What ‘Teeny’ Group Seminar Teach Us: Enhancing Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) in Small Group Seminar through Technology-Enhanced Learning (TEL) and Anecdotal Pedagogy

Abstract

This reflective study delves into the nuanced impact of varying class sizes on the pedagogy of teaching literary theories and explores the ways of improving diversity in different classroom settings. It is based on my comparative analysis of the outcomes from teaching two different sizes of small seminar groups previously: one with eleven students and one that had between two and four students in regular attendance (what I term as a ‘teeny group’). To empower students to better empathise with the racial and gender inequalities portrayed in theoretical texts, and to facilitate a friendly and open dialogue for students to share their own perspectives and experiences, I employ technological tools such as Padlet and Vevox as well as my own perspective as anecdotal pedagogy, namely, the inclusion of personal experience into teaching methods and contents. In doing so, I create an online platform to allow my students to share their opinions anonymously and visually and make use of my identity as an Asian woman to encourage underrepresented marginalised groups to get involved in discussions. This reflective piece draws on the article ‘‘Violating Pedagogy’ by Heather G. S.  Johnson (2015) as a theoretical framework to demonstrate both the strengths and limitations of the teeny group in comparison with the normally small group and further to evaluate different pedagogic methods in advancing Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) from a unique perspective. In doing so, this article contemplates the optimal classroom sizes for effective teaching and examines how various pedagogical approaches counteract the differences in class sizes.