Workshop: Dr. Mark Orbe

Cultivating a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy

“Higher” forms of education are thwarted unless diverse perspectives are centralized within the learning experience. As educators, it is our responsibility to prepare students for a future whereby global and national issues will continue to have local significance. This means cultivating greater cultural competency and cultural humility in the classroom. This 2-hour workshop will provide a foundation for such work, and include several experiential learning opportunities for participants to come to understand what this means for particular pedagogical areas. Through the sharing of promising practices, faculty members will be able to learn how colleagues embrace the opportunities that are inherent to a culturally responsive 21^st century pedagogy.

Extended Biography

Dr. Mark Orbe is professor of Communication and Diversity, in the School of Communication and Gender & Women’s Studies Program at Western Michigan University. Orbe’s teaching and research interests center on the inextricable relationship between culture and communication as played out in a number of contexts (intrapersonal, interpersonal, intergroup, mass media).  Accordingly, he teaches a wide variety of undergraduate courses and is actively involved in numerous research projects.

He has presented over 100 papers at regional, national and international academic conferences, and published over 100 articles in scholarly journals and chapters in edited books.  He has also published almost a dozen books, including:

• • Interracial Communication: Theory Into Practice (with T. Harris, Wadsworth Publishing, 2001; 2nd edition, Sage Publications, 2007; 3rd edition, Sage Publications, 2015).
  • Intercultural Communication in a Transnational World (with L. Flores and B. Allen, NCA Press, 2009).
    Communicating Within/Across Organizational Contexts (with B. Allen and L. Flores, NCA Press, 2007).
  • The Same and Different: Acknowledging the Diversity Within and Between Cultural Groups (with B. Allen and L. Flores, NCA Press, 2006).
  • Contemporary Issues in Interpersonal Communication (with C. Bruess, Oxford University Press, 2005).
  • Building Diverse Communities: Applications of Communication Research (with T. McDonald and T. Ford-Ahmed, Hampton Press, 2003).
  • Constructing Co-Cultural Theory: An Explication of Culture, Power, and Communication (Sage Publications, 1998).

Orbe’s latest book projects are:

• • Critical Autoethnography: Intersecting Cultural Identities in Everyday Life (with R. Boylorn, Left Coast Press, 2014).
  • Identity Research and Intercultural Communication: Reflections and Future Directions (with N. Bardhan, Lexington Books, 2012).
  • Communication Realities in a “Post-Racial” Society: What the U.S. Public Really Thinks about President Obama (Lexington Books, 2011).

Ph.D., Ohio University, Athens, OH Primary area of study:  Interpersonal/Intercultural Communication  Major advisor:  David Descutner  Dissertation: “`Remember, it’s always white’s ball’:  A phenomenological inquiry into the  lived experiences of African American men”

M.A. in Education, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT Primary area of study:  Higher Education Administration

B.S., Ohio University, Athens, OH  Major:  Organizational Communication

Handout [Cultivating a Culturally Responsive Pedagogy]