The Conversation

Matthew Lynch published in Equity, HBCU's, Higher Education

Let’s face it: gender bias in academia is for real

Cynthia Leifer, Cornell University; Hadas Kress-Gazit, Cornell University; Kim Weeden, Cornell University; Marjolein C H van der Meulen, Cornell University; Paulette Clancy, Cornell University, and Sharon Sassler, Cornell University

Cornell Professor Sara Pritchard recently made the argument in The Conversation that female professors should receive bonus points on their student evaluations because of the severe negative bias students have toward their female professors.

Commentators on FOX News attempted to discredit her argument as “insane,” ridiculed the idea that gender plays a role in evaluations and repeatedly mentioned a lack of data to support her claims. But the reality is women faculty are at a disadvantage.

Unfortunately, as we well know, for many women in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), the path to academia ends long before they obtain a faculty position and are the “lucky” recipient of biased student evaluations.

We represent the success stories – women with careers at Ivy League universities. And yes, while we agree that there are more women in STEM fields today than ever before, bias still affects women in STEM, and not just in student evaluations.

Letters of recommendation and teaching evaluations

It starts right from the hiring process.

In the first stage of the hiring process, a candidate for an academic position must be selected from a pool of hundreds to give a job talk and on-site interview.

The decision of who to invite for a job talk is based on materials about the candidate including CVs, letters of recommendation from prominent figures in the field, samples of research, “buzz” about who’s a rising star and teaching evaluations.

A large body of research shows that many of these materials, and how they are evaluated by search committees, reflect bias in favor of male candidates.

Letters of recommendation, for example, tend to have a very different character for women than for men, and their tone and word choice can affect the impression that the hiring committee forms about candidates.

For example a 2008 study of 886 letters of recommendations for faculty positions in chemistry showed that these letters tended to include descriptors of ability for male applicants, such as “standout,” but refer to the work ethic of the women, rather than their ability, by using words such as “grindstone.”

It turns out that female candidates are seen as less hireable as well.
Mike Licht, CC BY

A similar study showed that female, but not male, students applying for a research grant had letters of recommendation emphasizing the wrong skills, such as the applicants’ ability to care for an elderly parent or to balance the demands of parenting and research.

Furthermore, a 2009 analysis of 194 applicants to research faculty positions in psychology found that letters of recommendation for women used more “communal” adjectives (like helpful, kind, warm and tactful), and letters of recommendation for men used more decisive adjectives (like confident, ambitious, daring and independent), even after statistically controlling for different measures of performance.

Perhaps not surprisingly, a follow-up experiment in the same paper found that these subtle differences in the language can result in female candidates being rated as less hireable than men.

Unfortunately, even when the same language is used to describe candidates or when the key objective criteria of productivity are used, evaluators rated female candidates lower than male candidates.

Teaching evaluations, as our colleague already pointed out, are also known to be biased.

Historian Benjamin Schmidt’s recent text analysis of 14 million rankings on the website ratemyprofessor.com showed substantial differences in the words students used to describe men and women faculty in the same field: men were more likely to be described as “knowledgeable” and “brilliant,” women as “bossy” or, if they were lucky, “helpful.”

If a female candidate makes it through the “on paper” process and is invited for an interview, the bias does not end.

What makes a ‘fit’?

Once a field of candidates is narrowed down from hundreds to a handful, very little distinguishes the top candidates, male or female. Final decisions often come down to intangible qualities and “fit.”

Although “fit” can mean many things to many people, it boils down to guesses about future trajectories, judgments about which hole in a department’s research profile or curriculum is most important to fill, and assessments about whether a person is going to be a colleague who contributes to mentoring, departmental service, and congeniality.

Research in social psychology and management shows that women are seen as competent or likable, but not both. The very traits that make them competent and successful (eg, being strong leaders) violate gender stereotypes about how women are “supposed to” act. Conversely, likable women are often perceived as being less likely to succeed in stereotypically male careers.

Despite all this information, FOX News isn’t alone in its view that women candidates for academic positions are not at a disadvantage.

In fact, one of the commentators in that segment cited a study from other researchers at Cornell that concluded the employment prospects for women seeking faculty positions in STEM disciplines have never been better.

The authors of that study go so far as to blame women’s underrepresentation in the sciences on “self-handicapping and opting out” of the hiring process.

Women doing better, but not better than men

The fact is at the current rate of increase in women faculty in tenure-track positions in STEM fields, it may be 2050 before women reach parity in hiring and, worse, 2115 before women constitute 50% of STEM faculty of all ranks.

This is supported by faculty data at Cornell itself. Between 2010 and 2014, there was only a modest 3%-4% increase in women tenure-line STEM faculty.

In contrast to these data, the study cited by FOX News argued women are preferred to men for tenure-track STEM academic positions. The authors of that study used a research method common in social sciences in which true randomized experiments are impossible to carry out in real-life contexts called an audit study.

In an audit study, people who make the relevant decisions, such as faculty or human resource managers, are sent information about two or more fake applicants for a position. The information is equivalent, except for a hint about the question of interest: for example, one CV may have a male name at the top, the other CV a female name.

The battle against sexism has yet to be won.
European Parliament, CC BY-NC-ND

Although the audit study design can be very useful, in the case of STEM faculty hiring it oversimplifies the complex hiring process, which typically involves many people, many stages and many pieces of information.

The authors sent out equivalent descriptions of “powerhouse” hypothetical male or female candidates applying for a hypothetical faculty opening to real professors. Among the respondents, more said that they would hire the woman than the man. However, the study in question “controlled for,” and thus eliminated, many of the sources of bias, including letters of recommendation and teaching evaluations that disadvantage women in the hiring process.

Furthermore, only one-third of faculty who were sent packets responded. Thus, the audit study captured only some of the voices that actually make hiring decisions. It is also hard to believe that participants didn’t guess that they were part of an audit study about hiring. Even if they didn’t know the exact research question, they may have been biased by the artificial research context.

The study by our Cornell colleagues has already generated a lot of conversation, on campus and off. The authors have entered this debate, which will undoubtedly continue. That’s how science works.

Contrary to what FOX News and some of our academic colleagues think, the battle against sexism in our fields has not been won, let alone reversed in favor of women. We must continue to educate hiring faculty, and even the society at large, about conscious and unconscious bias.

Paulette Clancy, Hadas Kress-Gazit, Cynthia Leifer, Marjolein van der Meulen, Sharon Sassler, and Kim Weeden are professors at Cornell University. Hadas Kress-Gazit, Cynthia Leifer and Kim Weeden are also Public Voices Fellows at The Op-Ed Project.

The Conversation

Cynthia Leifer, Associate Professor of Immunology, College of Veterinary Medicine, Cornell University; Hadas Kress-Gazit, Associate Professor of Mechanics and Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University; Kim Weeden, Professor of Sociology, Cornell University; Marjolein C H van der Meulen, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Cornell University; Paulette Clancy, Professor of Chemical Engineering, Cornell University, and Sharon Sassler, Professor of Policy Analysis and Management , Cornell University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

 

Read all of our posts about HBCUs by clicking here. 

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity

Want to change perceptions of Muslims? Support students of all beliefs

Matthew Mayhew, New York University

In the wake of the recent terror attacks in Paris, Baghdad and Beirut, our national discourse has been full of conversations about Muslims in civic life.

Presidential candidates have offered up religious tests as potential barriers to entry for refugees seeking to flee conflict zones. State governors have proposed suspending accepting new refugees in the wake of the attacks.

Despite the recent surge of interest, skepticism about the trustworthiness of Muslims in America is anything but new.

National research data demonstrate that Muslims were ranked in the coldest third on a “feeling thermometer” by their fellow Americans of different faiths.

Even more troubling is the reality that religion-based violence against Muslims represented about 14% of hate crimes in 2013, despite the fact that Muslims comprise less than 1% of the US population.

The national attitude toward Muslims extends into the collegiate environment.

Our research on religious and spiritual campus climate has indicated that only 46% of students believe that Muslims are accepted on campus. But our data also point to ways in which college educators can make a real difference in the ways Muslims are perceived by Americans generally.

Prejudices on campus

Controversy around Muslims on campus has hit the headlines on a number of occasions.

Universities have faced criticism, for example, for providing worship space to Muslim students (most recently at Wichita State in Kansas). Earlier this year, Duke encountered an outcry from alumni after announcing plans to permit Muslim students to sound the call to prayer from the chapel bell tower. Similarly, in 2007 the University of Michigan-Dearborn faced a backlash after installing footbaths for Muslim students on campus.

These situations, unsurprisingly, have an impact on how Muslim students perceive their campus communities.

Bruce Speck’s study of Muslim college students demonstrates that they feel largely unsupported in their religious practices and subject to bias and disrespect both in and out of the classroom.

Incidents such as the murder of three Muslim students in North Carolina earlier this year continue to fuel fear in this community.

Students gather during a vigil on the campus of the University of North Carolina for Deah Shaddy Barakat, his wife Yusor Mohammad and Yusor’s sister Razan Mohammad Abu-Salha, February 2015.
Chris Keane/Reuters

It is our belief that these prejudices and misperceptions damage the strength of our American democracy. Higher education has a role to play in beginning to address these challenges.

But what can campus leaders do?

Together with Alyssa Rockenbach at North Carolina State University, we have collaborated on research to answer precisely this question.

Data speak volumes

We developed a survey to examine the attitudes shown and values held by people on university campuses about religious diversity. From 2011-2014, we administered this survey at 52 colleges and universities.

The findings of our research point in some exciting directions for educators seeking to make a positive impact on negative perceptions of Muslims in higher education and beyond.

One of our key questions was related to the idea of how non-Muslim students perceive Islam and Muslims in the world. And following on from that, we wanted to know what experiences help non-Muslim students come to appreciate Islam and Muslims around the world.

We asked non-Muslim students to respond to a series of statements to gauge their level of appreciation for Muslims. These questions included, “Islam values service to others,” “Islam promotes peace,” and “In general, Muslims are moral and ethical people.”

Our subsequent data analysis revealed a variety of interesting trends.

Consistent with the literature on collegiate experiences, our analysis showed that the types of educational experiences students encounter within a campus community are critical in shaping their perceptions and attitudes.

Non-Muslim student appreciation for Islam and for Muslims around the world was associated with:

  • participating in interfaith experiences, such as an interfaith service activity or an interfaith dialogue
  • having uncomfortable conversations that moved non-Muslim students to examine their own prejudices, and
  • engaging in informal opportunities to interact across difference, like dining together or studying together.

However, opportunities to encounter difference did not always lead to greater appreciation of Muslims.

In fact, our research also showed that, among non-Muslim students, the following experiences were associated with a lack of appreciation of Islam:

  • attending their own or other formal religious services
  • being silenced and feeling unsafe to express their own faith freely on campus, often due to moments of conflict or tension around religion
  • feeling as though their college seems to favor certain worldviews above others
  • perceiving less support for their own religious or nonreligious identities.

A unique opportunity

What do these data points tell us? As the number of Muslim college students continues to grow, college educators have a unique opportunity to create and support productive meeting spaces that promote positive attitudes toward Muslims among non-Muslim college students.

As the number of international students from a variety of religious traditions increases on college campuses so will the opportunities for these students to return to their nations as leaders. Our work hopes to equip these future leaders with the tools needed to effectively and productively engage across religious differences.

However, increasing diversity on campus is only part of the solution.

Religious diversity needs support.
Pass a Method, CC BY-SA

In fact, the mere presence of diversity on campus may actually harm relations among communities, as diversity left unengaged and unsupported can lead to greater isolation and distrust.

Educators, we would argue, have the responsibility to appropriately design and thoughtfully support opportunities for interaction where students can genuinely learn and get to know one another.

Simply attending a religious service on or off campus or participating in a religious course is not enough.

Students are profoundly impacted by their own experiences of inclusion and exclusion. When they themselves feel safe and respected, they more readily extend a welcoming hand to others.

This suggests that educators must give greater attention to campus climate around religious identity and diversity as a whole.

Although students are less likely to formally identify with a religion over the course of their studies, there has been a notable increase of students who participate in voluntary religious activities since the 1990s.

Faculty, staff and other campus leaders play a critical role in shaping a community where all feel welcomed.

Let us be clear: we believe these data give us the opportunity to change the news headlines of the future. Our research indicates that creating thoughtful educational experiences and building a constructive campus climate for all around religion has the potential to change hearts and minds about all Muslims.

It’s worth noting that those benefits are not limited to Muslims. Jewish, atheist, Mormon students and more would all benefit from this type of collegiate experience.

If higher education were to prioritize this work, how might the world respond differently in the wake of major global events related to religion? We challenge educators to help us discover the answer to that question.

This piece was coauthored with Mary Ellen Giess from the Interfaith Youth Core.

The Conversation

Matthew Mayhew, Associate Professor of Higher Education, New York University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Higher Education, International Education

Why South Africa’s universities are in the grip of a class struggle

Rajendra Chetty, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Christopher B. Knaus, University of Washington

Each year, hundreds of thousands of students enrol to study at South Africa’s universities. Of the 60% of black African students who survive the first year, only 15% will ultimately graduate. This is hardly surprising: these failed students come from an oppressive, ineffective public school system. Most of their classmates never make it into higher education and those who do come poorly prepared to the killing fields.

The post-apartheid educational system is not founded on what the poor and marginalised need. Instead, as research shows, it is racial and class-based. This notion of class has great significance in a post-apartheid – but not post-racial – South Africa, not only in education but in all realms. Class, here, refers to the norms and experiences that come from living within a particular economic and financial resource base.

Access to basic shelter, adequate food, clothing and decent schooling all empower or disadvantage particular communities. There have been attempts to provide redress to previously disadvantaged South African communities, such as social grants, the provision of low cost housing and the introduction of “no fee” schools. But these have proved insufficient to remedy their continued economic exclusion.

This, then, is the unchanging element of pre and post-1994 South Africa: black youths’ life chances remain significantly lower than those of whites. What role can academics and universities play in changing this? And might they finally be spurred into action by the student protests that marked 2015 – protests which, we would argue, are a class struggle.

Inequality abounds

Education is unequal at all levels in South Africa. There is deepening racial segregation at schools and universities. Higher education is increasingly racially stratified, and it is particularly apparent in the concentration of black and coloured students at historically disadvantaged universities. Most white students attend the previously advantaged universities, like the English liberal Universities of Cape Town and the Witwatersrand, or more conservative Afrikaans institutions like the Universities of Stellenbosch and Pretoria.

Those universities catered almost exclusively to the white minority until 1994. They occupy top positions in local and international research rankings. That stems from their obtaining the lion’s share of research funding from statutory bodies such as the National Research Foundation.

They also charge much higher fees than the universities that were built exclusively for blacks during the apartheid era. This maintains the class structure of apartheid society. It is logical that universities which charge higher fees are able to provide a higher quality of education to middle class students.

But the status quo has been disrupted. In 2015 something shifted inexorably at South African universities. Students protested against institutions’ language policies, high fees, structural inequalities and colonial symbols.

It was poor and working-class youth who drove the protests – a clear indication that it is a class struggle. This is further emphasised by the fact that most students who protest, whether during 2015 or on other occasions, are black. Race and class lie at the heart of opposition to South Africa’s existing, exclusive university system.

Let’s talk about class

But racism and class are largely excluded from any understanding of the current youth resistance in higher education. This is possibly because the education system has distributed relatively petty advantages within the working class through limited scholarships and loans. It also allows for entry into elite, predominantly white institutions based on academic achievement. This serves to disorganise the entire working class and allows the capitalist democracy to more effectively exploit the majority of poor youth.

Modern forms of class prejudice are invisible even to the perpetrators, who remain unconvinced of the class struggle of black youth. They dismiss it as unruly behaviour and a lack of respect for the new “progressive” order governing universities. Protesters are berated for not understanding universities’ financial pressures; they are viewed as being insensitive to their peers who just want to get on with their education without disruptions.

Where are academics in all of this? Sadly, we believe that the voice of thinkers in the academe has been discouraged and repressed. Many of the activists among us have been co-opted onto the university bureaucracy and unashamedly drive a neo-liberal agenda of colourblindness.

Our silence has given consent to the deepening crisis of inequality. Once again, it’s the youth that had the courage to resist the system, just as they did during the Soweto uprising in 1976. They do so at great personal risk. But students should fear less the angry policemen with their rubber bullets than the racist academe that covertly discriminates against the poor.

The current black student resistance over fees, housing and limited intake clearly shows that higher education’s transformation agenda needs serious consideration. The professoriate, for instance, remains largely white and male with more gestures at window dressing than inclusion. Racism against black students and staff is prevalent.

It is also evident that in spite of profound policy changes in higher education, a “new” racial structure is operating. This accounts for the persistence of racial inequality and must be challenged. Academics are well placed to lead the charge.

Academics have a responsibility

Universities and academics should be grateful for these protests, and to the students who took up the cudgels for change. The protests should be viewed as a positive initiative. They represent a chance for the academe to generate ideas that will address the racial and class divide in South Africa rather than entrenching it. Academics cannot abdicate their responsibility towards social change any longer.

The Conversation

Rajendra Chetty, Head of Research, faculty of Education, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and Christopher B. Knaus, Professor of Education, University of Washington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Are lectures a good way to learn?

Phillip Dawson, Monash University

Imagine a future where university enrolment paperwork is accompanied by the statement: Warning: lectures may stunt your academic performance and increase risk of failure.

Researchers from the United States have just published an exhaustive review and their findings support that warning. They read every available research study comparing traditional lectures with active learning in science, engineering and mathematics. Traditional lecture-based courses are correlated with significantly poorer performance in terms of failure rates and marks.

The study’s authors boldly compare our new awareness of the harm done by lectures to the harms of smoking. Their article – they claim – is the equivalent of the 1964 Surgeon-General’s report that led to legislated warnings about smoking in the United States. The renowned physics education researcher Eric Mazur has described continuing with lectures in the face of this new evidence as “almost unethical”.

This paper is so important because it combines 225 individual research studies through a technique called meta-analysis. So although individual studies published over the past 70 years may have occasionally found lectures to be better, we now know that the collective evidence is in support of active approaches.

So what’s the alternative?

Rather than the perfect lecturer performance or PowerPoints, active approaches privilege “what the student does”. Courses built around active learning require students to spend class time engaged in meaningful tasks that lead to learning. These tasks might be online or face-to-face; solo or in a group; theoretical or applied. Most of our popular learning and teaching buzzwords at the moment are active approaches: peer instruction, problem-based learning, and flipping the classroom are all focused on students spending precious class time doing, not listening.

This new study confirms a significant difference in student achievement and failure rates between lectures and active learning. A hypothetical average student would move up to the top third of the class if allowed to participate in active learning instead of lectures. The difference in failure rates was large too: students in lecture courses were 1.5 times more likely to fail than active learning students. Active learning was better than lectures for all class sizes and all of the science, engineering and mathematics fields they considered.

But active learning as defined in this study is such a broad term. If your lecturer pauses to get you to solve a problem in a group, or asks you to explain a concept to the person sitting next to you, that is active learning. Worksheets, workshops or other activities taking up at least 10% of class time was enough to get a class labelled “active”.

Rather than a call to abandon lectures, this study is important evidence that we need to improve them. We now know beyond all reasonable doubt that talking at students non-stop for an hour or two is a bad idea. But we knew that already, didn’t we?

Sadly, the study authors calculate that in their dataset of 29,300 students, there were 3,516 students who failed but would not have failed if they were in an active class. They go on to muse that if those studies were conducted by medical researchers they would have stopped the experiments for ethical reasons, as denying the students access to active classes was harmful.

So perhaps the warning label should read:

Warning: bad lectures may stunt your academic performance and increase risk of failure.

What makes a good lecture?

In What’s the Use of Lectures, Donald Bligh notes: “One of the most common mistakes by lecturers is to use the lecture method at all”.

Bligh’s review of the research found that aside from transmitting information to students, lectures were not good for much at all. Lectures should not be a default teaching approach, but should instead be used in a targeted way when they suit the specific goals of the class. For other goals, such as teaching ethics, provoking thought, or developing practical skills, more active approaches work better than lectures.

There is some debate about the ideal length of lectures, with claims that student attention diminishes after 10 or 15 minutes, however the evidence behind these claims is thin. This doesn’t, however, give us permission to waffle on: unnecessary-but-interesting details can hurt learning, and so can excessive quantitative information.

The Conversation

Phillip Dawson, Lecturer in Learning and Teaching, Monash University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

Keeping children back a year doesn’t help them read better

Paul Thomas, Furman University

If you’re an eight-year-old living in Charleston, South Carolina, you’re soon going to need to study extra hard at reading. The US state has joined in with a policy trend across the country that links children’s chances of progressing from third to fourth grade with their performance on reading tests.

Back in 2012, 14 states plus the District of Columbia had policies in place that hold students back a year on the basis of their reading ability.

New efforts to reverse the trend, in states such as Oklahoma, remain rare. This is despite research showing that holding children back a grade – known as grade retention – causes more harm than good.

Following Florida

In the US, holding children back a grade as a key element of reading legislation can be traced to a 2001 programme Just Read, Florida. Because of this programme, Florida was characterised by the New York Times education writer Motoko Rich as: “One of the pioneers in holding back third graders because of inadequate reading skills.”

But two problems lie in the popularity of such grade retention policies. First, while the Florida model has significant bi-partisan support among both Democrats and Republicans in the US, reviews of the outcomes of the Florida policy show research on it is misrepresented and inconclusive, at best.

Alongside this, 40 years of research into the policy of holding children back a grade refutes the practice.

Long-term consequences

The policy of holding children back a school year remains “widespread” internationally, according to a 2013 study by two Belgian scholars who studied retention and behaviour in Flemish high school students.

Research addressing retention in Senegal, in Belgium, and in Lebanon reinforces disturbing patterns about the overwhelming negative long-term consequences and ineffectiveness of grade retention. In the UK, where the practice is very uncommon, the policy has been assessed as costly and ineffective.

Holding children back a grade is strongly correlated with behaviour problems for retained students. Examining the Florida model, CALDER education researcher Umut Özek concluded, “Grade retention increases the likelihood of disciplinary incidents and suspensions in the years that follow.”

Another 2009 study by the Rand Corporation for the New York City Department of Education, found:

In general, retention does not appear to benefit students academically. Although some studies have found academic improvement in the immediate years after retention, these gains are usually short-lived and tend to fade over time.

Most disturbing are the long-term consequences. As literacy professor Nancy Frey explained:

The practice of retention … is academically ineffective and is potentially detrimental to children’s social and emotional health. The seeds of failure may be sown early for students who are retained, as they are significantly more likely to drop out of high school. Furthermore, the trajectory of adverse outcomes appears to continue into young adulthood, when wages and postsecondary educational opportunities are depressed.

Despite a well-established research base discrediting the practice, the policy appears to endure for two reasons. A political and public faith in punitive educational accountability sits alongside a straw man argument that advocates keeping children back instead of “social promotion”, where they are automatically passed onto the next grade regardless of student achievement.

Reward vs punishment

Giving children punishment and rewards for reading ability, like grade retention, is ineffective, especially in the context of teaching and learning. Education writer Alfie Kohn has challenged both for years.

Punishment and rewards shift students’ focus away from learning and toward avoiding one or seeking the other. In literacy, that failure has been exposed in the popular but flawed Accelerated Reader (AR) programme that seeks to increase reading through rewards.

Writing about the AR programme, literacy scholar and professor Renita Schmidt explains

If we continue to let AR ask the questions, we may very well lose the interest of our students and create literal readers who only want to ‘get points’ and be done with reading. That’s not teaching and that’s not reading.

But the National Association of Schools Psychologists asserts that neither strategy – repeating a year, nor promoting the student automatically – is an effective remedy.

Alternatives include addressing the powerful influence of how much access children have to books at home. Other research-supported policies, suggested instead of retention by Shane Jimerson and his colleagues at the University of California, Santa Barbara, include focusing on parental involvement and targeted practices based on student needs. They also suggest modified reading programmes as well as more holistic approaches to supporting students, including mental health services and behaviour interventions.

But the most urgent political step is to acknowledge that holding children back a grade fails both students and their progress in literacy. Instead, we need an effective and evidence-based policy to replace decades where punishment is preferred over educationally sound practices.The Conversation

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

Paul Thomas, Associate Professor of Education, Furman University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Policy & Reform, Teachers

As easy as ABC: the way to ensure children learn to read

Kerry Hempenstall, RMIT University

Human speech has long been present in every culture, and our brains have evolved specialized features to enable its rapid development when we are exposed to the speech of others. Reading however is a relatively recent skill, and we have no such dedicated reading module to guarantee success.

Fortunately, our brains are able to adapt to the task, although there is considerable variation in the assistance learners require to achieve it.

Unlocking the alphabet

Humans have produced numerous writing systems in their attempts to create a concrete form of communication, and those languages employing an alphabet have provided the most powerful means of achieving this goal.

The invention of the alphabet was one of the greatest of human achievements. It required the appreciation that the spoken word can be split into its component sound parts, and that each part can be assigned a symbol or letter.

The only other element required to have an amazingly productive writing system is for the learner to be able to identify the sound for each letter, and blend the sounds together to recreate the spoken word.

This is known as the alphabetic principle, and allows us to write any word we can say. Our written language is thus a code, and phonics is simply the key to unlocking the code.

Should we explain to our students through phonics teaching how our speech is codified into English writing? It sounds obvious that we should; indeed, that not to do so would be cruel.

Early introduction is paramount

But some believe there is a better way. English is after all a complicated language, having absorbed so many words from other languages with differing spelling patterns.

But, no, it turns out from years of research that there is a significant advantage in demonstrating from the beginning how the alphabetic principle works. This benefit is particularly evident in the 30% or so of our students who struggle with learning to read.

It also has become clear that demonstrating this principle systematically is more effective than merely sprinkling a few clues here and there as a story is read with, or to, a student.

If we do not introduce this principle early, there is a risk of students developing less productive strategies in their efforts to make sense of print.

Some of these approaches have a surface appeal because they provide a veneer of reading progress, but become self-limiting over time.

Don’t distract from the words

Despite a lack of evidence for its worth, many teachers believe that skilled reading involves making use of multiple cues in identifying words. They believe that words can be predicted (guessed), based on cues other than their structure – picture cues, meaning cues, grammar cues, and hints from the first letter.

However, routinely using pictures to determine word identity draws student attention away from print, thereby diminishing the central importance of the alphabetic principle.

Asking students to remember words as a primary strategy gives the unhelpful message that reading involves the visual memory of shapes, of letter landscapes devoid of alphabetic significance.

Stressing the integrated use of multiple cues (picture, grammar, and meaning cues) leaves students with too many ill-defined options, and produces marked variability in the preferred approach of students.

Fourth grade slump

Of course, many of the better students will develop an understanding that phonics is a foundation anyway; however, those less fortunate will be left to scour their memories for word shapes or attempt to predict upcoming words based on sentence/passage meaning or on the sound of initial letters.

Syntactic cues to word identification tend to be less employed among this less fortunate group group as their skills in grammar are likely to be under developed.

The problem is often not identified until about the Year 4; hence, the term fourth grade slump. In truth, the problem was there from the beginning, and had an instructional source, but was unrecognised because of some teachers’ misunderstanding of reading development.

What happens to these apparently progressing students? As text becomes more complex, prediction becomes less and less accurate.

Many sentences will now include difficult-to-decode words that carry non-redundant information, and hence become more difficult targets for prediction.

There are now increasing numbers of such words. For the memorisers, the number of words that must be recalled from visual memory outgrows students’ visual memory capacity.

These moribund strategies collapse, but in the absence of a productive course of action, students often hold on to them, resisting a return to decoding as a first option as being too hard or too babyish.

Resolution of the problems of these older readers is very difficult for both teacher and student. Better not to create this situation in the first place.

The challenges

Even when the value of early phonics teaching is recognised by educators, students vary significantly in the ease with which they develop from their initial painstaking attempts at decoding through to effortless fluent orthographic-dominant reading.

Our challenge as educators is to be truly sensitive to every reader’s progress through careful monitoring, and to ensure the intensity and duration of instruction is appropriate to their needs.

Once they are on their way, future progress becomes a self-teaching issue, driven largely by how much students choose to read. However, until reading is effortless, we cannot expect children to choose books over the many alternative communication modes available to them today.

The Conversation

Kerry Hempenstall, Casual lecturer in Psychology, RMIT University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in EdTech & Innovation, International Education, Teachers

Online students need more face-to-face time, not less

Shanna Smith Jaggars, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University and Thomas Bailey, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

Higher education, we’re told, is rapidly heading towards huge transformation and technological disruption.

Advocates of online education promise that advances in online learning technologies – by permitting course enrolments in the tens of thousands and leveraging crowd-sourcing for peer review — will make a high quality, low cost higher education accessible to any student.

In the meantime, in the US and elsewhere, universities and colleges are swiftly expanding their offerings of what one might call “old-fashioned” online courses: classes designed by individual instructors with enrolments of 25 or so students.

In 2011, almost seven million American undergraduates were enrolled in such courses.

For the sake of these online students, as well as those yet to enrol, it is important to withdraw our gaze from the glow of what could be, and direct it for a moment toward what is. Only by examining the actual experiences of students in online courses today can we understand both the potential of online learning, and its pitfalls.

Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, recently concluded a series of studies that took a close look at online courses
in one American state’s community college system. We found that most consisted of
readings and assignments placed online, along with “chat rooms” where students were
asked to hold discussions with their peers.

While the technologies deployed varied in
sophistication, in almost all classes one quality remained more or less constant: there
was little meaningful interaction between students and their teachers.

Students were acutely aware of this absence. They told us that if they expected to
struggle in a subject or really “wanted to learn something,” they preferred a traditional classroom where they had more contact with their teachers.

Interestingly, an analysis of the factors that predicted student performance in online classes — factors that included course design and use of technology, among others — found that only one predicted better grades: the depth of interpersonal interaction among students and instructors.

Another team of our researchers examined the role that non-academic factors play in the ability of students to successfully complete a qualification. Interviews with students and faculty made clear made clear that many students arrive at college without possessing or understanding the skills and strategies necessary for academic success.

These skills are as basic as time management, taking notes, using a library and recognising when, how and whom to ask for help.

Interestingly, interviews with online faculty made clear that they expected their students
to be relatively adept and independent learners: students had to be able to manage
their time, take initiative, and generate their own approach to mastering course material.

In other words, to be successful, online learners needed precisely the skills we found to be so deficient in entry level students.

It is perhaps not surprising, then, that our studies have found that students fail and withdraw from online courses at a higher rate — in some subjects, up to twice as frequently — than they do from “face-to-face” classes. Even more troubling, this decline in performance is steeper for groups of students, including minorities, that
are already lower performing.

In other words, existing achievement gaps between, for example, whites and blacks or females and males are exacerbated in the online classroom.

Together, these findings suggest that large numbers of college students need more, not
less support from their teachers; yet, perversely, many online courses ask students to teach themselves.

This request may be reasonable when it is aimed at well-prepared students who have the habits necessary to succeed, and most discussions about the potential benefits of online learning are held with these college-ready students in mind.

For the millions of students who arrive underprepared, however, many from families
with no higher education experience, college or university is a place they go to learn how to learn. It is unlikely that even the most responsive technologies can replace the kind of student-teacher interaction that both hard data and anecdotal evidence indicate are vital in motivating and inspiring such students to succeed.

Online learning will continue to make significant inroads in the post-secondary sector; it may even lower costs. But it remains an open question as to whether this trend will increase access to high quality higher education, or further accentuate glaring gaps in educational advantage.

To ensure the latter does not happen, universities and colleges will have to rethink their approach to online learning.

To start with, the sector should spend fewer resources expanding online offerings, and more on preparing students and training faculty for the demands of online classes.
They should be more deliberate about which courses to put online, and expend greater
effort in evaluating and enhancing student preparation.

Finally, they must require faculty
training in methods that support meaningful interaction with students in the virtual
space.

These adjustments will require time and money, and there is the possibility that truly effective online learning will not cost significantly less than traditional classroom
learning.

However, if online learning is to achieve the purported goal of helping all students attain a quality higher education, now is the time to make these investments.

The Conversation

Shanna Smith Jaggars, Assistant Director, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University and Thomas Bailey, George & Abby O’Neill Professor of Economics and Education; Director, Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

 

Click here to read all our posts concerning the Achievement Gap.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in HBCU's, Higher Education

Students aren’t customers…or are they?

Geoff Sharrock, University of Melbourne

With the rise of mass higher learning, tight public funding and intense competition for students, universities are often encouraged to see students as “customers”. But should they?

Commentators who criticise them for “poor customer service” seem to think so.

But others object that these are social institutions, not businesses selling commodities to consumers. What’s more, if you commercialise higher education, you corrupt it.

To this, others say that all universities, public or private, create private benefits along with public goods. Yes, society benefits from the learning embodied in graduates. And students gain too, from credentials that offer them access to jobs, careers and social mobility.

So why not aim for “customer satisfaction” in the name of better quality, better value for money, or both? Whoever pays?

This seems logical; but the analogy has problems. As the angry professor in Hannie Rayson’s play Life After George says to the cash-strapped dean, “Students aren’t customers! We can’t just give them what they want. They don’t know what they want until after they’ve heard what we have to tell them!”

If it works in business…

Studies of successful businesses may have led to some cognitive dissonance in this debate. A century ago, American and English department stores succeeded with the slogan: “the customer is always right”. French hotelier Cesar Ritz had the same idea: “Le client n’a jamais tort”.

More recently that 1980s bestseller In Search of Excellence found that the best-run US companies stayed “close to the customer”.

Then came “Total Quality Management”. Its focus on process improvements aimed at boosting “customer satisfaction” made consumers the final arbiters of quality.

Meanwhile consulting firms engaged in “Customer Intimacy”, designing solutions for complex client needs, even if the “customer” couldn’t say exactly what they wanted.

Even in business the concepts of “consumer”, “customer” and “client” are not clear-cut. They are shorthand for a spectrum of simple products and complex services, brief encounters and extended engagements.

A “customer focus” spectrum. Source: author

As customers, are they “always right”?

Ideas such as these, tried and true in the commercial world, are hard to reconcile with the student/teacher relationship.

To a lecturer marking assignments, the notion that the “customer is always right” soon gets mugged by the reality that “the student is often wrong”.

The analogy seems to miss the fact that students co-produce what they learn, not just with books and lectures and tutors, but with peers.

For students, study may entail heavy workloads, challenging tasks and uncomfortable interrogations. Knowing this, many lecturers lament the use of short, sharp student surveys as blunt instruments to assess their course or teaching quality.

A spectrum of student experience

In fact, as they engage with the university, students step through a spectrum of identities. Do they ever occupy the role of customer or client? Yes, but with caveats.

The “student as customer” idea is not as novel as it seems. University of California president Clark Kerr observed 50 years ago that as study electives proliferated in US universities, patterns of student choice shaped academic programs: “Their choices, as consumers, guide university expansion and contraction, and this process is far superior to a more rigid guild system of producer determination…”

But here, as part of the bargain, the “consumer” had obligations: “The student,
unlike Adam Smith’s idealised buyer, must consume – usually at the rate of fiftee hours a week.”

We can add other caveats. In the marketplace, payment alone entitles the consumer to the product or service on offer. But most students must pre-qualify to enter their chosen course; and to graduate, they must show that they’ve earned their degree.

Student support and professionalism

Cocooned for a time as citizens and subjects of the university, students assume “membership” rights as well as responsibilities. These rights include access to facilities, advice and support.

The more study options there are, for example, the more guidance they may need, if only to avoid a timetable that even Hermione Granger couldn’t handle.

If they want to switch courses, can students find help that is responsive, respectful and reliable? Or must it be time-consuming, cranky, and confusing?

If the 1990s Melbourne film Love and Other Catastrophes is a guide, student administration can be chaotic, and academic supervision unprofessional, due to a lack of service commitment (or “customer focus”).

While the term is not used, a “customer focus” rubric informs the new national University Experience Survey. As a road-map to quality assurance, it shows how multi-faceted student life can be.

Along with what they think they’ve learned, it asks students to rate their experience of social engagement, teaching quality, student advice, administrative support, campus facilities and IT resources.

Limits to “customer satisfaction”

Yet clearly, students can’t finally dictate what universities do. Cambridge University’s David Howarth observes (in an essay on whether law is a humanity, or more like engineering) that academics, like judges, often serve a “virtual client”.

In court, a lawyer must act in her client’s best interests. But in determining the merits of the case, the judge must consider the interests of absent third parties: a whole society may be the “virtual client”.

Scholars are there to help individual “clients” succeed, up to a point. But when giving a grade that leads to the award of a degree, they must keep absent third parties (such as employers) in mind.

As graduates, students become “products” of the university. When assessing student work, a lecturer who gets too “close to the customer” (and here we include “customer intimacy” in its biblical sense) must take steps to avoid bias.

So, does it ever help to see students as “customers”? Yes, if this means ensuring they’ll be well advised and well supported, so they can make informed choices, use their time well, and benefit fully from study.

And no, if this means distorting the teacher-student relationship, failing to uphold course standards, or undermining the institution’s integrity and the reputation of its degrees.

The Conversation

Geoff Sharrock, Program Director, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Equity, HBCU's, Higher Education, International Education

The covert racism that is holding back black academics

Kalwant Bhopal, University of Southampton

Students are walking out in protest against racial inequality and injustice in the US and have been rallying together in days of action at campuses across the country. The #StudentBlackout movement has challenged and confronted white supremacy and anti-black attitudes on university campuses, and has made demands for more black and minority ethnic faculty members.

So it is ironic that the US is the destination of choice for British black and minority ethnic academics who feel worn down by incidents of racism, exclusion and marginalisation in Britain. Recent research that I worked on, published by the Equality Challenge Unit, found that as a result of their experiences black and minority UK academics were significantly more likely to consider a move to overseas higher education than their white counterparts.

Many spoke of the potential opportunities they identified in working for American universities. I can’t help feeling they might have to re-evaluate their options in the light of what is going on in the US. Many of the demonstrations across American campuses have been triggered by specific local circumstances – such as reports of all-white parties and students in blackface at Yale.

But taken as a whole they represent a response to more widespread concerns about racism within American academic culture. These demonstrations also reflect the wider groundswell in concern across America exemplified by the Black Lives Matter demonstrations which have been sparked by unlawful killings by the police.

Protecting white privilege

In the UK, such protest has not yet been seen. Academics present themselves as guardians of a space that highlights liberal sentiments, progressive values and a commitment to meritocracy. Many regard their “seats of learning” as places that challenge inequalities and injustice. But this is clearly not always the case in reality.

My research has found that many black and minority ethnic academics report experiences of subtle, covert and nuanced racism in higher education in which white identity is privileged and protected within the space traditionally reserved for the white middle class.

During the past decade there has been a significant increase in the numbers of black and minority UK academic staff in higher education – from 6,000 staff in 2003-4 to almost 10,700 in 2013-14. There were even more non-UK black and minority academic staff, as the graph below shows.

But black and minority ethnic academics are far less likely to be in senior roles compared to their white colleagues: 11.2% of UK white academics were professors compared to 9.8% of UK black and minority ethnic staff (of which only 4.5% were black). There are only 20 deputy or pro vice-chancellors who are black or minority ethnic compared to the majority, 530, who are white.

Significant policy changes in the UK, such as the 2010 Equality Act and the introduction of the Race Equality Charter, designed to measure how successful universities were at delivering inclusive policy in practice, might suggest higher education had become more inclusive. But in reality, covert racist behaviour impacts heavily on the career trajectories of many black and minority ethnic academics.

A total of 21 higher education institutions took part in the pilot of the Race Equality Charter 2014 of which eight were successful in gaining a bronze award. The Race Equality Charter works in a similar vein to the Athena Swan charter, which was introduced in 2005 to advance the representation of women in science and engineering subjects.

On the outside

It is often hard to pin down or confront racist behaviour in universities because it is indicative of an environment in which inequality flourishes behind the scenes, rather than centre stage. For example, black academics report goalposts, such as selection criteria, being moved when they apply for promotion – which doesn’t happen for white colleagues.

In my research, which included interviews with 30 US-based academics and 35 who were based in the UK, respondents indicated that in both the UK and US an increase in fragility and risk within academia had resulted in greater competition for new jobs, threats of pay cuts, and fears about job security and tenure.

In a climate of financial global insecurity, competitiveness over job security was far more likely to privilege those from white middle-class backgrounds. Black academics I interviewed in both the US and UK were less likely than their white colleagues to have access to established networks of knowledge and support. These networks open the door for new opportunities in which job offers are made and access granted to particular institutions and insider processes.

I found that “who you know” still counts for far more than “what you know” and fears of job insecurity and fragility actively work to promote the interests of white established elites in academia. This environment of insecurity is of greater value to white academic elites, for who it serves to maintain their ascendancy.

While public displays of racism in the academy are rare, a more pernicious set of behaviour has emerged. Black and minority ethnic academics told me of instances when colleagues would not make eye contact with them in meetings, their opinions were not taken into account and there was constant undermining or criticism of their work.

We must continue to disrupt, challenge and dismantle such covert racism if we are to move forward in our quest for a socially just society.

The Conversation

Kalwant Bhopal, Professor of Education and Social Justice, University of Southampton

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share
Matthew Lynch published in Diversity, Equity, Policy & Reform

Explainer: why transgender students need “safe” bathrooms

Alison Gash, University of Oregon

Bathroom safety has become the next battle for transgender students on college campuses across the nation.

Often referred to as “bathroom desegregation,” calls for safer bathrooms have inspired “shit-ins” at California Polytechnic and San Diego State, where transgender advocates asked student allies to use only gender-neutral restrooms.

Recently, “urine” blockades also confronted Berkeley students at Sather Gate, the main entrance to campus. Advocates filled plastic cups with fake urine and lined them up to greet students as they crossed the threshold into campus to protest inadequate restrooms for transgender students.

Why all the contention over bathrooms? Recent studies suggest that over 50% of transgender individuals will experience sexual assault in their lifetime (a rate that is far higher than for nontransgendered individuals), and using bathrooms could pose a significant threat of physical harm or harassment.

Fear of violence

Studies show that transgender students could be harassed, sexually assaulted or subjected to other physical violence when they are required to use a gendered bathroom.

One survey, commissioned by the Williams Institute, a think tank at UCLA, found that 68% of participants were subjected to homophobic slurs while trying to use the bathroom. Nine percent confronted physical violence.

Another study that surveyed transgender individuals in Washington, DC found that 70% were either verbally threatened, physically assaulted or prevented in some way from using the bathroom of their choice. Some experienced more than one form of such behavior.

Yet another survey found that 26% of transgender students in New York were denied access to their preferred bathrooms altogether.

Redesigning bathrooms

As a result, transgender students need to constantly weigh the trade-offs as they consider bathroom options.

As one University of Washington student articulates:

Do I choose physical safety or emotional safety? Do I choose physical health or mental health?

Universities are bringing in policies to have gender-neutral bathrooms.
Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA

So, from California to Texas, in elementary schools and colleges, administrators are considering the costs and benefits of redesigning bathrooms to accommodate transgender students.

For example, students at University of Pittsburgh can now use bathrooms that conform to their own gender identity. Arizona State University, Ohio State and Wesleyan University, among several others, have instituted policies requiring all new construction to include gender-neutral bathrooms. They are assessing how to modify the existing bathrooms to become gender-neutral single-stall facilities.

This is not limited to colleges and universities. As increasing numbers of primary- and secondary-school-aged children are identifying as transgender, public schools have become “ground zero” for fights over bathroom safety.

Miraloma Elementary School, in San Francisco, for instance, removed gendered signs from many of their bathrooms.

In fact, about two years ago, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law the School Success and Opportunity Act, requiring that all students be able to access bathrooms or locker rooms that are consistent with their own gender identity in California’s K-12 settings.

The ‘bathroom bill’ opposition

But as with other issues concerning transgender rights, some have reacted to these changes with visceral opposition.

For instance, Wisconsin, along with several other states, is considering legislation that would require school districts to only provide separate-gendered bathrooms as a way to stop local school districts from accommodating requests from transgender students.

An elementary school student in Stafford County, Virginia, was prohibited from using the bathroom associated with her gender identity after parents and politicians in the state spoke out against the student’s request.

In fact, opposition to these bathroom accommodations figured prominently in the initiative to vote down Houston’s recent antidiscrimination ordinance, which would have, like hundreds of others across the nation, prohibited discrimination in housing, gender and public accommodations on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, among others.

Opponents dubbed it the “bathroom bill,” framing the policy as one that would permit “men in women’s bathrooms” and would expose women and girls to sexual predators.

Consequently, the ordinance – subjected to public review under court order – failed with 61% of the voters.

This opposition exists even when transgender advocates have not only focused on their own risks but have also invoked the needs of students with disabilities, those who may need “family bathrooms” and students who have survived sexual abuse and are more comfortable with single-stall facilities.

And now, Privacy for All, a group dedicated to opposing transgender bathroom advocacy, is hoping to launch a similar campaign in California. It is currently collecting signatures to bar any public institution from permitting individuals to use bathrooms or changing rooms that comport with their gender identity.

Federal intervention has sent out mixed signals as well. On the one hand, the Department of Education issued a letter to an Illinois school district stating that denying a transgender student’s rights to access a bathroom consistent with their gender identity is a violation of Title IX.

On the other hand, a federal court rejected a transgender student’s claim that his equal rights were violated when his university rejected his request to use a locker room that matched his gender identity.

Need for safety

At this point, for most transgender students, bathroom options are limited.

Transgender students need safe spaces.
Ted Eytan, CC BY-SA

Either they have to travel quite a distance to get to the nearest single-stall gender-neutral bathroom, or change in an “alternative” locker room (often a faculty bathroom or custodial closet).

There could even be days when they go to class in their workout clothes or “hold it in.” Hence, demonstrating Berkeley students held out signs that said: “Where was I supposed to go?” or “I couldn’t hold it any longer.”

Such options have clear drawbacks and health risks. Urinary tract infections, depression and even suicide could be among them.

As a result, sometimes students see their best option as renting a house near campus so they can go home to use the bathroom.

As we mark World Toilet Day by campaigning on behalf of the billions of individuals who lack access to safe, clean sanitation, remember that among those denied access to safe bathrooms are transgender students.

The Conversation

Alison Gash, Assistant Professor of Political Science, University of Oregon

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

  • no reactions
0
Share