Origins & Overview

Introducing Bias Literacy Workshop

August 19, 2008

AAAS, Washington DC

In the Beginning:The Idea for the Workshop . . .

• Began at the Working WISE Conference at UMass-Lowell in 2007

• Ruta & Daryl in same small group on “workforce discrimination”

• Term “bias literacy” uttered by Ruta, which Daryl wrote down & we returned to it

The Idea (cont.) . . .

• After fleshing, we drafted a book prospectus, which Jossey-Bass promptly declined for being too “popular” in orientation

• We decided to produce a first, conceptual chapter of the book

• Then we decided to adapt the chapter for presentation, first at WEPAN, then ICWES, now as a AAAS workshop

Bona Fides of Workshop Leaders

• Who we are

• AAAS Capacity Center

• The team approach

AAAS Capacity Center at a Glance• Origin: Established as a science & engineering human resource

development consulting service August 2004 with 3-year, $400K grant from Sloan Foundation to AAAS (www.aaascapacity.org)

• Mission: Through nationally-calibrated research & technical assistance in examining programs & outcomes, foster institutional capacity to . . .

recruit, enroll, & support STEM students diversify the faculty change programs, structures, & attitudes

• Clients/Sponsors: • Higher education institutions (Harvard-PRISE, LSU-LA STEM, UWash-

CAEE)• Corporations (HP-Teaching with Technology) • federal agencies (NSF-Broadening Participation in Computing) • non-profits (Sloan, NACME, CT Academy for Education, WEPAN)

. . . focus on research, education, and institutional climate

Baseline:Discovering the Audience

• Sector

• Pre-knowledge

• Motivation

• Expectation

Formats for Today

• Lecture: solo & team

• Interactive online

• Q&A/Discussion

• Small Group

Level: Superficial(or Introductory, if you prefer)

• This is an “environmental scan”

• Some of it will under-estimate your knowledge base

• Consider today a “starter kit”

• We seek breadth and will offer tools to help you drill for depth (on your own)

Assumptions

• Our own experiences are valuable, so we will be introspective & autobiographical

• Who’s not here? We are preaching to the choir, but . . . solidarity helps

• We do not dwell on what we can’t control, but . . . must be aware of constraints in the environment

• We raise issues—and you will raise others we didn’t anticipate—but won’t discuss or resolve some of them to our mutual satisfaction . . .

• We will “park” issues for return treatment at day’s end

Vital Distinctions

Research . . .

Advocacy . . .

Policy

Research

• Empirical findings evolve—they are not fixed for all time

• There are limits to generalizations, as well as attributions of cause & effect

• New knowledge requires adaptation to different contexts & populations, as well as adjustments in behavior

Advocacy for Social Justice versus Research

• Research = systematic, controlled, empirical investigation and process of inquiry, i.e., a search for “truth”

• Advocacy = active support, promotion of an idea or cause for the sake of changing public opinion, acceptance, and behavior, i.e., a search for choosing a certain path

• Driven by advocacy and informed by research . . .

• What is the best course of action for achieving this goal—a choice among alternatives?

POLICY = a commitment to achieve a valued objective

Advocacy can be INFORMED by research:

“This truth is wrong, and we must correct this wrong”

Research can be MOTIVATED by advocacy:

“We need to know more about this situation, so we can learn what works to change it.”

Policy acts on values: It can be based on research, advocacy, self- interest, altruism, and expediency

More on this throughout the day . . .

Thanks for being here!