Educators can create more inclusive learning experiences by acknowledging identity, beliefs, cultural assumptions, and unconscious biases. When educators understand their own cultural assumptions, they can design more inclusive and equitable active learning experiences that resonate with diverse student populations.
Educators' personal biases and cultural assumptions can significantly impact their curriculum design and assessment methods and their interpretation of student achievement. For example, through self-reflection, an educator might realise their unconscious bias towards certain technological solutions based on most of their disciplinary experiences being in developed urban areas. This bias might lead them to unconsciously dismiss or undervalue traditional or Indigenous engineering solutions that could be more appropriate in different cultural contexts.
Analyse which perspectives are prioritised in the curriculum and whether inherent biases exist. This is best conducted with multiple faculty and institutional professionals who can contribute perspectives from multiple cultures and backgrounds.
Use a questioning framework to uncover biases when developing the curriculum.
Example questions
What cultural and social assumptions are made when selecting student groups?
What are the educator's expectations of students, and how much has been explicitly stated?
What prior technical knowledge is assumed, and do all students share it?
What assumptions are we making about people’s abilities in online learning?
Are we assuming everyone can differentiate colours equally?
What assumptions are we making when designing lab spaces, such as a specific height standard for workbenches in educational spaces?
Are we assuming students of a particular background are ‘naturally good’ at specific practices? How could this impact the student and those not from that background?
Do we hold assumptions about certain types of students regarding class preparation and performance?
Do we make assumptions about students based on their communication style?
Create a rubric or guiding questions for peer review of teaching sessions designed to unpack unconscious bias.
Develop a program-wide observation rubric that prompts reviewers to analyse the equity practices present in their educator colleagues’ assessment tasks.
Engaging in cross-disciplinary discussions with educators to leverage diversity in experience when it may be lacking within departments.
Explore personal resistance
Sensing internal resistance to change can be a good indicator of an internal bias. For example, an educator may resist being encouraged to design active learning experiences. Upon reflection, this could be due to their prior education being heavily theoretical, and this bias might disadvantage students from backgrounds where practical, community-based problem-solving is valued.
Maintain a resistance journal to identify moments when your beliefs and values are challenged.
Jot these experiences down when they occur and reflect on them later. If the resistance is because the idea doesn’t align with your values, then it’s an opportunity for you to consolidate and stand firm in those values. If the resistance makes you question your values and what you hold to be true, then explore this.
Assume students have little capacity to reflect on bias, so they all learn the same skills over time without anyone being disadvantaged due to a lack of prior knowledge.
Begin with an anonymous diagnostic survey in the introductory course, asking students to consider their own identity and beliefs, then build towards critical reflection on bias and assumptions.
Create a reflective framework with prompting questions to critically examine unconscious bias, cultural sensitivity, and any other EDI themes you want your students to explore.
Require students to document how they address potential biases and incorporate cultural considerations into their solutions.
Example questions
Why do you know this?
Why do you hold this as true?
What do others hold as true for them?
Students may not recognise how their beliefs and assumptions differ from others unless they are exposed to alternative perspectives.
Create a case study assessment that contains inherent cultural bias within product design, have students analyse and identify the bias, and then revise the product brief to address cultural relativity. If equity and cultural relativity themes are embedded in the assessment task, then they should also feature within the assessment criteria and rubric.
Include a reflective task where students analyse the perspectives and theoretical standpoints within a task or project, noting whether a broad range was represented or if certain views were prioritised.
When providing choice in assessment, integrate a rationale component that asks the student whether their choice is related to the existing knowledge base or their aligned interests. Have students reflect on whether their choice is related to improving their diversity of thought.
Create a group assessment task with an individual reflective component that encourages personal reflection on social identities and power dynamics.
Develop empathy through perspective-taking exercises and reflective post-assessment debriefs.
Creating space for educators to be open and honest with their own skill gaps allows staff to speak from their own perspectives and work together in a form of mutual trust and transparency.
Use an ePortfolio and encourage staff to showcase their own skill gap identification and development, and use this ePortfolio to showcase growth. Sharing perspectives within a smaller group, such as a school or department, may be safer.
Run a student focus group that broadly elicits feedback to indicate potential faculty gaps rather than individual ones. While gaps in faculty competency can be indicated by students, it's advisable to be careful about the information elicited through institution-wide student satisfaction surveys.