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Critical Thinking Worksheets: Bias in Encyclopedias

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Critical Thinking Worksheets: Bias in Encyclopedias

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The lesson below starts with an IELTS passage on the life and work of Marie Curie (Cambridge IELTS 9, 2013). This passage is an adapted version of the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Marie Curie, (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2014). Wexelbaum (2012) notes that while early encyclopedias were marketed solely for scholarly audiences, in the twentieth century encyclopedias began to be marketed for the general public and were housed in public libraries, specifically in the ‘reference’ section. Encyclopedias are well-known and generally trusted sources of information with the World Book, for example, claiming to ‘set the standard in publishing accurate, current, and reliable reference and learning materials for children and adults’ (World Book, in Wexelbaum 2012:4).

However, Wexelbaum (2012) argues that encyclopedias are often problematic for students studying minorities and under-represented groups and gives the example of the lack of inclusion of entries on LGBTQ issues and populations. Reagle & Rhue (2011:1138) argue that women in particular have often been relegated to ‘matters of social and purely feminine affairs’ presented as ‘handmaidens to the wide-ranging sweep of male intelligence’ (Thomas in Reagle & Rhue 2011:1139). A particularly famous example is how in previous versions of the Encyclopedia Britannica, Marie Curie was presented as an addendum to her husband, Pierre Curie’s entry. The students are presented with the previous entry for Pierre Curie, this allows students to read multiple texts (Behrman 2006:492) on the same topic of Marie Curie and take a critical perspective on how the information is presented.

Wexelbaum (2012) argues that students in developing countries are less likely to have access to updated versions of print encyclopedias and instead are more likely to access online encyclopedias such as Wikipedia. Wexelbaum (2012) argues that although Wikipedia was initially resisted and banned by academics and professors, it has seen more acceptance by academics fluent in web 2.0 technologies and online resource evaluation. However, Reagle & Rhue (2011) argue that technology has actually exacerbated gender imbalances with women making up as few as 1.1% of participants in the free/libre and open-source software (FLOSS) movement, whereby software is shared and developed in the open, and account for only 13% of Wikipedia contributors. The students read a Guardian (2011) article about this imbalance and comments by the Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales that ‘we are relatively poor in a few areas; for example, biographies of famous women through history and issues surrounding early childcare’ (The Guardian, 2011), which are rather suggestive of a narrower need for women to contribute to traditional feminine issues, rather than wider societal topics.

Cambridge English Language Assessment. (2013). Cambridge IELTS 9: Authentic Examination papers from Cambridge ESOL. Cambridge: CUP.

Curie, Pierre in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Vol. 7, Slice 8, [Online], [Accessed 30th August 2014], Available from Project Gutenberg (2012): http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38709/38709-h/38709-h.htm#ar89

Reagle, J. & Rhue, L. (2011). ‘Gender Bias in Wikipedia and Britannica’ in the International Journal of Communication, Vol.5, pp. 1138–1158.

Wexelbaum, R. S., (2012). ‘Are Encyclopedias Dead? Evaluating the Usefulness of a Traditional Reference Resource’ Library Faculty Publications, Paper 26. [Online], [Accessed 30th August, 2014], Available from: http://repository.stcloudstate.edu/lrs_facpubs/26

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Critical Thinking WorksheetsBias in the News

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Critical Thinking WorksheetsBias in the News

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Below is attached a lesson plan on bias in news sources prepared by Media Smarts. The first part is an outline of a suggsted lesson plan, then you have the worksheet proper. The worksheet helps students to deconstruct news stories looking for any signs of bias in the different elements, such as the headline, pictures, captions, source and so on. The worksheet provides an explanation and example of bias in these different areas. I think this is a fairly easy to use worksheet for students and I've used successfully in the past to analyse the 'Cameron's Cuties' story which apeared in the Daily Mail, July 15th, 2014 as seen in the link below.

I think this is a good story to deconstruct as it has fairly easily seen bias in all the elements  on the worksheet (headline, pictures, captions etc.). At the time, this article was widely criticised, such as by Roy Greenslade in the Guardian who accused the Daily Mail  of 'going back in time' and treating women as 'sex objects'. The article is about newly promoted female government ministers in the UK government, but rather than focus on their professional lives the Daily Mail instead looked solely at what the women were wearing as they went to Downing Street to accept their new roles. Such a story would obviously be ridiculous if applied to male ministers. However, the female ministers were relunctant to complain in case the Mail turned on them as it is a firm supporter of the Conservative party.

Bias in the news can also be taught through the use of supplementary texts (Behrman 2006), where students compare the reporting of the same issues by two different news organisations, such as The Sun and The Guardian. I then usually ask students to follow this up as homework and find articles that they think show signs of bias, use the worksheet to classify the bias and then bring it into class to discuss in small groups.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2693150/Camerons-cuties-make-stylish-presence-felt-march-Downing-Street-dramatic-reshuffle.html

http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade/2014/jul/16/dailymail-women

Behrman, E. (2006). ‘Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of classroom practices that support critical literacy’ in Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 49, No.6 pp.490-498.

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I have attached the study skills worksheet I use with my IELTS classes as well as the EAP classes on the IELTS stream. The aim is partly for me to get an idea on which areas students wish to concentrate as well as to get the students thinking about self-study activities and student autonomy.

The first part gets students to rank the different skills/ sections of the IELTS test in terms of perceived difficulty. They then focus on the areas which they think are most difficult and write between 3 and 5 learning goals. Typically, most students rank listening as the easiest, followed by reading and then either speaking or writing, with most students citing the essay structure of Task 2 and their confidence when speaking as their main areas of concern. This is quite different to Hawkey (2006), who noted that many students particularly struggled with reading and particularly liked the speaking part of the test. This could reflect a cultural dimension as the Hawkey (2006) study was in the UK. In contrast, in Indonesia Novera (2004) notes that education is characterized as formal, with little questioning of the teacher’s authority and the teacher dominating the discourse. Even in English classes, little English is spoken, instead students are required to memorise a more or less fixed state of facts to be regurgitated later in a test.

Although this needs analysis is framed around the IELTS test as that is often students’ principal concern even in EAP classes, the same issues are prevalent with students adaptation to university once they start their courses. Novera (2004:480) found that Indonesian students struggled to enter into class discussions, with local Australian students dominating and the fluid nature of discussions, which might change topics and bring in students’ personal experiences, often left the Indonesian students becoming ‘passive with total confusion and loss of understanding’. Similarly students struggle with writing as they have little prior experience of writing in English with academic conventions and this tends to be where students struggle in both the IELTS test and their later university study as the main criterion of course assessment is essay-based (Novera 2004).

The last part of the worksheet asks students to thinking of self-study activities they can do to meet their learning goals. This is where I could bring in the British Council video to give ideas for the students as much of the focus is on speaking and writing activities. The last part gets them to put the activities into a weekly timetable, where they also have to consider the resources they need as well as whether they would be doing it alone or in a study group.

Hawkey, R, (2006). Impact Theory and Practice: Studies of the IELTS test and Progetto Lingue 2000. Cambridge:CUP.

Novera, I.A. (2004), “Indonesian postgraduate students studying in Australia: an examination of their academic, social and cultural experiences”, International Education Journal, Vol. 5, No. 4.

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Critical Thinking Worksheets- Racism in advertising

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Critical Thinking Worksheets- Racism in advertising

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Below are handouts where I look the issue of racial bias in advertising. This is a significant cross-cultural issue as there are many advertisements, particularly from Asian countries, which would be seen as racist in the West. The examples I've taken was the blacked-up face for Dunkin Donuts and skin care adverts. Similar to Thomas et al (2010), I often find that students take a resistant stance to class discussions of race. This is particularly exacerbated due to the challenge of discussing racial issues as a white teacher (Rogers 2002) in an Asian student class. Students comment that racism is not a problem in Indonesia, and that white people fuss unnecessarily about it.

The students initially see no problem with the Dunkin Donuts advert with some students describing it as ‘artful’. They then read an article from Time magazine (2013) which compares American and Thai attitudes to the advert, with Americans strongly opposed so much so that even Human Rights Watch commented. The students are provided with an explanation from BBC trending (2014) on why some cultures find ‘blacking-up’ racially offensive. The aim is not necessarily to force students into viewing the advert as racist but instead for them to engage with it and be open to other cultural perspectives that do view it as racist; as Foss (in Behrman 2006:493) says ‘to “peel” different layers of meaning from a text and to explore how the same reader might approach a text from different identities’. The issue is then brought closer to the students’ context by looking at a fairly common skincare advert in Indonesia and discussing how the advert can be viewed from different perspectives.

Behrman, E. (2006). ‘Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of classroom practices that support critical literacy’ in Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 49, No.6 pp.490-498.

Rogers, R. (2002). ‘”That’s what you’re here for, you’re supposed to tell us”: Teaching and learning critical literacy’ in Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 45, No.8, pp. 772-787.

Thomas, P., Hall, L. & Piazza, S. (2010) ‘Challenging Texts: Engaging with Critical Literacy: Reflections on Teaching and Learning’ in The English Journal, Vol. 99, No. 5, pp. 91-94.

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Critical Thinking Worksheets- Race in texts

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Critical Thinking Worksheets- Race in texts

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Below are handouts of materials I use in EAP classes to cover the issue of racial bias in children's texts. Students start by doing an IELTS speaking style talk on a childhood book and discuss the benefits of reading for children. They then read the text on 'Noddy's such a clever fellow'; the first part of the worksheet simply checks that they understand the main themes of the story, it then asks students to analyse the text looking at which words are associated with Noddy and which with the Golliwog. The last part of the exercise asks students to produce a counter-text from the Golliwog's perspective (Behrman 2006:494).

Most students don't like the story as they think Noddy is behaving badly and wouldn't give it to their children in case it encouraged bad behaviour. While students often frame this in gendered language such as 'boy will be boys', they rarely see the racial dimension of the story. It's only after they start analysing the word associations that they see the racial bias. Students also bring up other issues such as class, that Noddy is probably wealthier than the Golliwog because he has a car and a nice house. This points to the importance of diversity when deconstructing texts, a text can contain multiple levels of meaning based on a range of other factors besides race and sex (Janks 2000).

Behrman, E. (2006). ‘Teaching about language, power, and text: A review of classroom practices that support critical literacy’ in Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Vol. 49, No.6 pp.490-498.

Janks, H. (2000) ‘Domination, Access, Diversity and Design: A synthesis for critical literacy education’ in Educational Review, Vol. 52, No.2, pp 175-186.

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I have included my dissertation for my MA TESOL programme at the Institute of Education, University of London as an example of classroom research. As part of the literature review,  I surveyed techniques on classroom research, particularly action research and Exploratory Practice. Although action research is better known, it does still have it's critics. I largely agreed with researchers who argued that action research presents a deficit model on teachers (Haggarty & Postlethwaite 2003) and that having a strict 'problem-solution' structure could be counter-productive (Allwright 2005). Instead, I favoured Allwright's (2005) Exploratory Practice model which has a greater focus on gaining a better understanding of a situation and particularly people's relationships, such as student-teacher. Therefore, rather than just focusing on myself and my teaching, I engaged with the other teachers as a 'community of practice' as well as the students' needs and views.

In terms of research instruments, I took a mixed-methods approach. First, I gained survey data from a new class of students analysing their strengths and weaknesses, prior experiences and expectations. I also surveyed the teachers to ascertain the factors that they took into consideration when designing their courses. Then, I engaged several of the teachers to observe my classes and provide coments, which we discussed in feedback sessions and finally I conducted student interviews and feedback surveys to gain a student perspective.

I think the main lesson I gained from this research is that you're not necessarily teaching in a vacuum. Other teaching colleagues can provide valuable perspectives and ideas which you can accept or reject as you wish. In addition, your teaching has to be relevant to the needs of the students- this does not mean simply pandering to their wishes, but may mean challenging their notions of effective learning. One key issue that came up in the research was students often had very negative attitudes to working in groups, so even in short courses I place more emphasis on developing students' awareness of learning skills. As Allwright (2005) argues this more interpersonal aspect wouldn't have been so prominent in a strict action research project, which often focuses on more technical issues, but for my own personal and professional development I feel that this greater level of understanding was very valuable.

Allwright, D. (2005). ‘Developing Principles for Practitioner Research: The Case of Exploratory Practice’ in Modern Language Journal, Vol. 89, No. 3, pp. 353-366.

Haggarty, L. & Postlethwaite, K. (2003). ‘Action Research: a strategy for teacher change and school development?’ in Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 29, No.4, pp. 423-448.

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Learner Autonomy- British Council Video
  

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Learner Autonomy- British Council Video
  

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This is a video by the British Council and is aimed more at learners rather than teachers. It provides a brief description of what learner autonomy is and why it's useful to learners; it then goes into detail about practical activties and resources that students can access to take control of their learning.

This is similar in concept to what I do in most IELTS and EAP preparation courses. At the start of the course I get students to rank the different skills in terms of difficulty and then write 3-5 specific learning goals relating to the skills that they have difficulty with. In groups they then discuss activties they could do to achieve those learning goals and finally they put those activties into a clear self-study timetable. This video would make a good summary to provide them with ideas of activities that they could do. I haven't yet used this video as I don't currently have any new classes starting but will look into using it for future classes, particularly as it's only a few minutes long.

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Revisiting learner autonomy in a communicative classroom by Dervilla Fastner
  

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Revisiting learner autonomy in a communicative classroom by Dervilla Fastner
  

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Below is a youtube video from a conference paper presentation by Dervilla Fastner. She's an ELT teacher originally from Ireland, but now teaching in Germany for the past 12 years. Her presentation is on how to incorporate learner autonomy in the classroom.

This leads on from Sinclair's (in Borg & Al-Busaidi 2012) point that learner autonomy isn't just self-study outside of class but is also inside the classroom. Dervilla starts by summarising the needs of her students, who are mostly business students and so mostly need English for business oral communication. One of the points she makes is that in these types of situations students need to react spontaneously, whether it is a meeting, a negotiation or small talk there isn't necessarily any time to plan and practice what you are going to say. Nor are coursebooks necessarily that useful as they provide generic situations which may be innapropiate for the students own context. So she goes through several examples about how students can take control of the topics and what they are learning. These include bringing in pictures or items of realia such as advertisements, letting students come up with situations for role-plays or agree/disagree discussions on issues that affect them.

Although the presentation is based on Business English examples, I don't see why the concept can't be applied to EAP. The main downside I would argue is that it could be quite a daunting situation for the teacher as they may not know what realia or topics the students have come up with, so it does require the teacher to react spontaneously, which could potentially be rather disempowering and lead to a loss of face. Also it may not be possible in certain institutions or if a rigid curricula has to be followed. However, I think that it still would be possible at certain intervals to open the lesson up to students to bring in materials to tak about, or problems to discuss.

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LLAS Centre for Languages Linguistics & Area Studies

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Revisiting learner autonomy in a communicative classroom by Dervilla Fastner

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Creating communicative activities that are both stimulating and appealing can be quite a challenge for English language teachers. This practical talk is about empowering language learners to seek and create their own speaking opportunities, thus taking more responsibility for developing their own verbal communication skills.

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Attached below is a research paper by Borg & Al-Busaidi (2012) on 'Learner Autonomy: English Language Teachers' Beliefs and Practices'. I shall briefly summarise some of the main findings:

Firstly, there is some general confusion over what learner autonomy actually means. Commonly it is perceived to be synonymous with 'independent learning' and 'self-directed' study and so is commonly thought of as being the student working alone outside of class. However, in Sinclair's (in Borg & Al-Busaidi 2012:5) definition, it can take place inside or outside the classroom and has a social as well as an individual dimension. Instead, Sinclair (ibid) suggests that learner autonomy is a construct of capacity, that it requires the willingness of learners to take responsibility and that neither of these are innate and are interpreted differently by different cultures. Thus, the teacher has to not only teach strategies but also to raise consciousness of the learning process.

In terms of the beliefs of the teachers in the study, they mostly took a physchological (learning to learn) orientation to learner autonomy. While teachers were generally positive about the desirability of learner autonomy, they were less convinced by its actual feasability. Many teachers commented on learner-related factors, such as lack of experience or reliance on the teacher, which limited the extent to which they could promote learner autonomy.

The last part of the study covered a number of professional development workshops which the researchers were able to provide for the teachers in the study. The handouts to those workshops are given in the appendix and I think they are quite a valuable resource. The main argument made by the study was that teachers play a crucial role in promotoing learner autonomy and that any institutional change depends on teachers collaborating to implement LA over the long term.

The youtube video below is one of the authors discussing the paper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCUJlqgm9jg

Borg, S., & Al-Busaidi, S. (2012). Learner autonomy:  English language teachers’ beliefs and practices. ELT Research Paper, British Council 2012.

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Attached is the task description for the student 1500-2000 word Academic Paper. This is the main assignment given to students in the EAP course and takes approximately 4 to 6 weeks to complete; the other assignments are writing a summary/critical review of an article and a shorter 500-word discussion essay. As part of this assignment students also attend seminar sessions to discuss their graph, chart or table and than another to discuss their essay plan using the rationale software programme.

I've included this assignment as evidence of developing student autonomy as the students decide the topic of the research, conduct the research independently, gather appropriate data and write it individually. Even though they write it independently, I put the students into study groups, of about 3 or 4 students, based on their research areas. So when students do activities in class discussing their paper, they work in those study groups. The first of those activities is to decide their research question and that worksheet is included as part of the handout attached.

I ask students to write their paper in the genre of a report which uses either empirical data in the form of a graph, chart or table etc. or in the form of a case study. As my group last year was the business and economics stream it is very common for such students to encounter visual data sets and case studies. Also, students frequently access research reports from the IMF and World Bank, which use a similar genre in their structure.

I think this provides a nice balance for the students, giving them the freedom to choose a research question and topic based on their background, while giving them a clear genre they can follow- as Hyland (2007:150) argues, genres provide an explicit and systematic framework for students that supports them by raising their consciousness, thus, empowering them to take a critical perspective to discourses. I also explicitly raise their awareness of how this analysis part is similar to an IELTS Task 1 writing, and so try to make them understand how the style of Task 1 writing can be relevant to their future research, which hopefully provides positive washback (Green 2007) on students' perceptions of Writing Task 1. Students often find Task 1 quite random, so if they do choose to analyse data for their assignment, then they can think about the differences and appropriateness of presenting their data as a chart, graph or as a table and why there are a range of formats to use.

Green, A. (2007). IELTS washback in context: preparation for academic writing in higher education. Cambridge:CUP.

Hyland, K. (2007) ‘Genre pedagogy: Language, literacy and L2 writing instruction’ Journal of Second Language Writing, Vol.16, pp.148–164.

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Attached is the syllabus for the 4.5 month EAP programme I taught last year. This syllabus was newly designed and will probably be modified slightly for this year. The main way this syllabus differed from the previous one was that it was organised in three clear streams. In the last unit I discussed the first two streams EAP and IELTS, in this part I shall discuss the third stream that was added the 'Learning Strategies and Self Study'.

This stream broadly corresponds to the concept of student autonomy and aims to help students develop skills and strategies to take control of their learning and become more independent. This part of the syllabus isn't wholly the responsibility of the EAP teacher, it also includes the library staff as well as the academic manager.

First, there are practical issues which are mainly dealt with by the library staff. We have an extensive library and range of IT resources, which can be quite overwhelming at the start, so the library staff run sessions introducing the different resources and software packages that they can use. A key problem that comes up is with priorities- many students are so focused on getting their required IELTS score that they only want to focus on practice tests. Instead we encourage students to access relevant grammar and vocabulary resources as well as the language skills. There are different sections in the library for these and the EAP teacher runs sessions on topics such as developing vocabulary building skills, use of vocabulary notebooks and so forth. At certain intervals students also do grammar and vocabulary quizes to monitor their progress.

In addition, the academic manager also runs workshops on more general study skills such as time management and creating study groups. In terms of relflective activities, at certain intervals, for example every week, or after a particular event like a guest speaker, students write learning journals and we provide handouts giving a framework of possible topics/ questions they could write about. Also after each practice test, students analyse their performance looking at which areas they're struggling in with the idea being that they access suitable resources in their study groups to target these areas.

This part of the syllabus is more complex than the other two streams as much of it isn't necesarily discrete units that can be 'taught'. Instead it's something that needs to be revisited over time. It is arguably one of the most important parts of the syllabus as, if students don't analyse their strengths and weaknesses and correspondingly don't make any effort to improve their language abilities, then they aren't going to achieve their target IELTS score and will struggle once they start their academic studies. It was discussed, whether to have a member of staff be responsible for this area and to monitor and check whether the students were doing independent study, but in the end it was decided to leave it to the individual EAP teacher to monitor for their class. This can be quite difficult, particularly during busy times in the course. Personally, I found it helpful to give students timetables of which topics and grammar areas were to be covered in the course and when, so they could focus their study around these areas. However, I concede that that reduces the 'self-directed' part of the studying.