facing sources such as newspaper articles, magazine articles, and newsletters as they lack the kind of rigor found in studies published in books or journals. I also excluded book reviews, microfilms, reference materials, web resources, patents, and transcripts, as these items do not contain original research or analysis. In addition, I excluded conference proceedings, as the information available online was not enough to conduct detailed analysis of the findings and methods. Finally, I excluded “gray material” such as government documents and unpublished dissertation and theses work. This was a difficult decision as one potential pitfall of delimiting these types of resources is publication bias that does not see studies with nonsignificant effects as readily published (Alexander, 2020). However, as we will see in the results, numerous studies published in major journals showed nonsignificant outcomes on university students who had taken a required diversity course. As it is very difficult to prove the rigor of “gray material,” because no peer review of any kind is conducted on such work, I ultimately opted to exclude them, as the published work in this area seemed to include outcomes of all kinds. From these 2823 articles, books, and book chapters, 1 I further limited the topic to education, which mainly excluded medical diversity courses or diversity requirements in the workforce that did not fit my search parameter. I chose to exclude fields outside of education because my research questions (particularly the third research question) are aimed at understanding the impacts of these courses on students and teachers, as well as mining the existing literature to support those of us in higher education who are involved in developing or teaching such courses. I believe that limiting the search to studies in the field of education helps me to focus more clearly on answering those questions. After limiting myself to only works in the fields of education, I went through the remaining 579 results by year. The results yielded research articles from the last 30 years (starting in July 2020 when data was gathered) and failed to yield results before the year 1991. I suspect this is because of the relatively recent emergence of required diversity courses in the 1980s and 1990s (Patton et al., 2019).
As I decided which publications to include, I had to make some decisions about what to consider a “diversity requirement.” For instance, there are many studies on changing student attitudes in elective diversity courses. However, this is fundamentally different from a required course (Bowman, 2010). Studies on elective diversity courses were not included because the self-selection process of students enrolled in an elective versus a required diversity course will be very different, and students who choose to enroll in courses that focus on diversity are probably more likely to have favorable views on diversity to begin with. 3 So, in my search for diversity courses, I limited my field to studies that identified the classes under review as fulfilling a university diversity requirement or were designated as a university diversity course—in other words, only research that looked at classes that all undergraduate students had to take to graduate. It is worth noting that required diversity courses did not have to be the only focus of the article to be included, but it did have to be a significant aspect of the research. 4 I also excluded studies that focused on graduate-level courses, although this could be a fruitful avenue for future study. 5 Because I am interested, for the purposes of this analysis, in the impacts of diversity requirements on the general undergraduate population, I also excluded diversity course requirements that were designed specifically for students from one major (for example, diversity courses for teacher candidates or pre-med students). 6 Diversity requirements for specific majors or for graduate students is, I argue, a significantly different topic that needs its own, separate analysis. From the original 579 results, and after narrowing based on these criteria, I located 21 results that focused on undergraduate-required diversity initiatives. When I finished reading these initial results, I employed a researcher checking strategy (Alexander, 2020), where I searched specifically for articles written by authors that appeared multiple times in the literature. This yielded a further five articles. Next, I conducted referential backtracking (Alexander, 2020) to ensure that the search parameters had not excluded viable literature. I read through the reference pages of the 26 articles and book chapters included and identified seven additional articles that had been missing from the initial search, but that fit within my constraints. I added this additional step of reviewing the works cited by the articles in the review because I hoped to eliminate missed entries due to search limitations. 7 This process resulted in 33 total studies reviewed in this research (see Table 1).
Results of search terms and limiters
Before I turn to the results of the analysis, I first want to provide some descriptive information of the studies, including the types of methodology used, the types of journals articles came from, and the kinds of universities represented. Table 2 includes a brief contextualization of the diversity requirement under study, the data and sample, the method employed for analysis, and a very brief summary of the findings. Of the 33 articles and one book chapter reviewed, 17 studies were purely quantitative. Fourteen studies in the analysis were qualitative. Finally, two studies employed a mixed-methods 8 approach that included both survey data from students and a qualitative component (in one, syllabi content analysis, and in another, reflection on course content creation). All of the studies that reported the information (nine studies either did not examine a course or did not clarify whether the course under study was the only diversity requirement available to students) examined a course or courses that were one of a menu of courses that could be used to fulfill a university-wide diversity requirement. However, it is somewhat difficult to tell the impact this approach to diversity-required courses has on students, as only two articles examined the course content or syllabi across different courses within the diversity requirement; this is a concern I will return to in the discussion. Finally, there was a great deal of variety in the kinds of universities analyzed across the various studies. Institutions in the analysis included liberal arts colleges (2 studies), research universities (7 studies), community colleges (1 study), primarily white institutions (5 studies), private universities (5 studies), state universities (4 studies), public universities (6 studies), Hispanic-serving institutions (1 study), and regional universities (1 study). 9 The majority of studies, 27 of the 33 total studies, were published in education journals, with two-thirds of those studies belonging to specifically higher-education journals. The remainder of studies were published in journals on psychology (4 studies), sociology (1 study), modern languages (1 study), and theology (1 study). 10 Despite limiting my search to education, I was able to include many interdisciplinary articles, as evidenced above.
Summary of diversity course and university context, sample and data, methods, and findings
Limitations and Positionality
This literature review is intentionally limited in scope to focus only on one very small aspect of diversity initiatives. This review would pair well with a similar fine-grained analysis of other aspects of diversity initiatives (for example, administration and policy as identified by Patton, Sánchez, Mac, and Stewart, 2019). This review also focuses only on undergraduate students, so expanding this look at diversity requirements to include teacher education programs or graduate programs would also be a fruitful direction in which to continue the conversation. Finally, analyzing how universities are framing diversity across the country by examining their general education requirements would be a helpful way to further this discussion. My own positionality will also impact this literature review. I have taught a required diversity course at my university for four years; having this “insider” view on diversity courses contributes to my view on this research. Although I am an “insider” in some ways, I am also an “outsider” in others. As a white Latina, I realize the burden that has historically been placed on faculty and graduate students of color in teaching these kinds of courses (Perry et al., 2009). Therefore, I think it is important for me to use my privilege to call attention to this pattern of overburdening faculty and graduate students of color, which I hope that this literature review does. Finally, my own research focus is on literacy instruction and composition, and I have spent a great deal of time working in writing centers and teaching college-level writing. Therefore, perhaps it is inevitable that I would notice the lack of student work (namely writing) that is absent in this research, while perhaps missing other gaps.
Results
I will now turn to the findings of the 33 articles under study. I have broken down the findings into two separate sections: one for quantitative studies and one for qualitative studies. Although I know this is an imperfect metric and does require that I address mixed-methods studies in two separate sections in the paper, the trends across qualitative and quantitative studies are similar enough that separating the studies in this way supports my analysis. Broadly speaking, my findings show that quantitative studies are mostly interested in measuring students’ awareness of inequity and feelings of prejudice, usually at the beginning and end of taking a diversity requirement. Specific counts follow in more detail, but the majority of studies that employ quantitative methods attempt to measure change in students’ prejudice in some way. However, these studies do not agree on the actual effect of these courses, as findings are quite mixed. This framework of reducing student bias does not support a social justice rationale, although they are an incredibly important piece of information to further building this argument. In turning to the qualitative studies, studies mainly trace instructors’ experiences in teaching these courses, either in the form of self-reflection, interviews, or student feedback. One piece that I note as missing from this body of work is a substantive analysis of student work in the literature. I will return to this point in my discussion, but honoring and understanding student experiences in fine-grained analysis is incredibly important to building a social justice rationale in required diversity course literature.
Quantitative Studies: Measuring Students’ Prejudice
I analyze first the framing of how these 17 quantitative studies understand the problem of required diversity curricular initiatives. Next, I discuss the methods employed and information about participants and data used, and note any methodological shortcomings that I identify. Finally, I discuss the results of these studies, which again are somewhat mixed. Information on sample sizes, detailed information on participants, and university settings can be found in Table 2.
Finding 1: The goal of university-required diversity courses, as framed in the quantitative literature, is often to reduce student bias against marginalized groups
Ten studies attempt to measure bias or awareness of bias against women, people of color, or LGBTQIA+ people before and after the course, although there is quite a bit of variation. In one of the earliest quantitative studies, Chang (2002) explains that the goal of diversity courses, in part, is to “[challenge] students to think more deeply about their assumptions concerning race, ethnicity, gender, class, sexual orientation, or physical disabilities” (p. 22). Bidell et al. (1994) 11 , Case (2007b), Chang (2002), Hogan and Mallott (2005), and Radloff (2010) all focus their research on understanding changes in students’ attitudes and prejudice toward students of color and their opinions on race-based interventions and equal opportunity structures. Denson (2009) uses similar framings, but in the form of meta-analysis. Interestingly, while “diversity requirements” are often described in similar ways to Chang’s (2002) definition, which includes many different aspects of identity, all of the studies included in this analysis measured student prejudice in regards to either race (Case, 2007b; Chang, 2002; Denson, 2009; Henderson-King & Kaleta, 2000; Hogan & Mallott, 2005; Radloff, 2010) or gender and sexuality (Henderson-King & Kaleta, 2000; Case, 2007a; Case and Stewart, 2009; Case & Stewart, 2010; Cole, Case, Rios, & Curtin, 2011). Although many studies hoped to see reduction in student prejudice, Henderson-King and Kaleta (2000) propose that, unlike the traditional wisdom that college will increase students’ tolerance and civic engagement, students will actually become more intolerant over the course of their time in college. They argue that diversity courses actually have a “buffering effect” (p. 146) that does not necessarily reduce prejudice but prevents it from increasing. Three studies, Case (2007a) and Case and Stewart (2009, 2010), look at the effects of psychology courses that meet a diversity requirement on students’ levels of sexism and homophobia, and one study, Cole, Case, Rios, and Curtin (2011), examines measures of blatant racism along with endorsement of Protestant work ethics.
There are exceptions to this trend to foreground bias reduction (seven total studies). Nelson Laird, Engberg, and Hurtado (2005); Castellanos and Cole (2015); and Cole and Zhou (2014) center their studies on understanding how diversity courses promote students’ civic engagement and students’ commitment to social action engagement. Other outcomes of interest include students’ moral reasoning (Hurtado, Mayhew, & Engberg, 2012); students’ experiences with folks who are different from them, as well as their desire for multicultural interactions (You & Matteo, 2013); faculty framing of the courses they teach (Nelson Laird & Engberg, 2011); and students’ psychological well-being and orientation to diversity (Bowman, 2010). Specifically looking to compare required diversity courses with other courses with high and low inclusivity of diversity, Nelson Laird and Engberg (2011) use surveys of faculty to analyze the kinds of content included in required diversity courses, courses that are highly inclusive of diversity (but do not count as a diversity requirement), and courses that are not very inclusive of diversity. This study is unique in that it uses faculty (rather than student) surveys to compare content of these studies. Moving away from measuring student bias reduction, as in these studies, questions assumptions that “diversity coursework is uniformly beneficial” (Bowman, 2010, p. 544). Importantly, Bowman (2010) hypothesizes disequilibrium (the discomfort and resistance around learning about diversity-related content) as a driving framework to understanding the usefulness of required diversity courses. Students’ levels of well-being and diversity orientation may actually become worse after only one course before improving on both counts after two or more courses because of the discomfort associated with learning about diversity. Bowman’s (2010) is one of very few studies to hypothesize a nonlinear relationship with diversity course work and may also help to elucidate some of the varying results that we see in these studies.
Finding 2: Eleven of the studies included in this literature review use very similar pre- and post-test survey methods
Pre- and post-test designs were highly favored, but variations exist among the treatment and control groups. Some surveys use student responses before taking the diversity course as the control group and responses after taking the course as the treatment group. Case (2007a, 2007b), Case and Stewart (2009, 2010), Bidell et al. (1994), and You and Matteo (2013) all use pre- and post-tests administered to students enrolled in diversity requirements at the beginning and end of the semester. The four studies authored or coauthored by Kim Case document students’ demographic information, their awareness of privilege, their support for social justice initiatives, and their hostility toward minoritized groups. Bidell et al. (1994) used a small sample to measure students’ cognitive understanding of racism; they were the only study to use qualitative questionnaires with short-answer questions that were later coded by the researchers. The researchers convincingly displayed strong interrater reliability; however, students were informed of the purpose of the study, which may have seriously impacted the results. Chang (2002) also includes only students enrolled in required diversity courses, using a thorough approach that randomly sampled students in all 25 of the possible courses that fulfilled the diversity requirements across different subject areas. Deviating slightly from previous studies, Chang (2002) uses a between-subjects design, where surveys were sent at the beginning of the course to some students (control group) and at the end of the course to some students (treatment group). The surveys included demographic questions (race, gender, age, parents’ education level) and modern racism scale (MRS) questions including statements like “It is easy to understand the anger of Black people in America” and “Black should not push themselves where they are not wanted” (p. 29).
Another common approach was to compare pre- and post-survey responses for students enrolled in a required diversity course (the treatment group) and students not enrolled in such a course (the control group). Case and Stewart (2010); Cole, Case, Rios, and Curtin (2011); Henderson-King and Kaleta (2000); Hurtado, Mayhew, and Engberg (2012); and Nelson Laird, Engberg, and Hurtado (2005) use such an approach to conduct their analyses, with some variation. Cole et al. (2011) employ an OLS regression analysis, hypothesizing that student consciousness of diversity, racism, and privilege will increase for treatment group students, but that actual comfort with racial groups different than their own will be highly impacted by student empathy. Hurtado, Mayhew, and Engberg (2012) measured students moral reasoning and critical-thinking skills, controlling for pre-test measures for moral reasoning to compare the change in students’ moral reasoning between the pre- and post-test in the treatment and control groups. Henderson-King and Kaleta (2000) use a feelings thermometer rather than a traditional survey. Nelson Laird, Engberg, and Hurtado (2005) used structural equation modeling to measure students’ commitment to social action engagement and the quality of the interactions that they have with other students who are members of races different from their own.
Methodological concerns in these studies largely come from samples and cofounding variables. For example, Henderson-King and Kaleta (2000) do not control for students’ previous enrollment in a diversity course, meaning that students in the control group are not currently enrolled in a diversity course but may have been previously. Other studies include a very limited number of confounding variables. Cole and Zhou (2014) only control for race, gender, and precollege civic mindedness, and Radloff (2010) does not use any demographic control variables. Students involved in these surveys may also skew toward dominant groups (which is also an issue in the qualitative studies). Case and Stewart (2009, 2010) opted to remove from the studies students who self-identified as LGB to focus only on the “attitude change among heterosexuals” (2009, p. 5). Similarly, Bidell et al. (1994) and Radloff (2010) chose to only include white students in the study, and Cole and Zhou (2014) excluded international and multiracial students from their sample.
Controlling for the number of diversity courses taken by students, as stated above as a limitation in Henderson-King and Kaleta’s (2000) research, is critically important and a question that has no clear answer. In the largest study included here, Bowman (2010) surveyed 4,500 students’ freshman year of college at 19 universities. This survey asked students for demographic information, academic information, information about their high school, the number of diversity courses they had taken, and measures of their psychological well-being (the outcome variable). Hogan and Mallott (2005) also used the MRS and added variables on students’ opinions about reverse discrimination, their willingness to take nonrequired diversity courses, and their awareness of racism as currently existing. Importantly, their sample included students who had previously taken a diversity course, students who were currently enrolled in a diversity course, and students who had never taken one. Radloff (2010) also attempted to measure how many diversity courses students had taken (0–2 courses) and their impact on student responses on the MRS. One significant concern in this study, as mentioned above, is that it appears from the writing that the only independent control variable was the number of diversity courses taken. One interesting study is Cole and Zhou’s (2014) longitudinal regression analysis, examining changes in students’ civic engagement from precollege to after graduation, including many required diversity courses and many different diversity initiatives in their analysis.
Only two quantitative studies turn from student data. Nelson Laird and Engberg (2011) use Nelson Laird’s “diversity inclusivity model” to situation college courses along a spectrum from “not at all inclusive to highly inclusive” of diversity (p. 121); they used data from the 2007 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement to compare faculty teaching three kinds of courses: required diversity courses, courses highly inclusive of diversity, and courses not highly inclusive of diversity. One serious limitation to the study, in my opinion, is that when sorting the nondiversity requirement courses into high and low diversity inclusivity, they chose a cut point of 3.5 out of 4 on the Nelson-Laird’s inclusivity scale, meaning that any course below a 3.5 on the scale is marked as low diversity inclusion. They say that this decision was “somewhat arbitrary” (p. 125) and appeared to have more to do with keeping sample sizes equal. When they turn to their findings comparing low and high diversity inclusivity courses, I believe that this cut-point decision is a much bigger factor than they suggest here. Castellanos and Cole (2015) employ a mixed-methods study of students enrolled in a diversity requirement course. They analyzed the content and syllabus of each course and classified each course using a transformation of Bennett’s (2001) genres of multicultural education—curricular reform, multicultural competence, societal equity, and equity pedagogy (p. 795).
Finding 3: The results of these studies are quite mixed
Eight of the quantitative studies found positive results from students’ enrollment in diversity courses. Chang (2002) found that students at the end of their diversity course had statistically significant more favorable attitudes toward African Americans than students who were at the beginning of their diversity course. Other studies reported that both men and women had lower levels of hostile sexism and prejudice against gay men and lesbians at the end of the diversity course (Case, 2007a), as well as increased awareness of male privilege (Case, 2007a), heterosexual privilege (Case & Stewart, 2010), support for affirmative action, and support for gay marriage (Case & Stewart). However, men still displayed higher sexism at the end of the course than women had at the beginning of the course (Case, 2007a, p. 429). The results of Radloff’s (2010) analysis suggests that the results of diversity requirements may not take root in one semester alone, with findings illustrating less resistance to race-based policies from students having taken two diversity courses. However, this study is less rigorous than similar studies 12 and should be interpreted cautiously. Nelson Laird, Engberg, and Hurtado (2005) found that enrollment in a diversity course positively influenced students’ interest in social action engagement and that it increased the quality of interaction with diverse peers (p. 468). They also highlight the important difference in required and nonrequired diversity coursework by focusing on students’ levels of interest in diversity-related coursework more broadly—what they called “accentuation effects”—as well as students’ civil action engagement: “students who were more committed to social action engagement tended to take a diversity course, which in turn strengthened this attitude” (p. 469). Hurtado, Mayhew, and Engberg (2012) found that students enrolled in diversity courses showed increased moral reasoning over the course of the semester at a statistically significant level, compared to the nondiversity control group. Their findings were also important in that changes in moral reasoning over the course of one semester are often quite small, and so significant results are promising. Finally, Bidell et al. (1994) found that about half of white students enrolled in their diversity requirement class moved either one or two levels in their self-created model—a significant change—while about half stayed at the same place as when they started. However, as mentioned earlier, this model was never validated. Finally, Cole and Zhou (2014) reported positive relationships with college diversity requirements and students’ civic engagement. Their survey results at the beginning and end of students’ time in college show that enrollment in one or more multicultural courses (as required by the general education curriculum) was statistically significant when correlated with increased civic engagement.
Five quantitative studies had more complicated results and suggest that the outcome might have more to do with student identity or course content. The significance of the results may have to do with the kind of content in these courses. Hogan and Mallott (2005) overall found that the students currently taking a diversity requirement and students who had completed one showed sustained awareness of racism, but only the former showed reduced antagonism toward minorities. They speculate that while “the denial component may have been relatively easy to modify because it is fundamentally a belief stereotype rooted in ignorance and misunderstanding,” which can be improved by presenting students with facts, the other two components are more difficult to change because they are “defensive emotional/motivational reactions” (p. 123). The effectiveness of learning in diversity courses could also be largely dependent on the course content. In studying students’ desire for multicultural interactions and actual intercultural experiences, You and Matteo (2013) found that not all of the courses that fulfilled a diversity requirement had statistically significant changes in multicultural experiences. Instead, the only two courses that had “structured interaction with people of different backgrounds” (p. 64) integrated into their syllabi were also the only courses to have a statistically significant increase in multicultural experience and multicultural desire. This suggests that students’ being able to interact with their peers may have more of an impact than learning about the material without these interactions, although causal claims here cannot be made. There were also no statistically significant changes in multicultural experiences or desires based on the number of diversity courses students took. In examining syllabi, Castellanos and Cole (2015) found that the majority of courses included curricular reform that includes marginalized voices, but none of the courses “[emphasize] the transformation of hidden attitudes . . . instructional strategies . . . and practices that disadvantage . . . underserved students of color” (p. 798).
Bowman (2010) found that the effects of diversity requirements vary greatly depending on student identity. Students who had taken two or more diversity courses evidenced the highest psychological well-being, whereas students who had taken only one diversity course showed the lowest. This matches Bowman’s hypothesis that the first diversity course may increase disequilibrium, whereas following courses may improve psychological well-being—a nonlinear effect. Importantly, the study found that the results were quite different for men compared to women, for wealthy students compared to working- and middle-class students, and white students compared to students of color. White students and wealthy students benefitted from taking multiple courses compared to a single course, and there were greater benefits for men than women for taking any number of courses. One caveat, as Bowman himself points out, is that there is no separation between required and nonrequired courses in this study. However, because the findings include required diversity courses, the idea that there may be a nonlinear relationship between diversity coursework and students’ relationships to diversity-related content is highly important, especially for administrators and educators looking to measure the outcomes of these courses. Cole, Case, Rios, and Curtin (2011) found that students of all races were “less likely to deny the existence of blatant racism and were more aware of White privilege” after taking the diversity course (p. 402). Similar to Bowman (2010) they found that white students’ enrollment in a diversity course “was associated with increased intersectional consciousness and decreased endorsement of the Protestant work ethic” while “no such effect was observed for students of color” on those items (p. 403). When looking at students’ civic engagement as the outcome, Castellanos and Cole (2015) found that “courses that emphasize society equity have . . . greater gains experienced by students of color” (p. 805). These findings raise very important questions about who these courses are really for, and the relationship between content and student identity.
Three of the quantitative studies showed nonsignificant changes in students’ attitudes based on their enrollment in diversity courses. Henderson-King and Kaleta (2000) found that students not enrolled in the required diversity course rated statistically significantly less positive feelings toward Latinx people, African Americans, men, and women between the beginning and ending of the semester. However, the students enrolled in the diversity course did not show a change in either direction at the end of the semester (the only exception was a statistically significant positive change in women’s attitudes toward feminists). So, while these courses may not increase positive feelings toward marginalized groups, they may halt the negative perceptions that seem to be developing over time in college in this study. Additionally, although Chang (2002) found that students in his study who were enrolled in the diversity requirement developed more positive attitudes toward African Americans, he also found that students who were enrolled in a second diversity course did not have more positive attitudes, which suggests that such courses do not have a compounding effect in terms of their effectiveness. Case (2007b) found negative associations in students’ levels of prejudice after taking the required psychology of race and gender course. Prejudice against most racial groups did not change at all and, although there was a statistically significant change in students’ awareness of white privilege, racism, their own white guilt, and support for affirmative action, the author admits that the practical changes were very small. More alarmingly, prejudice against Latinx people increased in Case’s study. Although Case is not able to directly explain this phenomenon, she posits that it may be due to course content or the increase of Latinx people around the university.
Why are the results so inconclusive? Denson’s (2009) meta-analysis of diversity initiatives (curricular and noncurricular) can help us summarize these disparate results. Denson examined 27 research articles on diversity initiatives and added a quantitative synthesis of effect sizes using hierarchical linear modeling and descriptive results. Denson examined not just required diversity initiatives (although some were included), but also cocurricular and nonrequired diversity content. One important finding from Denson’s work is that more rigorous studies (i.e., studies with better designs) tended to have smaller effect sizes than less rigorous ones. Overall, though, their modeling of the results in the literature is that “diversity-related activities show a moderate effect on reducing racial bias” (p. 823). This systematic review of the quantitative literature shows a similar trend in regard to required diversity courses, with the majority showing positive gains.
The results for the quantitative studies vary greatly and only show reduction of student bias and prejudice in some cases. Some studies find that enrollment in required diversity courses decreases students’ levels of prejudice toward people of color, women, and LGBTQIA+ people (Bidell et al., 1994; Case, 2007a; Case & Stewart, 2009, 2010; Nelson Laird, Engberg, & Hurtado, 2005; Radloff, 2010). Other studies, however, showed negligible or negative results on students’ levels of prejudice (Case, 2007b; Henderson-King & Kaleta, 2000), or findings that suggest that the outcomes depend largely on the individual class or on student identity (Bowman, 2010; Castellanos & Cole, 2015; Chang, 2002; Cole, Case, Rios, & Curtin, 2011; Hogan & Mallott, 2005; You & Matteo, 2013). As researchers, one trap that we need to be careful to avoid is overinflating the impact of these courses. To be clear, I strongly believe that diversity courses as a requirement are necessary for undergraduates, and the literature shows promise that they are important to the university curriculum. I also do not believe that these results mean that students cannot learn difficult, cognitively dissonant content, but rather that it is worth thinking about the ways that we deliver this information to students. These mixed results may suggest that the goal of reducing bias by mandating diversity requirements alone will probably not be effective over the course of one or two semesters. Diversity requirements most likely need to be combined with a variety of approaches (Cole & Zhou, 2014; Goodman & Bowman, 2014). Other studies that aimed to measure a variety of outcomes help us to expand this discussion and think about the goals of these kinds of courses. In addition to instruments that measured bias, researchers also attempted to understand the impact of diversity requirements on commitment to social action engagement (Nelson Laird, Engberg, & Hurtado, 2005), students’ resistance to race-based policies (Radloff, 2010), the extent to which students can interact with their peers (You & Matteo, 2013), and their civic engagement (Castellanos & Cole, 2015). The studies that focus on engagement and its possibly related impact on broader social change seem most committed to an outlook that is forward facing, like Moses and Chang’s (2006) social justice rationale for diversity content.
Qualitative Studies: Contextualizing Student and Teacher Experiences
The 14 remaining studies in the analysis, which I will turn to now, are qualitative. Across the qualitative literature, three findings emerge. First, qualitative studies tended to include details of instructors’ experiences teaching required diversity content, either in the form of interviews, case studies, self-studies, or student evaluations, revealing the difficulty of teaching such courses. Instructors report resistance to the course content, which can be exacerbated by student perceptions of people of color as more biased on issues of equity. Second, relatively few qualitative studies addressed student experiences of the course or included student projects or papers generated in the course. Third, these studies detail the kinds of emotional labor that goes into teaching required diversity courses, and how that labor often disproportionately lands on the backs of those with less institutional power.
Finding 4: Strategies for instructors and administrators to implement based on resistance to diversity courses were present in eight of the studies
Duffee and Bailey (1991) offer one of the earliest case studies, focusing on their experience implementing the first course to fulfill a diversity requirement, a criminal justice course, at SUNY Albany. They ultimately found that the students (the majority of whom were white with a few African American and Latinx students) were very resistant to the diversity aspect of the course and that the reaction from students was “generally negative” (p. 148). Most of the students were not interested in hearing about the historical context of current policies. They also found that most of the students were not interested in hearing about the social contexts of these policies and wanted to relegate all problems to the past, as many students were unwilling to admit that there were current issues of injustice in the legal system. The authors conclude that, even though the students were largely resistant to the course content, such response underscored the need for this type of course: “In our view, the evidence of the types of resistance we encountered more than justifies the presence of such courses or other attempts to include diversity content in the curriculum” (p. 154). Disch (1993) also highlights early struggles to make diversity courses happen, in her case at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Disch provides insight 13 into the types of negotiations that go into curricular decisions of implementing a required diversity course. Of note is the resistance to a two-course sequence from faculty senate at her institution, as well as her advice for institutions looking to institute similar requirements to avoid the “‘political correctness’ debate” 14 and instead approach the issue from an educational rationale (p. 199)—designed to combat resistance to the creation of such a course. Although, this recommendation goes against the social justice rationale proposed by Moses and Chang (2006) in which this review is situated.
It would be easy to relegate these findings as a product of the times (after all, these studies are now 30 years old) if not for the persistence of similar outcomes in more recent studies. More recent studies articulate different theoretical and pedagogical strategies to address student resistance. One approach is putting students in the shoes of the “other” using Freirean pedagogy. Owens (2005) discusses an assignment where students choose a religion that is not their own and act as a member of that religion for the entire semester. Owens identifies one (in my opinion, major) concern with her approach, that “we risk the students’ becoming once again colonizers who take what they need or want from a culture and move on” (p. 250), but then she brushes it off just as quickly, saying that “first-person speech personalizes, unifies, and humanizes” (p. 251), thereby making colonization impossible in her view. Similarly, Doucet, Grayman-Simpson, and Shapses Wertheim (2013) also rely on Freire and transformative learning theory for an assignment called “becoming the minority,” where students immerse themselves in a culture different from their own. I feel that both studies seem to lack an analysis of the fact that the experience of marginalization is not just numerical, but rather systemic. Other studies relate ideas about depoliticizing the content, similar to Disch’s (1993) earlier suggestion. Martinez (2014) discusses her experiences as a woman of color teaching a course that fulfilled a math requirement, compared with teaching a course that fulfilled the diversity requirement. In the math course, she found that students “often appeared less defensive and uncomfortable [than in the diversity course] because we could always turn to the statistical evidence” (pp. 76–77). Although Martinez acknowledges that this approach can be problematic, she believes that it is a “developmentally appropriate mechanism” (p. 77). Perry et al. (2009) heard similar suggestions from the 20 instructors of color they interviewed about teaching a diversity course. Instructors reported trying to make the subject matter less of a direct attack on the students in the classroom by “depoliticizing” (p. 96). The authors (who also self-identify as people of color) are critical about whether this approach subverts the intentions of these courses. Finally, instructors report being deeply concerned with connecting issues in the classroom with bigger concepts in students’ lives. Miller and Pouraskari (2019) interviewed faculty in the wake of the 2016 presidential election, revealing that faculty were grappling with relating the election to historical contexts and providing students an opportunity for civil discourse. The authors express concern that traditional understandings of civil discourse do not support marginalized students. Winkler (2018) also works to link her classroom content with students’ lived experiences, identifying racism as a “threshold concept” for her course.
One last piece to consider is the level of institutional support necessary to implement a required diversity course. Disch (1993) emphasizes the importance of broad student, faculty, and staff support, an idea echoed in the research conducted by Pickens, Bachay, and Treadwell (2009). They present a case study in a very specific setting: their small urban Catholic university had a majority Hispanic student body and a majority white faculty. This study discusses the commitment of the faculty to support a diversity initiative that included required diversity courses—commitment that was very high overall—and suggests that students (and faculty) may have more positive experiences with these kinds of courses when institutional support and enthusiasm from the faculty are present.
Finding 5: Student work or feedback was very rarely examined in the qualitative studies
Five studies used student feedback of some kind, in the form of student evaluations (one study), survey data to support a qualitative case study (one study), and student writing (three studies). Unfortunately, four of the five articles that included student work in their analysis were also the three qualitative studies with which I had the greatest methodological or theoretical concerns. Pickens, Bachay, and Treadwell (2009) use limited student survey data to support the findings in their university case study, but the survey instrument often worded questions in a way that took for granted that students thought diversity is important. 15 Schueths et al. (2013) examined student evaluations at the predominantly white institution in their study, but their article is largely a critique of how students may unfairly critique instructors based on identity or course content, pointing out that student evaluations are not the most reliable way to determine course effectiveness.
Three studies included student writing samples from the class. Owens (2005) provides student blog posts as evidence that, by assigning students to another religion, they “try to actually function as though they are members of the group they are studying” (p. 247). However, the student blog posts that she cites as an example of their successful understanding of Buddhism instead evidences an essentializing view: “A lot of people in the world have no idea what their goal in life is . . . [Buddhists] know what they are working for and they ignore everything else that may get in their way of reaching that” (p. 250). Winkler (2018) also used substantial student data, analyzing writing to measure racism as a threshold concept in her course. However, her examination of student data is also problematic. A real problem with this article is that the rubric Winkler (as a white woman) developed to measure students’ grasp of racism is rooted in academic understandings of racism and not practical understandings of racism. One example of how she analyzes the student writing clarifies that distinction: “one black woman named Crystal wrote . . . ‘I was relieved [to learn the] definition of racism [as] a system of advantage based on race.’ For Crystal, the threshold concept . . . helps clear up the dissonance she felt in trying to understand racism” (p. 822). For Winkler, Crystal does not have a strong understanding of racism before the class because she could not articulate the difference between prejudice and racism. That is not how I read this journal entry at all. Crystal very probably understands racism based on her experiences as a Black woman. The frustration that she experiences in the longer entry is in trying to explain her feelings to others. The course is not giving Crystal a better understanding of racism but is giving her a term to articulate racism. To borrow Lorde’s (1984) language, “survival is not an academic skill” (p. 112, emphasis original). Understanding something and attaching academic jargon to a concept are two entirely different things, and it raises questions about whether the rubric Winkler uses to assess student learning is based on overly traditional measures that undervalue the lived experiences of students of color. The only study to substantively focus on student writing is provided by Doucet, Grayman-Simpson, and Shapses Wertheim (2013). The authors analyzed student writing in their diversity course and used written responses to elaborate on the ways that students expanded their frames of reference, their habits of mind, and their points of view. For example, they discussed ways that one student resisted changing old frames (by referring to LDS church members as “Mormons”) and did not fully transform her frame of reference by the end of the course. Other students reported a significant amount of unease in completing their assignment, but “[remain] in the uncomfortable situation” and begin to “see beneath its surface” (p. 286). The process of learning in their diversity course, as denoted by the title of the paper, is an ongoing journey that students may or may not complete while enrolled in their class. Importantly, in this study, “‘transformations’ need not be objectively observable to be subjectively meaningful” (p. 287) to the individual participants. This is one aspect that measuring student prejudice fails to capture.
Finding 6: As many of the studies focus on faculty experiences, several studies use interviews or student evaluations to understand the labor involved in teaching required diversity courses
One very real problem is that faculty of color and nontenure track faculty usually teach these courses; five studies deal explicitly with the unfair distribution of labor in terms of who teaches these courses: faculty of color, nontenure track faculty, adjunct, and graduate students. Perry, Moore, Edwards, Acosta, and Frey (2009) use the Black feminist framework of “outsider-within” (p. 83) that highlights that faculty of color in the predominantly white institution (PWI) of the university are viewed as outsiders and their credibility is frequently challenged—their “position at the margins of the predominantly white academy is a multi-dimensional phenomenon and includes physical, intellectual, and psychic isolation” (p. 83). The authors argue that this happens even more in diversity requirement courses because of the contentious nature of the material. There is significant resistance because stakeholders (mainly white) already debate the usefulness of these courses. This puts marginalized faculty in the unpleasant position of having their authority doubly questioned, as experts in the field and as unbiased instructors. This is especially problematic given that other studies have shown that required diversity courses are predominantly taught by faculty of color (Nelson Laird & Engberg, 2011). Another study by Moore, Acosta, Perry, and Edwards (2010) also relies on interviews and uses a split labor economy model to understand the emotional labor performed by instructors of diversity requirements. When interviewed about the emotion words these instructors associated with teaching these diversity courses, men and women of color were very likely to associate “anger,” “resentment,” and “rage” with their teaching of these courses, whereas white women were more likely to attach words like “frustration.” Perhaps most disturbingly, the two white male instructors in the study did not associate any emotion words with their teaching. When directly asked about this, one of these participants said there is “no emotional dimension” (p. 194) to his teaching the diversity course. This finding suggests that people of color in their study (and white women to a lesser extent) felt the brunt of the emotional labor in teaching about diversity.
In another study on faculty experiences, Schueths et al. (2013) examined the teaching evaluations of 29 instructors who taught required diversity courses at their university. They did find some positive feedback, such as students stating that they had learned something important from taking the class, giving some positive indication of the impacts on student learning. However, there were also harsh and bigoted comments from students on the same topics. Many students argued that the class was a waste of time, that people of color are disadvantaged because they do not work hard enough, and that their instructors were biased because of their race. Of notable importance was that these comments, both strongly positive and strongly negative, were more likely to appear on the evaluations of instructors of color. In fact, there were numerous white faculty members for whom diversity was never mentioned or where students called attention to the lack of diversity content, leading the researchers to suggest that white faculty may be “ducking diversity” (p. 1266). This concern around student evaluations was reflected in Miller and Struve’s (2020) study of nontenure track faculty who teach required diversity courses. After interviewing 30 nontenure track faculty, they concluded that the precarious position of faculty not on the tenure track was compounded by the risk of negative course evaluations often associated with diversity courses. One concern, then, is that universities understand that diversity requirements are important, but then relegate the work of tackling this content with students, who we have seen can be quite hostile to the material, to those faculty members with least power in the academy. As a single data point, I can speak to this trend with my own experience, as a former doctoral student now nontenured faculty member who teaches diversity requirements. In a final study on emotional labor, Miller and Pouraskari (2019) use interviews with faculty to discuss their handling of the 2016 presidential election in their classrooms. The authors conclude that the faculty teaching these courses expend a tremendous amount of emotional labor that they are largely unprepared for and express concern that faculty do not have the supports they need to have these kinds of discussions with students.
I conclude this section with the three available qualitative literature reviews on the subject. Patton et al. (2019) provide a critical analysis of the research, examining 45 total articles from nine major educational research journals to understand trends across diversity initiatives in higher education. Overall, the authors report being troubled at the lack of articles that focus on specific initiatives rather than diversity more generally, and also the lack of critical perspectives used in these articles. Denson and Bowman (2017) also provide an extensive literature review, specifically of curricular diversity initiatives. The 92 studies included in the review are broken down by department and number of courses taken. The direct implications on required courses are difficult to ascertain from this study because the authors do not differentiate between required and nonrequired diversity coursework (p. 43). Studies across categories showed a variety of positive, mixed, and nonsignificant findings, which echoes this work, Denson’s (2009) earlier study, and Engberg’s (2004) literature review on diversity interventions. Of the 100 findings across 92 studies, 62 findings had mixed results and 25 had positive findings, leaving the researchers to wonder “the extent to which diversity courses affect particular student outcomes” (p. 73). The only literature review to differentiate between required and nonrequired courses is Engberg’s (2004) extensive literature review of interventions designed to promote intergroup relations. In the aspects of the review that deals with required diversity courses, the findings support this study in that the results of the literature were quite mixed. Unfortunately, at the time of the publication, only seven studies were included that examined required diversity courses, and so the implications for present use are a bit outdated.
Discussion
After examining the available literature on university-required diversity courses, some trends become clear across the quantitative and qualitative studies. One main focus, especially in the quantitative studies, is in changing or reducing students’ measurable levels of bias. Based on my framework of using a social justice lens to interpret the findings of these articles, I am somewhat concerned that the outcomes measured may limit what we are able to learn about these courses, and I suggest the ways that researchers frame the importance of these courses is over-reliant on how they impact students’ levels of bias. If the overall goal of these courses is decreasing bias against marginalized people, then students who have been historically marginalized by the education system itself do not have much to gain by their own enrollment. Instead, a research approach based in the social justice rationale to these courses might ask, for example, what aspects of these courses reduce barriers to access for students of color or first-generation students. Considering the recent student activism in demanding these courses, the research largely does not question who these courses are actually designed for, and who benefits. Additionally, these courses often operate under the assumption that the “problem” is largely a lack of education. However, Hogan and Mallott (2005) suggest that it may not be as easy as this; they argue that it is much easier to change beliefs rooted in simple ignorance of the facts than it is to change bias that is deeply rooted in emotion and self-image. Of course, while feelings based in emotion and self-image may be incredibly important in changing actual feelings of bias, one very real concern is who will have to deal with the burden of these emotions? The studies under analysis showed that students may show hostile resistance to the material (e.g., Perry et al., 2009). Will marginalized students be left to perform the emotional labor of educating their classmates? Research on graduate-level diversity requirements suggest this may be the case (Harris & Linder, 2018).
Understanding these courses from the social justice rationale suggests that required diversity courses are important to equitably educating all students; the research available to us, while answering many other important questions, does not give us enough information to determine if all students are truly benefitting. In fact, several studies found a different result for students of color and white students, for female and male students, and even for students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Bowman, 2010; Cole et al., 2011; Denson & Bowman, 2017), with the more advantaged group members showing higher gains in each comparison. If the singular outcome of these courses is bias reduction, this sends a clear message about who is meant to benefit. There are a variety of different ways to interpret these conflicting results of student learning. On the one hand, these disparities point to the fact that students with different lived experiences will interact with the material differently. More disturbing are the findings that students of color may be learning less than their white peers. Perhaps this is because of the goals of the course; perhaps the courses are aimed at moving white students to an understanding of racism of which those directly impacted by the system are already aware. Another possibility is that because students of color already face considerable oppression in the school system and in society at large, they are less likely to see how they are complicit in other systems of oppression. Additionally, no studies looked at student bias in relation to ability, immigration status, gender expression, or language, pointing to a limited practical framing of diversity. Either way, more work needs to be done to unpack the different learning that happens in these courses based on student identity. Many studies do focus on areas other than reducing bias, such as civic engagement (e.g., Nelson Laird, Engberg, & Hurtado, 2005) or desire for multicultural experiences (You & Matteo, 2013). However, these outcomes are also rooted in the educational/diversity rationale, which emphasizes that students need to learn to interact with diverse peers to further career and citizenship interests (Gurin et al., 2002). These outcomes still do not tell us whether marginalized students are being educated equitably. Does requiring that all students take these courses contribute to a social justice approach to education if marginalized students do not benefit in the same ways? This question is worth pursuing further and is not necessarily answered by the current literature. Framing measurable outcomes based on social justice goals rather than awareness of oppression might also give us a clearer picture of what students who already face marginalization actually learn in these courses. There are several promising aspects of the research that suggest approaches to teaching required diversity courses that may be impactful for students. Combining the results from quantitative studies with qualitative ones is therefore of vital importance. Qualitative studies in these areas can give us more insight into the choices that instructors make in these courses as well as their experience with students and their reactions to these pedagogical choices. In other words, combining the qualitative and quantitative results can begin to build a more nuanced picture of the learning in diversity courses and their effects.
Implications for Further Study
I will now turn to the second half of my first research question and examine the areas in the literature that I believe are understudied based on my survey of the research. The gap includes two interconnected areas: fine-grained research on student experiences and work in these courses, and a thorough examination of the content and course design. To the first point, although there are significant findings that attempt to unpack students’ level of bias toward various marginalized groups, there is relatively little focus on what students say about their experiences in the course. There is also very little focus on the kinds of work that students submit. Second, while many of the qualitative studies shared strategies that instructors found effective, what seems to be missing is a deep dive into the kinds of material presented to students as well as the ways that they are asked to engage with the material in the form of assignments. A fruitful avenue of future study could be connecting pedagogical strategies with a further examination of student work. Focusing on student experiences and students’ own voices would also contribute to a social justice framing that centers students’ own lived experiences and feedback.
In the articles under study, only Winkler (2018), Owens (2005), and Doucet et al. (2013) included writing from students in their research, while Schueths et al. (2013) examined student-written course evaluations. Several studies (Duffee & Bailey, 1991; Owens, 2005; Winkler, 2018) mention that writing assignments are a significant part of the learning for students in these courses. I believe this may suggest some dissonance between the work that has already been done on instructors’ self-studies and how students are receiving these changes. For example, knowing in more details the kinds of work that students in Martinez’s (2014) or Owens’s (2005) classes produce might be helpful in further exploring their intended curricular outcomes and understanding how students interact with specific aspects of the material. The above-mentioned qualitative studies function as case studies that offer other educators tasked with teaching diversity courses insights into approaches that work in specific circumstances; however, these case studies mainly use the course as the unit of analysis, and I am here suggesting that more emphasis be placed on individual students as units of analysis. I would then call for research that more directly focuses on the work that students are completing in these courses; this kind of work is of course not limited to writing assignments and could include any assignments that students are asked to complete. The quantitative studies have provided us with a preponderance of evidence about the “results” in the form of student bias. However, I am concerned that this leads us to an either/or framing that lacks nuance: either students reduce their bias against marginalized people, or they do not. An approach that looks at student work (and instructor assignments that prompt this work) more deeply could also help us to further unpack how instructors see the goals of their courses and how students tackle individual issues within these courses. One area where nuance could be helpful is in understanding the experiences of minoritized students. As I mentioned previously, there is some evidence to suggest that white students may be showing larger changes in attitude than students of color. While this quantitative data is important, it is important from a social justice framing to begin to unpack why this might be happening, as well as how to make sure that marginalized students experience benefits from these courses.
One way to approach this research could be with a case study design. Although a few of the articles in this research take something of a case study approach for individual classes (e.g., Duffee & Bailey, 1991; Winkler, 2018), I argue that it is also necessary to turn our attention to the experiences of individual students within individual courses. The goal of such research would not necessarily be replication (as, after all, the experiences of every individual in a course will be different) but instead to try to gain insight into the different experiences that students may have in individual courses. Such studies could then move beyond a framing that only sees students as reducing their bias or not. Instead, researchers could focus on places where individuals embrace aspects of these courses and places where they resist this content; Schueths et al. (2013) use a similar approach to course evaluations, but I would argue that projects from class would be more robust.
The second major gap I see is in-depth studies of the course content. Some of the studies did address aspects of the course design such as syllabi (Castellanos & Cole, 2015), assignments (Martinez, 2014; Owens, 2005), and course content (Hurtado, Mayhew, & Engberg, 2012; Nelson Laird & Engberg, 2011), but none of the studies made the course design a focus of the research. What could be an interesting, and important, avenue for further research is the assignments that instructors use in their classes coupled with a discussion of the value of those assignments to the goals of the course. Hurtado, Mayhew, and Engberg (2012) called for a similar approach to future research that would “introduce a qualitative component that examines the nuances of the classroom experiences” (p. 217). Additionally, a study that unpacked the stated course objectives in these courses could be fruitful as well. As diversity courses gain in popularity, moves like that by the University of California system to mandate ethnic studies across all campuses may become more common. One concern I have is that as more universities begin implementing diversity requirements of some sort, their efforts may be siloed. It could be helpful for future development of similar courses (and to support the courses that already exist) to have a body of research that tells us what other programs are doing, the objectives that they have, and the experiences of students.
The Framing of Diversity Requirements
Now that we have looked thoroughly at the aspects of required diversity courses that have been studied as well as those that have not, what can we glean from this work over the last 30 years or so about the framing and purpose of these kinds of courses for undergraduates? And what might reframing these courses from a social justice rationale open up for us? First, one main goal of diversity courses (as conceived in the literature) is reducing student bias, and so most outcomes measured were instruments to reduce bias. Interconnectedly, there is a trend to frame them as moving students toward an ideal endpoint, but this tendency ignores the spectrum of places that students bring to the classroom. Finally, the focus of many studies appears to be to change the perspectives of white students; if this is the case, why are mainly people of color teaching these courses, and why are universities requiring these courses for all students? I am interested in how we can bring a social justice–oriented framework to the research on these courses.
As we can see from the magnitude of quantitative studies in this review, a major outcome in which these studies are interested is addressing student bias or prejudice (e.g., Bowman, 2010; Chang, 2002; Henderson-King & Kaleta, 2000; Hogan & Mallott, 2005). Therefore, I think it reasonable to argue that the main way that the “problem” is conceptualized is that students are biased against minoritized groups and that diversity initiatives should address this bias. Although this is indeed an important goal, I believe there are setbacks to this approach. Namely, one problematic assumption is that students begin by being ignorant about so-called diversity content; the goal of these courses would then be to move students to some “woke” endpoint. As student affairs researchers have argued, viewing student development as a linear process can be problematic (Bilodeau & Renn, 2005). I am especially concerned about this approach considering that there seems to be differences in learning outcomes for minoritized students. Additionally, given the recent violent uprising at the US capitol, I am left to wonder if an intellectual approach to addressing hate and bias will ever bear fruit. I join with Denson (2009) and Hogan and Mallott (2005) in suggesting that a more emotional approach may be needed, rather than a purely cognitive one. Again, a social justice framing of this question would also ask us to more closely examine our motives. Who benefits from these changes in perspective, and does this approach allow students who have been historically marginalized by higher education greater access to the academy?
Closely related to this is the fact that many of these studies center on PWIs (Martinez, 2014; Moore et al., 2010; Perry et al., 2009; Schueths et al., 2013) or on classes with a large majority of white students (Duffee & Bailey, 1991; Nelson Laird, Engberg, & Hurtado, 2005). These studies give us a crucially important insight into the experiences of instructors of color in PWIs. However, if the goal of required diversity courses is to reduce bias and promote appreciation, it seems almost certain that, for example, a queer student of color will learn less than a heterosexual white student. I am not arguing that this reduction of bias is the only framing of these courses, that the focus on bias is not warranted, or that it is unimportant to examine the changes in attitude of white students. Each of these studies are valuable and deeply important. However, these framings are prevalent enough that I believe it warrants some reconceptualization of how we as higher educators may be framing the problem. If we are to continue requiring students of color to take diversity classes, they need to be designed with their learning in mind.
In a similar vein to Patton et al. (2019), I also argue that studies would benefit from taking more critical views of the purpose and outcomes of diversity requirements. Using Moses and Chang’s (2006) social justice rationale rather than a diversity/educational rationale alone can help us move to understanding diversity course requirements beyond the impact they can have for the sake of diversity. Research that specifically asks how diversity-required courses contribute to a social justice framing in higher education can also answer new questions that studies focused only on changes in students’ awareness of inequality and bias in regard to marginalized identities may miss (while answering other important questions). Although universities may be limited in terms of their framing of these requirements based on legality and the continuing climate of hostility toward content about historical and current injustices and oppression, a framework that centers a social justice rationale in the literature can help us as researchers to ask new questions about this subject. For example, what kinds of rationales are used for marginalized students to take these courses, what moves do instructors make to ensure that marginalized students are benefitting from these courses, and how can we work within the legal framing in higher education to ensure that these courses advance social justice and equity in the higher-education setting?
Conclusion
Having reviewed the research that is currently available on university-required diversity courses, I see a significant gap related to the role of student writing, or really any student voice, especially students of color. There is a lot of information about students’ opinions in the form of surveys, and measuring student bias in this way can illuminate one aspect of what students are taking away from these courses. Researchers have also discussed indirectly the kinds of feedback that they as instructors receive from students. I think what we see from the quantitative studies is that there is a lot of variation in the results from these kinds of courses. What analyzing student experiences and instructor course design can do for us is give us a more detailed understanding of why this might be the case. How are students articulating diversity in their own writing in the course? How are they engaging with the course material, if at all? What elements do we see them resisting, and which elements do we see them taking up? How do instructors create material designed for diverse learners? Such an approach could give us more insight into the aspects of required diversity courses that could be pursued, while also helping to make sure that these courses are not designed for white learning and then required of marginalized students. To center diversity work around social justice issues, we must take into account student perspectives more fully.
Footnotes
Notes
Author
CHRISTINE ZABALA EISSHOFER is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, 1005 Asp Avenue, Norman, OK, 73019; e-mail: