Tag: Aaron

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Week of 6/29 Discussion

  1. In  Wong’s article, the section “Starting from the Margins” brings a really good point to the discussion. She writes ” Again, different forms of support are not to be confused with special or unfair treatment simply because they are not intended for or used by everyone.” (Wong, pg. 3)

This is important because it deals with differences in peoples needs to get the equity they deserve. I’ve often heard the argument before that it’s not fair for people to get “special treatment” and Wong in a very matter of factly way shoots this argument down by simply pointing out that because not everybody is the same, people need different things in order to be on the same level playing field as others. This is a point that I think a lot of people forget and would be well suited to remember and acknowledge.

2. The last paragraph in the section ” Equity vs. Equality” has many examples of using language to connect the text. She starts out by using the pointing word “This” to go back to the metaphor she wrote about in the previous paragraph with the foot size and running shoes. Her use of “not only” to connect avoiding acknowledging our identities to unhealthy behaviors that make it out to our identity characteristics being undesirable was very powerful as well, I thought. These examples are on page 3 also.

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Week of 6/22 research discussion, Aaron

  1. Mostly I have relied on JSTOR through the Syracuse Library’s website. I’m pretty familiar with it through other classes I have taken, and was aware at the vast amounts of articles/book chapters that are available on there. Originally while conducting this research I never used the advanced search to limit the publication dates, but have since changed that to find articles or chapters that were written in the last 5 years or so. I also plan to use some news articles (being aware at the plethora of unreliable websites out there) I’m deciding to only use things written by a reputable news source and written by an expert in the field of educational diversity, rather than just relying on any random post that some random person wrote,
  2. As stated above, definitely relying on the academic sources- peer reviewed is always a go to for me. Most of the sources that I have found so far on JSTOR have been chapters from books, so I plan to piece those together in the most fluid way possible. As far as news articles, looking through things like the New York Times, Washington Post, Forbes, etc. I realized I can probably just use the proquest search engine on the Syracuse Library website also since there’s a vast database of newspaper articles available on there. Do any of my classmates have good advice on sifting through newspaper articles to find something that isn’t opinion based or anecdotal? Thank you!
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Week of 6/15 discussion

  1. While going through my classmates canon posts, it is clear that there are multiple areas of interests as far as diversity and inclusion goes. What struck me was the post about “Bridging the generational gap” because that has always been something that has interested me outside of this class. I know age discrimination is certainly a thing, both for younger and older people, and it was neat to see this article about different generations working together. One passage from this post that was especially interesting to me was “His last suggestion is to include more technology in the curriculum. One way he suggested doing this is by incorporating fun and engaging games such as jeopardy to keep his students involved”. This stuck out to me because I have always had this assumption about the younger generation being highly reliant on technology, so it would naturally be incorporated into the learning style to keep them engaged. As for the media element that helped my understanding, I really appreciated the bar graph in the article discussing diversity in minority education. Bar graphs are simple, yet they paint a picture that is easy to understand.

3. The paragraph that touches on Webb blaming educational efforts and being obsessed with STEM and disregarding other areas of education is what I am focusing on for this. Bogost uses Webb’s statements aggressively to really drive an emphasis on this. Starting out with “Even though she’d like to see more diversity among tech workers, Webb blames educational efforts like those that Constellations is pursuing for the current state of affairs, at least in part. ” This sets the rest of the paragraph to explain why she thinks we need to do better in terms of educating people, and smoothly transitions to the next paragraph where she can give a counter example. In this case it is China, and how they teach children in a more organic way so that they are more versatile in their education rather than just focusing solely on one area.

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Rhetoric of Bogost

The article starts out by introducing a protagonist, Amy Webb, and right off the bat she is injured- a broken ankle. This injury is used to grab your attention immediately so you’re enthralled in what is being said. Bogost then uses Webb’s injury to connect the dots of how her injury produces the inconvenience of her having to go through x ray machines that highlight areas of her in big yellow blocks. This leads her to showing how technology does not take women into their creative processes, and as an end result they are treated very differently, unfairly even.

A second instance is Bogost explaining that Webb encountered other problems while being in this situation with a TSA agent, the physical characteristic of having big, curly hair. Webb says “She’s had other problems with the machines, too, including that her mop of thick, curly hair sometimes confuses them.” Bogost then uses a connection to a colleague, which makes the reader take a claim like this more seriously. It’s bad enough when it happens to one person, but when more people are added into the fold, especially when you know these people, or the author knows them, it makes this much easier to physically identify with.

Bogost uses the sentence “Computers have started issuing prison sentences” as an eye catching phrase that surely pulls emotion out of the readers. At first glance one might think that this is used a metaphor of some sort, but it’s actually much more than that. The link that is offered in this article takes you to another article- one that shows how criminal sentencing uses Artificial Intelligence to deem someone high risk for criminal behavior, and how terrifying that concept it.

Bogost (and Webb) criticizes the fascination with STEM education, and the pipeline of education to workforce as part of the problem with why these fields aren’t very diverse, but beforehand, theres a qualifying statement “Even though she’d like to see more diversity among tech workers, Webb blames educational efforts like those that Constellations is pursuing for the current state of affairs, at least in part.” This is used to sort of soften the blow for the criticism that is to come.

Another very interesting, but simple line that stuck out to me from this article touches on the differences between humans and machines: “Critical thinking is what the computers won’t be able to do,” This is a short, simple statement that has a lot to unpack. In one sentence this sort of sums up why Artificial Intelligence\, and technology might not be so helpful, because it leaves out so much (or even all) of the human element, and therefore it cannot truly do ther job that it is asked to do.

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Unit 1 Summary

In the book “What Universities Can be”, Robert Sternberg (a psychologist and psychometrician at Cornell University)  devotes a chapter to diversity in higher education. He begins this chapter by saying rather frankly that people learn better and learn more if they are mixed in with people who don’t look and think like them. He says “You cannot be an active concerned citizen if your only concerns are for people you view as like yourself” (Sternberg, 73).

This is an anecdotal claim at this point, and he uses it to identify with the readers because it is sort of a no brainer concept if you think about it. Our social and educational experience can only benefit if we have variety in our peers. Sternberg than uses a few study examples, one being done in rural Kenya. This study pooled Kenyans and asked them to identify herbs that would help heal with different ailments. They all did a great job with this, but when the objective changed and they tested these same people in more academic tests, the results weren’t as good. This study is used to illustrate his point that there are different types of knowledge and intelligence. One group of people (mostly western, white people in this case) can be better at testing and doing well in standardized settings, while the other group of people might not do so well in that area but excels in the area of experiential knowledge, of being able to identify and do things in the real world outside of the classroom.  Another example is using Alaskan Yup’ik peoples, who are able to do things like ride a dog sled over vast areas and hunt animals and identify that storms may be on the way by examining their kill. These sorts of things are unimaginable for most students or people who aren’t part of that culture.

This goes further into what Sternberg calls implicit theories of intelligence- folks ideas of what they consider to be smart. The same idea is very prevalent in high school and college testing, where white people who tend to be more affluent do better on these exams and end up in a better situation for college and life afterwards, and minorities who may not do as well on these exams are slighted, yet they excel in other areas of intelligence such as in the social realm.

In previous readings we learned about unconscious bias in terms of hiring practices. This phenomenon of bias is very closely related to implicit theories of intelligence. Essentially, deciding what you think constitutes being smart is a bias- you’re predetermining if a certain ethnicity, social group, gender, age range, etc is intelligent. When we take a step back and pull the blinds off of the window that is our mind, it’s easy to realize that differences between people is not a hinderance, but an asset. We should embrace them all.

This chapter from the book has an academic style to it, yet the messaging to the audience could be more broad than someone who is in one of his psychology courses. He uses studies to back up his arguments about diversity and also brings personal experience to identify with the readers easier. What we can take from this chapter is that diversity and inclusion are important to the whole picture of academic life, and we benefit as a whole from participating in it. There is more than one cog in the wheel when it comes to intelligence so it serves us better to include as many of them as we can.

An article focusing on the changes to college admissions testing and how it may benefit minorities who were previously hurt by this process: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/04/27/sat-act-policies-may-improve-diversity-at-colleges-and-universities/#3a9183f3bd57

The academic article i used to write this post:  j.ctt20d890h.8

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Unit 1 Summary, Aaron

In the book “What Universities Can be”, Robert Sternberg (a psychologist and psychometrician at Cornell University)  devotes a chapter to diversity in higher education. He begins this chapter by saying rather frankly that people learn better and learn more if they are mixed in with people who don’t look and think like them. He says “You cannot be an active concerned citizen if your only concerns are for people you view as like yourself” (Sternberg, 73).

This is an anecdotal claim at this point, and he uses it to identify with the readers because it is sort of a no brainer concept if you think about it. Our social and educational experience can only benefit if we have variety in our peers. Sternberg than uses a few study examples, one being done in rural Kenya. This study pooled Kenyans and asked them to identify herbs that would help heal with different ailments. They all did a great job with this, but when the objective changed and they tested these same people in more academic tests, the results weren’t as good. This study is used to illustrate his point that there are different types of knowledge and intelligence. One group of people (mostly western, white people in this case) can be better at testing and doing well in standardized settings, while the other group of people might not do so well in that area but excels in the area of experiential knowledge, of being able to identify and do things in the real world outside of the classroom.  Another example is using Alaskan Yup’ik peoples, who are able to do things like ride a dog sled over vast areas and hunt animals and identify that storms may be on the way by examining their kill. These sorts of things are unimaginable for most students or people who aren’t part of that culture.

This goes further into what Sternberg calls implicit theories of intelligence- folks ideas of what they consider to be smart. The same idea is very prevalent in high school and college testing, where white people who tend to be more affluent do better on these exams and end up in a better situation for college and life afterwards, and minorities who may not do as well on these exams are slighted, yet they excel in other areas of intelligence such as in the social realm.

This chapter from the book has an academic style to it, yet the messaging to the audience could be more broad than someone who is in one of his psychology courses. He uses studies to back up his arguments about diversity and also brings personal experience to identify with the readers easier. What we can take from this chapter is that diversity and inclusion are important to the whole picture of academic life, and we benefit as a whole from participating in it. There is more than one cog in the wheel when it comes to intelligence so it serves us better to include as many of them as we can.

 

I have included a link for further reading from Forbes that addresses the new changes in college admission testing since the pandemic, and how the lack of using these exams may be helping expand diversity in colleges:http:// https://www.forbes.com/sites/kimelsesser/2020/04/27/sat-act-policies-may-improve-diversity-at-colleges-and-universities/#4eb2b3f83bd5

j.ctt20d890h.8       This is the link to the pdf file of my article I summarized

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Week of 6/8 Discussion

  1. In the Ted Talk “Why work doesn’t happen at work” by Jason Fried, the overlying message is that the structure of office work in our society is flawed because of mandatory distractions in the workplace. Fried is a technology entrepreneur who in this presentation it is easy to tell that he is passionate about this topic. It seems that the audience he is aiming towards would be people who currently work in an office environment (or who have in the past).

His message of why the office environment is actually counterproductive is because while asking the question “Where do you go when you want to get things done?” (which is something he’s asked many people for quite a while) hardly ever comes back with the answer of “the office”. He came up with the phrase “M&M” being the cause of the biggest distractions in the office- it stands for managers and meetings.

His style is very conversational, almost like he is talking to a group of his peers and not in an academic sense, and he uses a bit of humor to make his points come across more comfortable for the listeners.

2. In the Margaret Heffernan speech “The human skills we need in an unpredictable world” we hear a very powerful message. She is a former CEO of multiple companies, and the audience of her speech is/can be a very broad one: it can be geared towards a group of students or it can be more of a social/political speech such as a state of the union address.  She begins with using an example of a grocery store chain switching to a digital format to capitalize on efficiency, and uses this to delve further into some anecdotal messages of how this actually makes people and companies less efficient because it doesn’t account for the human element, or that the world is just naturally unpredictable.

Further on however, she uses more concrete examples of this point:  CEPI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness has to prepare for upcoming epidemics. They do not know when, what, or where they will be, but they have to prepare anyways. This might not be efficient but it’s robust (which is one of the central themes of her speech.) Another is the English rugby club who goes on expensive, unorthodox team building trips and adventures which strengthens their bonds together. Banks holding more capital than they need, which is different from the past. Then she gets a bit more into the political economical realm about countries building trade relationships, putting in the time and effort into befriending many nations because it is better for their economy.

She smoothly translates this into the theme of automation in our industries and personal lives, saying that the more we allow technology to take over, the less we become involved in things, and it doesn’t suit us well to do this.

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Summary of Diversity article

The Journal article/study titled “Racial and Ethnic Diversity in the Classroom: Does It Promote Student Learning?” in The Journal of Higher Education from September-October 2001 conducted a study of 1,258 students spread out throughout seven four year colleges. The students were in the field of engineering, and were mostly white males.

Students completed a series of questionnaires upon completion of the course which shed light on their experiences- how they retained information, what their diversity experience was like, how well their problem solving skills grew, etc. The answers were on a basic 1-4 scale.

The numbers in this study show that while having a less homogenous, more diverse population in the classroom may have had a positive impact on class performance, it wasn’t enough to be considered statistically significant. Even more, there was virtually no difference in class performance in the classrooms where there was no diversity at all.

A valid reason for this is that the seven colleges represented in this study are not representative of higher education as a whole, and even more importantly, the field of engineering consists of students who already are performing at a high level academically and have high problem solving skills, and are mostly (73%) male who are non minority. Taking this into account, it’s very likely that the data is skewed. The authors of this study themselves even urge not to take this as gospel, and that more studies would be needed in order to come to a more concrete conclusion.

 

(I have attached the pdf version of this article below)

2672879

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Week of 6/1 discussion questions, Aaron

  1. For my article that I am choosing to add to the canon of diversity and inclusion I used the Syracuse library site to go through JSTOR to look for an academically peer reviewed article. There of course are many other outlets that would show a lot of results, but I wanted to make sure that I chose something that was credible in the field of academia. The subject i’m choosing to delve further into is diversity in the field of education, so I searched for articles that were published in teachers’ journals. Unlike some of my fellow classmates however, I am not limiting my search field to articles that were just recently published, and my reason for this is simple- just because something was written a while ago doesn’t make the findings any less relevant than something more recent, especially in the field of diversity and inclusion. We can get a better look at the results of questions posed in an article written years ago to see what changes (if any) occurred.
  2. In the 2015 article “Why Diversity Matters” we are shown graphics illustrating that companies who are more diverse have a higher percentage of productivity. While this is something that may seem to be common sense, a different article titled “The Inclusion Dividend: Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off” encourages us to look at diversity in a different way. While we can come to the agreement that diversity is good for us and our companies, we have to acknowledge that intent and impact make all the difference in the world. People may tend to claim that they are unbiased, but that is false, and this article reminds us that on a daily basis, any person can say or do things that are insensitive, no matter how honest or pure their intent was originally.
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K&D Summary

Authors Mark Kaplan and Mason Donovan wrote a book centering around Inclusion and diversity in the workplace. Both authors themselves are managing partners in a firm that specializes in inclusion and diversity in the workplace. This chapter uses a protagonist named Kim who is an executive level manager in a company and runs through a normal day in her work life. Throughout this day, the authors let us know that she has a very hectic schedule and is overtaxed at work and may have good intentions in what she choses to do or say, but the impact doesn’t match her intentions (the authors say it rarely does with anybody).

Essentially, Kim’s actions come off as tone deaf in a way because she uses her busy schedule as an excuse to be insensitive to other employees, even her mentee, who she doesn’t pay attention to and blows her off for a previous mentee who is an “aggressive guy”, which is an attitude she seems to favor. The message we can take from this chapter is that most people have good intentions and that doesn’t usually add up to positive impact, we all have unconscious bias and it affects us at work, there are in-groups and out-groups at work (similar to cliques in schoolchildren) and that there are different levels of these groups: Individual, group/team, and organizational.