Sunday, December 21, 2008

Feminism in Academia: Part I

I was recently solicited to participate in a survey about graduate teaching in the health sciences for someone’s dissertation. I always try to participate in studies when invited because I know what it is like to try and recruit subjects when everyone says no. So, I agreed to participate in the survey which contained numerous questions about attitudes and actions that a graduate faculty may engage in. The questions asked that I categorize the behaviors' appropriateness and requirement for disciplinary intervention into the following categories:

1 = Appropriate behavior, should be encouraged
2 = Discretionary behavior, neither particularly appropriate nor inappropriate
3 = Mildly inappropriate behavior, generally to be ignored
4 = Inappropriate behavior, to be handled informally by colleagues or administrators suggesting change or improvement
5 = Very inappropriate behavior, requiring formal administrative intervention

One of the survey items was:

The instructor does not include pertinent scholarly contributions of women and minorities in the content of the course.

Okay, well first, faculty leave pertinent scholarly contributions out all the time because there is usually not enough time to include all pertinent scholarly contributions. Secondly, why is it only women and minorities included in the question? Why is the researcher not interested in if the instructor does not include pertinent scholarly contributions of men and non-minorities in the content of the course?

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