The impact of ‘humanised’ teaching materials on student perspectives of disciplinary diversity and belonging

The lack of diversity in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) is a significant issue for the sector. Many organisations and educators have identified lack of representation of historically marginalised groups within teaching materials as a potential barrier to students feeling that a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) career is something that they can aspire to. A key barrier to addressing the issue is ensuring that EDI interventions are both evidence-based and feasible for educators to implement.

In this talk, we will discuss a project evaluating the impact of adapting teaching materials to ‘humanise’ the scientists involved, by presenting their full names and photographs alongside a Harvard style reference. This format is being increasingly commonly adopted with teaching materials as a way of developing belonging within disciplinary communities but, prior to our project, there had been no attempts to investigate its efficacy.

This session will be presented by Dr Dom Henri

Aims & Objectives