In what way can your background, characteristics and experiences affect your relationship with the students? How can your students' backgrounds, characteristics and experiences affect their motivation, commitment and learning in your teaching? Here are a number of exercises that you can use to get your student group, your teaching team and yourself to see unconscious bias, preferences and perceptions, norms and inequality in your own learning environment.
Awareness of the learning environment
What does the learning environment look like from a Gender, Diversity and Equal Opportunities perspective? How do we increase learning for all students regardless of background, characteristics and expectations and create a learning environment where all students feel equally important?
In order to see unconscious bias, preferences and perceptions, norms and inequality in our own learning environment, we need to reflect on differences in the student group and on ourselves in relation to the students. With increased visibility, we can become better at making conscious choices of teaching strategies. It also makes us more prepared to deal with tensions that may arise in the group.
Exercises in groups
The One step forward method helps you to see norms and how they are linked to injustices
The method highlights the advantages and disadvantages that individuals and groups can have based on how they are categorized and have different conditions in life.
Do this
Select, or add the statements that you think are best for the group and your purpose.
The exercise can be done in two versions. Either the participants can start from themselves, or the participants can do the exercise by getting cards with roles that they will then start from. If you choose to let the participants start from themselves, it is important that you and the group know each other quite well. Feel free to point out to the participants that they can lie if they want to and that it will not be checked. This can create additional security in the group. The advantage of this version is that the participants can to a greater extent see how they themselves are affected and benefit from different norms.
If you choose to do the version with the role cards, it is important to point out to the participants that they are not allowed to show or tell each other about their cards. Distribute the cards and ask everyone to read silently what is on their cards. Ask everyone to think for a moment about their role: How do they live? What is their role for background? What do they do during the day? In the evenings? What are they dreaming about?
Then ask the group to quietly place themselves on a line in the room next to each other. Tell participants that you will read out a number of statements. Each time a statement agrees with itself / its role (depending on which version you choose), you must move forward one step, otherwise you must remain in place. Slowly read out the statements one at a time with a break in between. When all the statements have been read out, it is important to stay in the place you have ended up.
If the participants have had roles, ask them to tell each other about their roles. Let them discuss with the person who ended up closest about how it came about that they ended up right there. In a group, it is then important to let the participants reflect on how they related to the roles. The role cards only contain a small part of each person's identity. If it is not stated what the person has for ethnicity, sexual orientation, functional ability or gender, then what do we put in ourselves? How was the statement taken when the information on the card was not sufficient? What was it that made one give their role those qualities?
Then continue to discuss:
Was any statement unclear or difficult to comment on? Why? How did it feel to take a step forward? How did it feel to stay?
What happens when you end up far behind or far ahead? What do you see?
What does it mean in a person's everyday life to be someone who ends up far ahead? What are the benefits? How does it affect society that certain people have advantages over others?
How can you move on when you have gained knowledge about the advantages and disadvantages you get from society? What can be done to counteract these injustices?
Source: Jämställt.nu
Norms that create homogeneity
Working groups are often very homogeneous in their composition. It has consequences for how projects / activities are designed, what is seen as a problem, how participants are treated, etc. With this method, norms that create homogeneity are made visible and problematized.
Do this
Tell the participants that in this exercise it is important to stick. This is done by finding what is common. It is important to find as many sticks as possible, to identify as many "similarities" as possible that everyone in the group has in common.
Divide into groups of three to four people in each. Ask participants to come up with as many similarities as possible. For example, skin color, mother tongue, hobbies, age, ethnic background, etc. To make it more difficult, you must not say things you like or dislike.
Then gather and reflect together on, for example, the following questions:
What was not mentioned? Why is it that some things come up but not others?
Were there any of the grounds for discrimination that you did not address and if so, what is the reason?
What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a homogeneous group?
What does it mean for the project / activity and the participants you meet, that the group is very hetero / homogeneous?
What do the participants need to learn more about? What knowledge and experience is not in the group?
What may the participants need to pay special attention to in their activities?
Source: Jämställt.nu
The Teflon test shows areas where we can experience friction when we break norms. Friction can be anything from discomfort, unwelcome staring or nonchalance, to clear discrimination, threats and violence.
The method aims to make your own position visible in relation to different standards. The method tries to make visible in which areas a person is subjected to discriminatory treatment both in the form of privileges and discrimination. The idea is that we should be able to relate to norms and our own positions in a conscious way so that we know, for example, what we need to learn more about or so that we do not happen to discriminate.
I experience friction because of my or others' ideas about:
My...
Often
Sometimes
Rarely
Age
Sex
Religion or other belief
Ethnicity / skin color / name
Gender identity or gender expression
Sexual orientation
Disability
Body size
Social background
Other
Source:
Louise Andersson 2010, in Bromseth, Janne & Darj, Frida (red.) (2010). Normkritisk pedagogik: makt, lärande och strategier för förändring. Uppsala: Centrum för genusvetenskap, Uppsala universitet
Individual exercise
IAT as a measuring instrument and its origin
"People don’t always say what’s on their minds. One reason is that they are unwilling. For example, someone might report smoking a pack of cigarettes per day because they are embarrassed to admit that they smoke two. Another reason is that they are unable. A smoker might truly believe that she smokes a pack a day, or might not keep track at all. The difference between being unwilling and unable is the difference between purposely hiding something from someone and unknowingly hiding something from yourself.
The Implicit Association Test (IAT) measures attitudes and beliefs that people may be unwilling or unable to report. The IAT may be especially interesting if it shows that you have an implicit attitude that you did not know about. For example, you may believe that women and men should be equally associated with science, but your automatic associations could show that you (like many others) associate men with science more than you associate women with science."
