Category: Hot Topics – Prior Weeks

Mathematics is often touted as The Universal Language. Supposedly, despite the many different symbols, definitions, notations, and conventions, the core principles of mathematics transcend cultural, societal, and even terrestrial differences. However, a language requires someone to speak it. And here, we find our universal language is not quite the same for everyone.

Coming into this week’s reading, I’ve been aware of the disparities for women in STEM. It exists, and there are multiple aspects to the problem. Personally, it’s just intiutive for me to think that equality is good. “Equal pay for equal work.” That just seems so obvious me. However, for me, I’ve always thought of striving for equality for equality’s sake. What I mean by that, equality is a right, and discrimination is bad. We should be more diverse in STEM, because everyone should have the opportunity to enter this field. It’s a question about morality and fairness.

Now, discrimination and racism can be a detriment to a student’s learning experience (and I will discuss that later). However first, one of the readings this week challenged my viewpoint that diversity is just a moral prerogative. The article, How Diversity Makes Us Smarter, speaks to the benefit of diversity in problem solving. When inter-disciplinary teams and experiences lead to innovative solutions, why do we not place the same importance in social diversity? I truly have never thought about this. Homogeneity excourages complacency. Novel ideas and solutions come about through constant questioning, and I never considered that diversity can have an impact on that.

In one of our additional readings, Whistling Vivaldi, Steele discussed the challenges women face in mathematics, as well as his attempts to understand what exactly is the cause. I’ve also been curious to find a reason for the disparities (and there are many). It’s important to acknowledge issues like harrassment. Part of me had some gut feeling that there was some gender biases that add extra obstacles for women in STEM. I feel like this chapter of his book really hit the tip of the ice berg. Without the presence of directly prejudiced people, Steele found that women can still feel negative consquences of gender biases. In addition, the effort to fight that stigma, itself, can hinder their ability to achieve. In my opinion, this really hits the nail on the head.

In terms of the classroom, how do we fight against this societal pressure? I feel like we can try to remove the stigma of “not understanding” material. Personally, I have times where I hadnot grasped subjects at first glance. When I don’t understand, I feel a stigma of asking questions in front of my peers during class. “I don’t want to seem dumb in front of others.” However, that doesn’t help me learn; it does the opposite. That pressure of trying to prove to others (or to society) of your abilities, while it  affects many more women in mathematics, it is not a unique feeling. We should strive to lower that pressure among our students in mathematics. Perhaps change the notion that only people who don’t know the material go to office hours.

Now, gender disparities in mathematics are not the only challenge that we face in our field. After some thought, I was starting to think about how language plays a part as well. Despite how we always think of math as transcending language, when it comes to expressing ideas to others, we have to use words in some way. For a direct example, think about foreign students who take proof courses. Is it more difficult for students to learn proof structure when they have to simultaneously learn English sentence structure, and grammer? For those new to proofs, those lexical aspects are absolutely required to learn how to express mathematical aspects . Native speakers have the luxury to focus entirely on the proofs, while non-native speaks have an additional handicap. This was a small thought of mine, but it would be interesting to explore the challenges to mathematics due to language barriers. Have there been major advances that took years to confirm because of difficulties in translation of mathematical papers?

Overall, I feel like Inclusive Pedagogy is much more relevant to mathematics than I initially had thought.

Some may think those who work in academia within STEM fields are lucky – the classes and work they do rarely involve bringing up conversations about biases, political correctness, and privilege among other things. Many of our research areas don’t involve the human experience at all, so “uncomfortable” subjects don’t usually come up in the classroom.

Just because we don’t intentionally stimulate “uncomfortable” dialogue very often doesn’t make us lucky at all. Situations that reveal biases and problems within the workplace will inevitably come about, rendering us unprepared and even more uncomfortable.

STEM fields are just as subject to inequality and biases as any other area. At my previous university, at least three women close to me reported Title IX incidents without any subsequent repercussion to the offenders. One of those reports involved a tenured, full professor in her department. She was being paid quite a bit less than her male counterparts; even less than some assistant, untenured male professors. Moreover, she was only one of two full, female professors in the department. Even further, there were no non-white faculty at any level in this department.

We never, ever talk about why white males dominate our field. Animal Science at the undergrad level is 80% female and mostly white. However, those with leadership positions in Animal Science, and agricultural fields as a whole – almost 100% male. I’m not entirely bothered by this, because I feel these dynamics are slowly changing at the academic level. What does bother me is that our higher-ups know these issues exist, and still choose to blatantly gloss over them.

Consequently these conversations are rarely had. When they come up in the workplace, they are not serious. Males dominate the dialogue, and as a woman I usually find myself feeling sheepish and not wanting to be contrary. I’ve been witness to such conversations where a woman will be brave enough to interject, only to later hear the men talking amongst themselves about the content of her character. As a result, my automatic reaction when the subject of bias arises is to be passive. Unfortunately, that’s how women are conditioned to be in our society – agreeable, cooperative, apologetic even.

The power dynamic rules in these situations.  Georgetown’s guides for using heated topics as a learning tool make the task seem more approachable. However, those mainly apply to a classroom setting when you hold the power cord of the conversation. The question is, how can we overcome the fear of having the unpopular opinion if we aren’t in the power role or in the majority? How can we learn to be okay with creating discomfort?

-J

Participants in learning environments have been members of society; affected by a variety of factors in society and have been exposed to different sorts of assumptions and judgments. They bring their rich experiences into the environment, unless their background and experiences are acknowledged; the environment may not welcoming and their learning experience may not be productive.

Diversity and inclusion matters. Katherine Phillips in her article highlights a particular benefit of diversity, informational diversity; the fact that participants have a chance to get exposed to different perspectives and beliefs. Phillips argues that people in an environment, in which they see/consider alternatives, work harder.  Georgetown’s Center for New Design in Learning and Scholarship reports that the efforts in creating inclusive environment students have positive academic and health effects for students who have been traditionally marginalized in the educational setting.

How can instructor create such an environment? Before making any agenda or action plan, instructor as a member of learning community needs to be aware of unconscious bias. Shakar Vedantam argues that our hidden brain unconsciously and without our awareness contribute in making unsupported judgement about individuals. To overcome this, a facilitator of a learning environment needs to be aware of her hidden brain when it works in “autopilot mode”, as Vedantam calls it. In addition, she needs to be aware that children get exposed to different biases from early ages influenced by family, educational system, media and so on. Her role, then, is beyond creating different sorts of learning opportunities and having different methods of assessment, indeed.

Thinking about different aspects of diversity, the issue of race and racism is perhaps the most difficult aspect that needs to be addressed. On the Heinmann podcast, “Dismantling Racism in Education”, panel members have paid close attention to systemic root of the issue and discuss exclusion of Black and Brown as an intentional problem in the schooling system. We cannot ignore it. Cornelius Minor, one of the panel members invites us to put humanity at center and see individuals’ backgrounds as shared struggle that solidify friendship. ,

This is not going to be an easy conversation, needs to have foundation and ground rules…

The reading I did for this week’s discussions covered many topics, of which, I liked Shankar Vendantam’s hidden brain post best. ( S.V is currently producing a podcast for NPR covering social sciences). The main point S.V raises is that bias is traceable to a cognitive process where our mind is trained to see patterns in repeated inputs it receives. So, our first reactions to meeting people who are considerably different from us is fear, suspicion and in general involuntary but  negative judgement.

I think there is more to this argument, as I will try to explain, and back up my thoughts with a few sources. What evolution has done to our minds is that it has wired it so that the tools for detecting confirmation are far more powerful than tools for logical thinking, especially if it requires going against our already re-inforced convictions ( This is the main argument here, and the examples are fascinating!). To make things worse, human beings’ cognitive apparatus is evolved to to scream danger when we find ourselves in new environments. This has been vital for our survival for many years, but is not helping us now, living in a cosmopolitan era. The solution (until our bodies find time to catch up) is to identify and resist and diffuse these misconceptions.

Wildlife & inclusive pedagogy. How do these words correlate? For some, the relationship may be unclear. But for someone like me who studies animals, the animal kingdom can teach us (humans) a thing or two about inclusive pedagogy. But first, what is inclusive pedagogy? According to Georgetown University “Inclusive pedagogy is a method of teaching in which instructors and classmates work together to create a supportive environment that gives each student equal access to learning. In these courses, the content takes into account the range of perspectives in the class, and is delivered in a way that strives to overcome barriers to access that students might have. Inclusive classrooms work to ensure that both teacher and student participation promote thoughtfulness and mutual respect” (https://commons.georgetown.edu/teaching/design/inclusive-pedagogy/). In other words, inclusive pedagogy is simply making sure that students with different backgrounds, learning styles, perspectives, and experiences all receive an education that works for them (i.e., there is no “one size fits all” in education).

While animals most likely do not consciously think about inclusive pedagogy or teaching in general, some animals raise and teach not only their own young but the young of others as well. These animals are inclusive. It does not matter to them that some of their pupils/babies/friends/choose whatever word you want, look different, sound different, smell different, act differently, etc. All that matters is that these animals are put in the care-for and teaching role – and they embrace it. Stories about an animal of one species befriending, taking care of, and “teaching” an animal of a different species are relatively commonplace. Of course there are stories that are twisted and misconstrued to pull at heart-strings (e.g., the lioness and the antelope), so it is important to take this all with a grain of salt, but countless examples of true mutual relationships between species exist. For example, there is the dog who is best friends with a duckling and helps teach the duckling to swim and the cat that adopts a baby squirrel that fell out of a tree and teaches the baby squirrel to purr (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gr5P-36w1Q). I know – my point here may be a bit of a stretch, but I kept thinking about this all weekend and so had to get some of these thoughts out!

Now, I realize many will argue that these examples of animals taking care of other animals is not teaching and is driven solely by some maternal or paternal instinct. And part of me agrees with that. But, another part of me has observed animals enough to know that they have empathy and compassion towards others and that they communicate in ways that are often too subtle for us to notice. I have watched my dogs teach my puppy how to do certain things (same species example, I know). However, it really doesn’t matter why animals will raise and teach other animals. It only matters that they do (and that it is really cute!)