zoe miller – Page 2 – WRT 205 Summer 2021

Discussion Questions week 7/19

Wong adds to the conversation through what I found to be a very relevant metaphor. When I think about the accommodations that I fought to get in high school for my ADD, I saw them as “helpers” that I needed to be able to function the way everyone else does. I had never really thought about equity and diversity being capable of needing the same thing. Her metaphor about the shoes used for a race is found on page 27 in the second paragraph of the section “Equity vs. Equality”. I think that this metaphor can be used in any situation where people are just a little bit “different” from the majority of the people that they are working with and putting it into a scenario where most people can really see the importance of these accommodations.

In my experience in the case of a disability, people who do not need the accommodations that I need do not understand the point of them. Some even found it unfair that I would get extra time on an exam or could type my essays instead of write them. The metaphor that Wong uses allows people who do not need the accommodations to see why people who need them do. By phrasing it the way she does and then explaining how it relates to equality and equity, and the difference between the two, shows what needs to be done to accomplish inclusion. It is not just about having a more diverse group of people working, which is also something that Wong points out, it is about giving everyone the tools they need, whatever those may be, to be successful.

Something that I noticed Wong did a often in her article is that after introducing a new point, she would elaborate on it. Since most, if not all, of her points are related in some way, transitioning from one point to another seemed extremely natural in the way that Wong posed her argument. A lot of the transitions she used to connect her points occurred naturally because the next point was able to validate or back up the previous one.

In the first section after the introduction, “Context: Social Inequities & Organizational Culture”, Wong makes a point, gives an example or explains what people are doing to cause the point she is making, and then concludes her poing by giving more information that will affect the reader. She did this well when she concluded her idea about safety professionals and their awareness with “When women die on the job, they are murdered at much higher rates than men, and a large percentage of women are killed at work by intimate partners”. This sentence is powerful and was a good way to transition into the conclusion of the section that reiterated the importance of safety professionals and their knowledge and awareness.

This week my mom and I went into the city and got bracelets that I saw online where they zap them on so that the only way to take them off is to cut it. If you need to cut it off you can always go back and they can put it back on. We got matching ones together!!

Discussion Questions Week of 7/12

The search tools that I have been using to find my sources are using key words and filters to find ones that relate to what my ideas are and make sure that they are the type of sources that I am looking to use. In the case that this does not work or I do not like anything that came up, I go to one of the sources that is relevant to my idea and look through what contributed to it, look at other pieces that the author(s) worked on, and look at if it came from a bigger source and go through it if it did. In the case that I did not find a source I liked, I would try using different key words and even take a step back and look again later to see if something would catch my eye that did not the first time.

I am planning to switch from discrimination among people with disabilities to discrimination against people in the LGBTQ+ community. In doing this, I hope to find sources that discuss examples and situations where people were discriminated against. I want to make sure that people who have experienced this type of discrimination and what they did in response, if anything. In order to find this I plan to start out the same way I found my article for my unit 1 expanding the canon as I explained above. I am hoping to make a point about how people being discriminated at all is unacceptable, people being discriminated against something they cannot control is cruel in every way.

Discussion Questions Week of 7/5

I found Joanna’s article and interpretation of Is it safe to bring myself to work? Understanding LGBTQ experiences of workplace dignity to be very interesting and informative. Discrimination against people with different sexualities has gone on for a while but is more recently being brought into the light. I think that knowing how to be a good ally is definitely important is supporting people who are being discriminated against which is why the video she included was so important. However, I found the excerpts of people explaining their experiences to be more powerful because it really brings to light how people are treated and for something that should not matter to anyone but themselves.

I also enjoyed Sherri’s interpretation and ideas of Algorithm-Driven Hiring Tools: Innovative Recruitment or Expedited Disability Discrimination? I think that people who do not have disabilities might not be able to see how people with disabilities are discriminated against and bring the topic into the light is important for companies as well as people who are discriminated against for something they cannot control. I found the statistics that Sherri included to be very helpful and eye opening. Seeing the actual numbers and percentages of how many people are affected, especially when it should really be no one, makes the issue much clearer and supports her ideas of the article very well.

Bogost’s transitions were so clean and smooth that they are almost hard to pin point. He has one argument, but different types of evidence to support the argument. When moving between the first couple points of evidence he uses small phrases that can be related in a way to everything that he is saying like “But that’s an aspirational hope” and “Those efforts have merit”. Both of these comments conclude what he is saying in a way that the reader might not even see it as a transition. His next point after each transition relates to the previous point which is what causes the transition to not feel like one.

Bogost’s Rhetorical Moves

In Bogost’s “The problem with diversity in computing” he uses different rhetorical techniques and moves to clearly and effectively get his ideas across. He is expressing the importance of diversity in computing but it is also problematic, as one can tell from the title of the article. The first point he makes stood out to me because he gives an example as to why diversity is important in computing. He explains the time that Professor Amy Webb had a hard time going through airport security because of her boot for her ankle, the underwire of her bra, and, believe it or not, her hair. She then says that the reason this happened to her and has most likely happened to other people it because “someone like me wasn’t in the room”. I found this to be important because in order to discuss what the problems with having diversity in computing are, there needs to be a point made as to why diversity in computing is important to begin with. The reader can actually see the importance of having a diversity of people creating a machine by Bogost painting a picture of what happened to Webb and why.

Another rhetorical move that Bogost used was the point he made about how “integration of women, people of color, and other underrepresented voices would mean that the behavior of the entire industry would change as a result of their presence…”. Whether the change in behavior would be positive or negative, the idea comes from the question that Charles Isbell rose: “are we interested in diversity, or are we interested in integration?”. Integration and diversity are not the same thing, but both of them would cause issues if integrated into computing. Here Bogost uses a hypophora by posing Isbells question about integration and then explaining what the difference between the two is and going into what the goal and his point of the article as a whole is.

Bogost also uses an oxymoron to exaggerate how big of an issue diversity in computing really is. “Tech-industry is improving, buy it’s still pretty terrible”. By using the phrase “pretty terrible” he dramatizes the problem of the lack of diversity in the tech-industry and goes onto explain how that is important for computing systems.

Bogost also makes a point that “inclusion is first a problem of economic equity; any resulting social or moral benefits would just be gravy”. He comes to this conclusion by identifying the goal of Google which is “to get more people in the game, not necessarily change the rules of the game”. This falls right under what Isbell asked about integration vs. diversity. Getting more people into the game is more diversity, but the issue with having diversity in computing at all is being able to make a change along with the inclusion of underrepresented voices. Here Bogost uses an antanagoge by mentioning getting more people involved and the company being diverse but following it with the idea that the company is not willing to change what they do which needs to take place along with the inclusion of underrepresented people.

Another rhetorical move that I found to be powerful was identifying what would need to happen to allow diversity or integration to happen. “But integration is much harder than diversity. Isbell thinks that two separate conditions need to be met in order to accomplish it: ‘one is that the new folks are both capable and confident. The other is that the old folks are willing'”. This is important because without both of those factors, integration might as well be impossible to achieve anywhere. By mentioning Isbells idea of what he believes needs to happen to achieve integration, Bogost is using apophasis. He identifies that these two things need to happen but does not elaborate on the idea that should one happen and not the other, it is useless.

Expanding the Canon

In “Researching Developmental Disabilities”, Szumski, Smorgorzewska, and Grygiel explore the attitudes that arise with students against peers that have disabilities. They conduct an experiment with a random sample of about 1500 Polish students in middle school through a questionnaire. They had a few different hypotheses and corresponding variables to help test them. They test students in two different types of classrooms, in a traditional one that does not have students with disabilities and in an inclusive one. The authors also included a large spectrum of different types of special needs and disabilities, such as: intellectual or physical disability, autism, hearing or visual impairment, social maladjustment, behavioral disorders, and students with multiple disabilities. The goal of this study was to educate schools and students who are working with disabled students and how to make them feel like everyone else. After concluding their research the authors use their evidence to explain the best ways to accomplish this.

Screenshot from Has Inclusion Gone Too Far? on https://www.educationnext.org/has-inclusion-gone-too-far-weighing-effects-students-with-disabilities-peers-teachers/ This graph is showing the percentage of students with disabilities that are included in a general or “traditional” classroom. It proves the authors point that an inclusive classroom is the best space for students with disabilities to feel included.

The authors used the “Multidimensional Attitudes Scale Toward Persons with Disabilities” (MAS), to analyze the attitudes and the “Commitment to Ethical Goodness Scale” (CEG), to analyze moral identity of the students individually and at a classroom level. To analyze the attitudes of the students the MAS measure is in a way a short story where a person encounters someone who has a physical disability. They then wait with them in a one-on-one situation and questioned through three groups: emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. The students answered each question on a five-point scale of the likelihood that each and any of the dimensions had been raised. To analyze moral identity of the students the CEG measure was a self-reporting questionnaire with 15 different statements. There were three different dimensions of morality included: moral locus of control, ethical goodness, and ethical self-regulation. The authors then used the five-point scale again to see whether the students agreed or disagreed with the statements on both an individual level and of each class.

Screenshot from Applying the Contact Theory in Inclusive Education: A Systematic Review on the Impact of Contact and Information on the Social Participation of Students With Disabilities on https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/feduc.2020.602414/full. This chart shows what can cause the attitudes of peers of students with disabilities and what those attitudes lead to when they are positive.

The authors concluded that moral identity is a regulator of a person’s behavior. Moral identity also allows for an improvement of the cognitive attitudes towards peers with disabilities better in an inclusive setting. Importantly, they note that classes where students contain a developed moral identity promotes commitment to the attention of others. They then note ways that their results can be used for change within the educational system to allow students with disabilities to feel less like they are being treated differently by their peers and feel more like they are just like their peers, which they are. They also acknowledge limitations that were present in the study like using a cross-sectional scheme, assessing explicit attitudes and not the analysis of implicit attitudes, primarily focusing on inside the classroom and ignoring what happens outside of it, and they studied only one culture as opposed to multiple. By taking note of both of these inconsistencies makes the authors an extremely reliable source.

The importance of this study is to show that the reason students with disabilities feel neglected and excluded in the classroom and in the future, in the workplace is because of the way their peers treat them. They grow up thinking that they are different and maybe not as good as their peers. This is also important in the idea of organizational culture because I believe that the definition of organizational culture is that it is when there is a diverse group of people working together to achieve one goal. I think that having such a diverse group of people allows for different ideas that some people may not have thought of. Eventually when these students work in the real world and need to solve problems and or create topics and ideas for their companies, they will have different ideas than students without disabilities because they have had different experiences and challenges in life that people without disabilities probably never even thought twice about.

Screenshot from Inclusive Education on https://www.steppingstoneskenya.org/new/welcome/inclusive-education/. It is important to end a division among students who need a little extra help to succeed and students who do not. Needing accommodations does not make them any less smart or accomplished.

Grzegorz Szumski, Joanna Smogorzewska, Paweł Grygiel. Attitudes of students toward people with disabilities, moral identity and inclusive education—A two-level analysis. Research in Developmental Disabilities. Volume 102, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2020.103685.

Expanding the Canon Draft

In the research of Researching Developmental Disabilities, Szumski, Smorgorzewska, and Grygiel explore the attitudes that arise with students against peers that have disabilities. They conduct an experiment with a random sample of about 1500 Polish students in middle school through a questionnaire. They had a few different hypotheses and corresponding variables to help test them. They test students in two different types of classrooms, in a traditional one that does not have students with disabilities and an inclusive one. The authors also included a large spectrum of different types of special needs and disabilities, such as: intellectual or physical disability, autism, hearing or visual impairment, social maladjustment, behavioral disorders, and students with multiple disabilities. The goal of this study was to educate schools and students who are working with disabled students and how to make them feel like everyone else.

Screenshot from Has Inclusion Gone Too Far? on https://www.educationnext.org/has-inclusion-gone-too-far-weighing-effects-students-with-disabilities-peers-teachers/

The authors used the “Multidimensional Attitudes Scale Toward Persons with Disabilities” (MAS), to analyze the attitudes and the “Commitment to Ethical Goodness Scale” (CEG), to analyze moral identity of the students individually and at a classroom level. To analyze the attitudes of the students the MAS measure is in a way a short story where a person encounters someone who has a physical disability. They then wait with them in a one-on-one situation and questioned through three groups: emotions, cognitions, and behaviors. The students answered each question on a five-point scale of the likelihood that each and any of the demensiones had been raised. To analyze moral identity of the students the CEG measure was a self-reporting questionnaire with 15 different statements. There were three different dimensions of morality included: moral locus of control, ethical goodness, and ethical self-regulation. The authors then used the five-point scale again to see whether the students agreed or disagreed with the statements on both an individual level and of each class.

The authors used a multilevel analysis to analyze the relationship between morality, attitudes towards students with disabilities, and the educational setting. They looked at the variables at an individual level and with each model they added more. The main idea of this study was to discover the importance of moral identity development among students. The authors analyzed it at a classroom level, an individual level, and through the cross of the two. They discovered that at an individual level, moral identity reduces negative attitudes in all three dimensions; however, the relationship between them is weak. Between the two different types of classrooms, students in an inclusive class had more positive attitudes than students in a traditional classroom. This was a strong relationship but only in the affective dimension. When analyzed at a classroom level, moral identity had a week relationship with the behavioral dimension, a moderate relationship with the affective dimension, and a strong relationship with the cognitive dimension. Importantly, the note that, classes where students contain a developed moral identity promotes commitment to the attention of others.

The authors concluded that moral identity is a regulator of a person’s behavior. Moral identity also allows for an improvement of the cognitive attitudes towards peers with disabilities better in an inclusive setting. They then note ways that their results can be used for change within the educational system to allow students with disabilities to feel less like they are being treated differently by their peers and feel more like they are just like their peers, which they are. Then they acknowledge limitations that were present in the study like using a cross-sectional scheme, assessing explicit attitudes and not the analysis of implicit attitudes, primarily focusing on inside the classroom and ignoring what happens outside of it, and they studied only one culture as opposed to multiple.

Screenshot from Inclusive Education on https://www.steppingstoneskenya.org/new/welcome/inclusive-education/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891422220301153

Discussion Questions Week 4

In Fried’s TED talk, he discusses the reason people do not get work done at work. All three of the TED talks were relatable but I felt that Fried’s was the most because of the way he explained distractions and the way he compared work to sleep. I think that the talk as a whole is significant for many reasons, I also think that the way Fried presented his argument is important because the way that an argument is presented can have an effect on the response by the audience. He gave example after example and explained why each example happened which allows his listeners to actually picture an event that he is describing. He uses so many different types of examples that most people should be able to related to. Even if you are someone who does not work in an office, like a student for example, you can relate to be interrupted by your phone or by your teacher. I found the overall topic to be interesting and significant because work and sleep are things that people do everyday and will do for the rest of their lives.

In Fried’s talk about doing work at work, he provides evidence that most people have most likely experienced. He discusses where and when most people claim they are the most productive by giving some examples of answers to the question he asks, “where do you go when you need to get something done?”. Fried also gives scenarios where people get distracted so they physically can’t do their work. Every piece of evidence that he gives, it is very clear as to how it supports his argument. For example, when 10 people are in a meeting for 1 hour, that is 10 people whose work was interrupted and 1 less hour of work that they are going to get to do. So, as Fried explains, thats 10 hours of work that the company is losing. He walks the audience through all of the examples and evidence that very clearly prove his point. What I found to be the most effective about his argument is the fact that he used a wide spread of examples, the more examples he uses, the larger amount of people are going to relate to it.

Attitudes of students toward people with disabilities, moral identity and inclusive education—A two-level analysis – Summary

The article written by Szumski, Smogorzewska, and Grygiel from the Research in Developmental Disabilities, explores the different attitudes that arise from students and what causes them when it comes to people with disabilities. The authors lay out the different concepts that contribute to these positive and negative thoughts that students are associating with disabled people. They discuss the actual attitudes that students have and the implications of those attitudes; the determinants of when people are aware of the attitudes that they have and how they differ for people with disabilities and people without them; and they put emphasis on how prosocial behaviors are influenced by moral identity. They also include throughout all three concepts the importance of inclusive learning environments and the different effects that come out of them. The two main focuses on the study are the idea of moral identity, what causes it and what it itself causes, and the difference that learning in an inclusive environment can make. The overall results are the study are very important for future education practices because hopefully, it will decrease the negative attitudes towards people with disabilities. Not to mention, starting with younger kids is a good way to hopefully have them thinking positively their entire lives.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891422220301153

Discussion Questions Week 3

I would like to look more into diversity among neurological disorders and different occasions and people who participate and are affected by it. As someone who has ADD and has needed a little extra help in school to do the best possible work that I can, I find the topic as a whole very interesting. I understand that that is not as extreme as what Austin and Pisano discussed in their article, but I am able to relate to somewhat of what they were saying. I also think that this is a kind of diversity that is overlooked and there needs to be a larger focus on it. I think that the experts to talk about this would be people who study neurological disorders and people who work on recruiting and hiring people to work for a company. They can both discuss the different sides to the hiring process and working with the company that will provide helpful and important information.

While Kaplan and Donovan ague that while people may have the right intentions when it comes to diversity and/or inclusion, it is not more or less important than following through and allowing actions to match up with ideas. Austin and Pisano agree that diversity and inclusion need to take place but are less focused on the intentions and more focused on the outcome.

I had a hard time coming up with a statement because both articles discuss similar ideas that I agree with. That being said it was not easy to come up with a way that they “disagreed” or had “contradicting” ideas. However, after thinking about both articles and looking them back over I noticed that the idea of intentions behind the actions differed just a little bit. While I definitely think that like Kaplan and Donovan discussed that the intensions are important, I do think that in the end at least we are getting somewhere and are treating people like they should be treated, as equals.

Kaplan and Donovan Summary

In the article Kaplan and Donovan cover very important and sometimes overseen issues that take place in a workspace. They do so by explaining the typical day of “Kim” who is a woman who works with a handful of different people. They walk through her day and then talk about what actions of hers needs attention because they are things that affect co-workers in ways Kim might not have seen.

They discuss impact vs. intension which is the overreaching theme of Kims actions. While her intension of her words and actions might be positive and most likely are, some people will see it differently and possibly feel offended. They also discuss ways that companies may tell their workers that they are different without saying the words and how that needs to stop being over looked. Between unconscious bias, insider-outsider dynamics and levels as systems are concepts that make some workers feel inferior to their co-workers.

The authors point is that diversity and inclusion is important and these concepts that companies use are doing the opposite of inclusion. These are things that need to be looked over and figured out how they can be eliminated all together so that everyone in the workplace feels comfortable and equal.