Maha,

I am so glad that you find Contemporary Ped. a transforming experience. I had the same feelings too when I was taking the class (for the first time). I thought that it provided me with the knowledge that was scarcely available in my own department. My experience in working with students was different from then on.

Catchy post title ! In my department they have been working on this ethics in comouter science course that I am hoping will grow to become a core course in the grad CS curriculum. It’s fascinating to watch the topics in this course evolve as new technologies foreshadow scarier ethical issues eveyday. Great post Meredith!

Very interesting point about the fluidity of not only the purposes but also the means and ways of education. Why people pursue knowledge is far more complex thing that can be categorized and the best hope is to help students ask themselves this question at least once and to recognize that even then, their answer might change as they experience it. Hopefully, the system gives them enough autonomy to self-direct some of what they believe is the ideal education for them.

Hi Jon,

I think in many classes it is quite feasible to allow students to choose some of their own reading. The field of academic textbooks and publications and online material (open or paid) is so vast and diverse that I don’t see why we can not leave it to our student’s judgment to choose something they are actually excited to read and learn about. Thanks for sharing the outline of your syllabus. The pdf one looks amazing !

Connor,
Thank you for such a thoughtful post! I agree with you that constructing a safe space for students to be able to show and be their true selves is a tricky thing. And as you describe it, even approaching students can be difficult/destructive. Maintaining an atmosphere of openness can be helpful to start building trust. The idea of multi-partiality was interesting!

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It is interesting that there is much anecdotal evidence about diversity workshops and training being useful and informative, but the personal experiences of people dealing with discrimination or bias being the most effective factor for change. No wonder role-reversal experiments (I’m thinking of Jane Eliott’s brown eyes-blue eyes) produce such seismic shifts in worldviews of people.

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It looks like, as you perfectly summarize in your post, that bias is a construct of our human physiology. So it’s probably not curable, but treatable. It’s great that we can educate ourselves about our biases and my hope is that we can train ourselves to be on the lookout for implicit bias through self-reflection.

I think the most effective discussion are the ones that thread a fine line between staying rational, keeping an open mind to ideas that question our convictions, while at the same time maintaining a close connection to emotions, so that we don’t fall in the crevasses of abstract thought. It is such a delicate balance that I don’t think there is a recipe for it. But it’s do-able and I’ve been fortunate enough to be present in many and learned a lot from them.

Hi Cindy,

I love that you are strategizing to meet the diversity problem head-on. It takes a lot of courage and awareness to resist the temptation to gloss over these issues or discount their seriousness. I am also interested to know more about the action plan!

My favorite example to de-centralize grades a little bit is when we shop (for goods or service) online. We don’t fully trust the stars, do we? They might be manufactured, or paid for or not even objective enough. What we usually do is to check the reviews, the testimonials people took time to write for that service or product that summarizes the quality of the work. Nobody writes those reviews based on a rubric and yet they are so useful.