Education Activities

Here are some exercises that you can use with students to increase understanding of issues around discrimination. As with all activities and discussions of this nature, they are potentially distressing, and appropriate support must be in place beforehand, as well as providing students with a content warning before the session.

We're all human: Love has no labels Play this short 3 minute video, which demonstrates that we are all human and essentially share the same characteristics and needs such as love. The associated resources and discussion questions can be used to help students reflect and discuss the issues

Getting to know you: bias and stereotypes TV 2 Danmark - This short 3 minute video illustrates that we may share things in common with others that we may not expect, and it challenges assumptions and stereotypes that we may hold of people. You could try to replicate the activity with your own students, and ask them to come up with some characteristics to get to know each other. Tell students that they do not have to share any information that they do not want to. Be cautious about including characteristics that produce ethnicity divides (e.g. you speak English as an additional language).

Equality versus Equity: $100 race Play this short 4 minute video which demonstrates privilege through the difference between equality (treating everyone equally) versus equity (treating everyone fairly so they have the same chance to succeed). Students could then be asked to discuss the difference between equality and equity and reflect on examples where they may have witnessed fair vs unfair treatment of others - more information and helpful visual illustrations can be shown here

Understanding Privilege: Watch a 5 minute video about privilege, describing what is privilege. You could suggest that your students complete a privilege questionnaire (aimed at an American audience), or take a Privilege Walk - the latter should be optional and students should be able to not respond to individual questions if they do not want to. After watching the video or completing the questionnaire, students could be asked to discuss the following questions

1. When was the last time you had to think about your ethnicity, race, gender identity, ability level, religion, and/or sexual orientation? What provoked you to think about it or acknowledge it?

2. When watching TV or a movie, how likely are you to watch shows whose characters reflect your ethnicity, race, gender, ability level, religion, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation?

3. When using social media, how diverse is your feed? How diverse are your friends and followers? How diverse are those that you follow?

4. How do you respond when others make negative statements towards individuals of a different ethnicity, race, gender, ability level, religion, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity than yourself?

5. How often do you go to social settings where the majority of individuals are of a different ethnicity, race, gender, ability level, religion, sexual orientation, and/or gender identity than yourself?

6. How diverse is the community in which you live?

7. How do you feel when you are in a community that is different than your neighborhood?

8. How would you make your neighborhood more inclusive and sensitive?

9. If you recognized your privilege, what did you do with this realization?

This is one evidence-based way to address the ‘divide’ that is sometimes visible in classrooms between white students and Black students, or indeed between any groups of students that seem segregated for whatever reason.

The contact hypothesis (Allport, 1954) promotes the idea that contact between members of different groups reduces prejudice and promotes positive attitudes toward each other. Contact is particularly effective if it involves cooperation, allows for the development of close relationships, and is done with institutional support (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006).

I usually do this activity early on in the course and I introduce it as an ice-breaker to help students get to know each other.

First, I show students this video . Then essentially, I replicate the activity with the students.

I get students up on their feet standing in a big circle.

I call out a number of different characteristics, one at a time, of varying degrees of seriousness, e.g., you have a pet, you went on a gap year, you hate marmite. If a characteristic applies to the student, and if they want to share that information, they walk into the centre of the circle and form a mini group. They can briefly share something of themselves with others in the group, e.g. what type of pet they have, before returning to the wider circle. (I learnt to be cautious about including characteristics that produced groups that are divided by ethnicity, e.g. you have lived in a country other than the UK, or you speak English as an additional language).

Although this exercise might be difficult in some teaching spaces with larger class sizes, it could be adapted by randomising students to small groups and providing them with a written list of characteristics that they discuss to find commonalities.

You could play a few rounds of this game simply as an ice-breaker, or try the following extension

Extension:

After a few rounds of this game, I facilitate students forming groups of about four based on one of the characteristics that they shared (e.g. one group might comprise dog owners).

In their small groups, over the course of the week they complete an exercise in which they have to choose a protected characteristic from the Equality Act, 2010, and find a notable person who has experienced discrimination on the basis of that characteristic (e.g. Nelson Mandela or Malala Yousafzai).

They briefly present that person’s challenges and achievements to the class the following week (this is the cooperation element according to the Contact Hypothesis).

To further improve the success of ‘contact’ by supporting the development of close relationships, I request that students return to their small groups regularly during the term when conducting discussions or activities.

I see these students forming new friendships that are not based on ethnicity, and seems to be one way to help to reduce any potential divides.

Decolonising the curriculum involves critically interrogating assumptions about how the world works and how these assumptions affect Black people. It requires questioning the location and identity of authors, interrogating what they write about, how they write, and what influence this has on our understanding (Sabaratnam, 2017). Decolonising is important because it enables views of marginalised voices to be acknowledged and appreciated, reflecting the experiences of all learners in the curriculum, helping them to understand who they are (Moncrieffe et al., 2020).

Student-led social media campaigns that gained attention around the year 2018, such as #WhyIsMyCurriculumWhite and #RhodesMustFall, sought to raise awareness of the lack of diversity in education and racist institutional structures.

Lots has been written about how to decolonise and diversity in different subject areas, so I will not repeat it here, but take time to find appropriate resources for your subject that will enable you to do this.

https://www.inasp.info/project/journals-online-project

"The Journals Online (JOLs) project aimed to provide increased the visibility, accessibility and quality of peer-reviewed journals published in developing countries so that the research outputs produced in these countries can be found, shared and used more effectively. "

"Improving the quality, credibility and visibility of developing country research journals is crucial to ensure balanced and representative global research dissemination, and to helping research achieve greater impact by making it accessible and valued by those that need it. "

You could search journals from different countries with key words to find evidence from the Global South that you could refer to in your teaching.