Third Rail Teaching Collaborative: Pedagogy & Peer Support in Contested Classrooms

We’re excited to invite all faculty who teach courses that engage with politically sensitive, socially charged, or otherwise controversial topics to join us for the first lunch meeting of the Third Rail Teaching Collaborative (TRT Collaborative). While teaching ‘third rail’ courses such as those dealing with geo-political issues, race, gender, climate change, immigration, religion, and political conflict often place unique demands on faculty, the metaphor of “third rail” indicates both the risk and the power inherent in these teaching contexts.

The TRT Collaborative will provide the space for faculty to share experiences, exchange strategies, co-develop resources, and support one another in the intellectual and emotional challenges of teaching in contested classrooms. It will be guided by the values of academic freedom, inclusivity, and ‘graciousness’.

The TRT Collaborative is an academic freedom safeguard, the cornerstone of Canadian higher education. It protects the right of faculty to pursue truth, conduct research, and engage students in difficult inquiry without undue interference. The collaborative addresses the gap between the principle of academic freedom and its everyday enactment in the classroom by providing a collegial space so that faculty who teach in such contested classrooms are not silenced, isolated, or penalized, but feel supported to pursue their scholarly and pedagogical work.