Representation in the Classroom
Representing Race and Gender: Performing and Teaching Intersectionality in Australia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Jane Park, Sara Tomkins
“Representing Race and Gender” is the only course in the undergraduate curriculum of the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney that foregrounds race. It shows how race intersects with gender, class, and sexuality and gives students theoretical tools to critique the reproduction of racism in dominant culture. This paper provides a critical reflection of our embodied experiences teaching this course as women of different racial, cultural, and generational backgrounds (Anglo-Australian millennial and Korean-American GenXer). We draw on feminist and cultural studies pedagogies as well as models of cultural competence to re-examine our memories of events, interactions, and emotions in the three years we have taught the course. We illuminate the strategic ways we have performed our own intersectional identities in lecture and tutorial spaces, in particular considering the different ways that students of various backgrounds have responded to the same material when it is taught by a white or non-white lecturer. Through this shared reflection, we hope to demonstrate the continued importance of acknowledging and using one’s own embodied experience to teach material on diversity such as race, gender and class in the university, especially in Australia where such courses remain rare.
Organizational Changes for Diversity in STEM: Professional Women’s Strategies for STEM Fields’ Cultural Changes in the United States and South Korea
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Yun Kyung Cho
Although women and minority representation in higher education has been consistently increasing over the last decades, their proportion has remained low in specific fields and professional workplaces. While the earlier “leaky pipeline” literature largely focused on individual women and minority students’ science competence and demographic characteristics, more recent studies illustrate that they initially have STEM interests and occupational aspirations but gradually become discouraged or unwelcome through interactions in their fields. This study examines how professional socialization facilitates mutual influences between the dearth of women in STEM and gendered STEM culture. By conducting individual in-depth interviews with female graduate students and professors in three STEM fields in the US and South Korea, this study seeks the organizational change mechanism by which professional women first socialize into STEM cultures for their individual success in their fields and then gradually modify the existing cultures towards more diverse and inclusive STEM cultures. By illustrating individual women’s agency and strategies in research practices and interactions with male colleagues, this study suggests a minority-based model for bottom-up organizational change mechanisms. It complements the current understanding of institution-level diversity issues that are based on majority-based model for reproduction mechanisms of existing social inequalities.
Enhancing Teaching and Learning Through 3D Pedagogy Workshops that Decolonise, Democratize and Diversify the Curriculum
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Deborah Gabriel
Equality, diversity and inclusion in educational practice are increasingly important dimensions of undergraduate education. In the UK in 2012, the National Union of Students called for a ‘liberated’ curriculum that tackles structural inequalities in society. Since then, due to government policy changes in higher education, funding is driven by student outcomes, measured through a Teaching Excellence Framework, under the auspices of an Office for Students that has a strong remit for social mobility and improvement in the retention, progress and success of students of colour and non-traditional backgrounds. To meet student demands and government priorities, higher education institutions must ensure that educational practitioners have the requisite skills to deliver culturally democratic teaching and create inclusive environments. Enhancing educational practice through workshops focused on reflective practice and critical pedagogy deliver benefits both to institutions and students. Critical reflective practice combines critical inquiry and self-reflection with critical analysis to create awareness of how cultural practices and educational policy shape teaching practice. Cultural competence enables educators to deliver cross-cultural and culturally responsive teaching. Diversifying the curriculum can help democratise the environment to enhance student experience and outcomes. This paper is based on the project Enhancing Educational Practice Through 3D Pedagogy Workshops. It discusses the preliminary findings of survey and focus group data collected following pilot workshops at two UK universities aimed at: advancing educational practice by enhancing the cultural competence of practitioners; equipping educators with the knowledge and skills to decolonise, diversify and democratise the curriculum and enhance practice by promoting reflexive teaching.
