Self-assessment of diversity competence as part of regular teaching evaluations in higher education: raising awareness for diversity issues

2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-183
Author(s):  
Edith Braun ◽  
Anna Spexard ◽  
André Nowakowski ◽  
Bettina Hannover
Author(s):  
Ying-Chiao Tsao

Promoting cultural competence in serving diverse clients has become critically important across disciplines. Yet, progress has been limited in raising awareness and sensitivity. Tervalon and Murray-Garcia (1998) believed that cultural competence can only be truly achieved through critical self-assessment, recognition of limits, and ongoing acquisition of knowledge (known as “cultural humility”). Teaching cultural humility, and the value associated with it remains a challenging task for many educators. Challenges inherent in such instruction stem from lack of resources/known strategies as well as learner and instructor readiness. Kirk (2007) further indicates that providing feedback on one's integrity could be threatening. In current study, both traditional classroom-based teaching pedagogy and hands-on community engagement were reviewed. To bridge a gap between academic teaching/learning and real world situations, the author proposed service learning as a means to teach cultural humility and empower students with confidence in serving clients from culturally/linguistically diverse backgrounds. To provide a class of 51 students with multicultural and multilingual community service experience, the author partnered with the Tzu-Chi Foundation (an international nonprofit organization). In this article, the results, strengths, and limitations of this service learning project are discussed.


2008 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katrina A. Meyer

Thirteen students in a graduate-level course on Historical and Policy Perspectives in Higher Education held face-to-face and online discussions on five controversial topics: Diversity, Academic Freedom, Political Tolerance, Affirmative Action, and Gender. Students read materials on each topic and generated questions for discussion that were categorized by Bloom’s taxonomy so that the level of questions in the two discussion settings would be closely parallel. Upon completion of each discussion, they answered questions that addressed depth and length of the discussion, ability to remember, and a self-assessment of how the student learned. Students’ assessments show a consistent preference for the face-to-face discussion but a small number of students preferred the online setting. However, what is perhaps more interesting is a minority of approximately one-third of the students who perceived no difference between the settings, or that the two settings were perhaps complementary.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-428 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karen M. Cardozo

This article analyzes the neoliberal turn to contingent labor in academe, specifically the development of a ‘teaching-only’ sector, through the lens of feminist, interdisciplinary and intersectional studies of care work. Integrating discourses on faculty contingency and diversity with care scholarship reveals that the construction of a casualized and predominantly female teaching class in higher education follows longstanding patterns of devaluing socially reproductive work under capitalism. The devaluation of care may also have a disparate impact on the advancement of women within the tenure system. In short, academic labor issues are also diversity issues. To re-value those who care, intersectional alliances must be forged not only between faculty sectors, but also among faculty, care workers in other industries, and members of society who benefit from caring labor.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (24) ◽  
pp. 10336
Author(s):  
Lukas Scherak ◽  
Marco Rieckmann

Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) competences have been widely discussed over the past decade. A number of frameworks have been developed, and the Erasmus+ Project “A Rounder Sense of Purpose” (RSP) set out to establish a profound and practical framework of competences to be used in any European context to enable in-service and pre-service educators to demonstrate their competence in ESD. Over the course of two years at the University of Vechta, staff training was provided using the RSP competences model as a guiding framework. Data were collected through a focus group and a self-assessment survey in order to answer the research question, “Which competences do university teachers need in order to work with the concept of ESD in higher education and how can these be developed in a series of staff training workshops?” The results show that all 12 RSP competences are indeed relevant for higher education teaching, but the potential for developing them into a staff training programme is limited. There are multiple trigger points and settings that are beneficial to and necessary for the development of ESD competences. If those conditions are not met there is limited opportunity for applying ESD methods within higher education.


2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Obeua S. Persons

This study has identified two important factors, unrelated to an instructor’s teaching ability, which can affect an instructor’s teaching evaluations.  The first factor, which has never been examined in any prior studies, is the section effect.  This study finds that teaching evaluations differ significantly across sections of the same course taught by the same instructor.  This section effect cannot be explained by six student-related variables.  The second factor, which is students’ pre-course interest measured at the beginning of a course, is found to be positively related to teaching evaluations.  These findings suggest that higher-education administrators may want to consider the section effect and the students’ pre-course interest when they evaluate an instructor’s teaching effectiveness for promotion, tenure and merit decisions.


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