On these events and opportunities pages we hope to keep you informed of events to hear the research of other members, visiting speakers, and opportunities to present your own research locally, nationally, and internationally. Specific upcoming events are listed below. More information about other general events and opportunities are listed in the other pages listed.
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Journal Club: Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations: Why representation matters
April 16, 2019 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
The journal club will be reading and discussing the following paper:
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0209749
Abstract
Gendered and racial inequalities persist in even the most progressive of workplaces. There is increasing evidence to suggest that all aspects of employment, from hiring to performance evaluation to promotion, are affected by gender and cultural background. In higher education, bias in performance evaluation has been posited as one of the reasons why few women make it to the upper echelons of the academic hierarchy. With unprecedented access to institution-wide student survey data from a large public university in Australia, we investigated the role of conscious or unconscious bias in terms of gender and cultural background. We found potential bias against women and teachers with non-English speaking backgrounds. Our findings suggest that bias may decrease with better representation of minority groups in the university workforce. Our findings have implications for society beyond the academy, as over 40% of the Australian population now go to university, and graduates may carry these biases with them into the workforce.