Dr Gwen Brekelmans, Department of Biological and Experimental Psychology, Denisa Pieptan & Sannimo Yeboah, BSc Psychology students - Queen Mary University of London
The student population is diversifying, which is an important factor in our higher education. It is important that this diverse student population see themselves represented in their chosen subject, but often materials presented to the students do not reflect this diversity yet (cf. Schuman Bird & Pitman, 2020), or are not clear in showing diversity when it is there. One small way of making students and educators aware of how diverse (or non-diverse) their taught materials are, is by finding a way to visualise this diversity.
This study in particular looks at visualising diversity of the research by adding pictures of the researchers whose work is being discussed. This study aimed to investigate whether showing this direct visualisation of the diversity (or lack thereof) in the researchers cited in the lecture materials, made a difference in how diverse people perceive the materials to be. Eighty current undergraduate psychology students or recent graduates took part in our study.
Participants were shown sets of slides on developmental psychology. These slide sets were grouped in 3 blocks: a block where pictures of people of a diverse range of backgrounds were used, a block with only pictures of white males, and a block with no pictures at all. Participants were randomly assigned to either a diverse names condition or the non-diverse names condition, to see if any effect of the pictures was modulated by whether this diversity was reflected in researcher’s names. For each slide set, participants were asked to rate how diverse they found the materials, how engaging materials were, and how much they learnt.
Preliminary results show that on average, people rated the text-only condition as the least diverse, while the version with diverse pictures was rated as most diverse. The non-diverse pictures and text-only conditions did not seem to differ in diversity rating for the diverse names condition, while in the non-diverse names condition text was perceived as more diverse than the non-diverse pictures. This suggests that adding visualisation of the diversity does seem to increase people’s diversity awareness, and interestingly adding non-diverse pictures might in fact be helpful for showing a lack of diversity in some cases. On the whole, this study can inform university teaching practice by showing that a small change to teaching materials might make students more aware of diversity. This can be a way to spark more active conversation about diversity in teaching more generally.