Journal of Academic Development and Education JADE Issue 10 | Page 32

32 | JADE
HIGHLIGHT #1 | 33
REBECCA YEARLING
end of this session, I encouraged students to be more aware of the
role that stereotyping and hidden bias played in their own lives: to
think about the way in which human beings automatically (and often
unthinkingly) judge others, and the discriminatory assumptions that
might lie behind their decision-making.
Because I had not addressed K.’s situation directly, choosing instead
to hold a class session that attempted to change students’ thinking
more generally, it was hard to know how much I had succeeded in
helping him. I did speak to him again a couple of weeks after the
session on identity politics, and he said that he didn’t feel like his
group was treating him differently any more—but this might be
accounted for at least partly by the fact that we as a class had
moved on from Heart of Darkness, and were now dealing with
Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway, a text that focuses more on issues of
class and gender than on race. It can be difficult in teaching to know
how much real, long-term effect one is having on one’s students.
While assessing students’ subject-specific knowledge is often
relatively straightforward, assessing whether the goal of enabling
transformational learning, in which students alter their essential
thinking and attitudes, has been achieved is often harder. 3
REFLECTIONS ON ISSUES OF STUDENT DIVERSITY
attempting to be blind to difference, ignoring skin colour, ethnic
origin, economic background, gender, age, and other factors, as
much as possible. I now realised that this was not ideal. I was acting
as if we had moved ‘beyond’ issues of racism, sexism, and so on:
as if, in such an inclusive academic community, there could be no
prejudice or hidden bias. However, this was not the case. In trying
to ignore my students’ racial differences, I had failed to anticipate
the ways in which K.’s racial background could potentially create
a situation in which he might feel uncomfortable or singled out. 5
Thus, my desire to treat everyone ‘equally’ had, ironically, created
a situation of inequality. I now realise that it is better to be mindful
of bias and try to find strategies to acknowledge and overcome it
than simply ignore the fact that it exists. Moreover, engaging directly
with issues of prejudice and identity politics seems to me to be an
important part of an education in the humanities. We need to learn
to acknowledge and accept difference rather than trying to gloss
over it, and we need to interrogate ourselves and try to recognise
our own hidden biases before we can fairly begin to assess anyone
else.
However, it was noticeable that, as the semester went on, students
were being more cautious in the judgements they made of literary
characters, rather than jumping to quick conclusions about, for
example, what a ‘woman’ or a ‘soldier’ or an ‘aristocrat’ was like. They
did seem to have taken on board the idea that there is great diversity
within human beings, and that we are not wholly defined by our
gender or race or profession or any other factor. Literary characters
are not, of course, real people—but nevertheless, the way we respond
to them can be indicative of the way we respond to people in reality.
K.’s situation represented a critical incident in my early teaching
career. Up until that point, I had been largely adopting a ‘paradigm
of neutrality’—not in my attitudes towards literary texts, but towards
my students, attempting to treat them all more or less identically. 4
I was aware that some had particular needs—that one or two were
dyslexic, or suffered from anxiety attacks, or depression, or other
specific cognitive and/or emotional issues—but I had otherwise been
3. This is discussed in Lindsey McEwen, Glenn Strachan and Kenny Lynch,
‘“Shock and Awe” or “Reflection and Change”: Stakeholder Perceptions of
Transformative Learning in Higher Education,’ Learning and Teaching in Higher
Education 5 (2010-11): 34-55, 44-6.
4. I have borrowed this term from Ofori-Dankwa and Lane, who use it to
describe a teaching model in which instructors ‘pay little attention to cultural
differences or similarities’ in the texts they discuss. Joseph Ofori-Dankwa
and Robert W. Lane, ‘Four Approaches to Cultural Diversity: Implications for
teaching at institutions of higher education,’ Teaching for Higher Education.
5.5 (2000) 490-1.
5. Ignoring difference is increasingly coming to be seen as a damaging
strategy in a pedagogic setting. Thea Renda Abu El-Haj writes, ‘As activists
for racial, ethnic, language, gender, sexuality, and disability rights have argued,
refusing to recognize difference […] does irreparable harm to students who
are excluded from meaningful participation in learning environments as
a consequence of the failure on the part of those institutions to own up to
ways that educational curriculum, practices, and policies usually reflect the
vested interests of dominant social groups.’ Thea Renda Abu El-Haj, ‘Equity,
Difference, and Everyday Practice Taking a Relational Approach,’ Annenberg
Institute for School Reform, January 2007. At http://www.annenberginstitute.
org. Accessed 26 November 2014. (Original italics).