Unconscious Bias: When Good Intentions Aren’t Enough

Unconscious Bias: When Good Intentions Aren’t Enough, by Sarah E. Fiarman. Educational Leadership,  November 2016 | Volume 74 | Number 3.

“Deep-rooted biases hinder our best intentions. Learn how to recognize and address them.” A longer (5 pages) article that goes through a number of unconscious ways in which inequities can be perpetuated, and that challenges us all to hold each other accountable to make change.

 

 

Is there space for Indigenous knowledge in academia?

“Is there space for Indigenous knowledge in academia?” Unreserved episode, CBC, Feb. 2018 (46 min).

A 46 min episode of the CBC show Unreserved. Feel free to comment on all of it if you like–but our focus here is especially on the first interview.

A really good resource; several short interviews addressing different aspects of this question. Especially interesting for many profs is probably the first interview with a student talking about being singled out in classes and the behaviours and practices of other students and professors

“Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Settler Privilege”

Dina Gilio-Whitaker, “Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack of Settler Privilege” November 08, 2018

An article that clearly refers back to Peggy McIntosh’s “white privilege” article, with another list of examples that while not specific to teaching, again highlight everyday things many people do, in and out of the classroom, that bear rethinking.

“White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”

Peggy McIntosh, “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack” 1989

A well-known and oft-quoted and referred to piece in which McIntosh lists a number of examples of “white privilege,” focusing in on the idea of privilege as reflected in structures and practices around her. While not specific to teaching, many of the examples she lists are the kinds of everyday things many people do, both in the classroom and outside of it.

Diversity is an organizational strength

“People from different backgrounds have varying ways of looking at problems, what I call ‘tools.’ The sum of these tools is far more powerful in organizations with diversity than in ones where everyone has gone to the same schools, been trained in the same mold and thinks in almost identical ways.”

– Scott E. Page, Professor of Complex Systems, Political Science and Economics, University of Michigan