Welcome to the WJETT blog
What is WJETT?
The WJETT blog or Warwick Journal of Education - Transforming Teaching blog is designed to encourage staff and students to disseminate good practice and to engage with their peers on academic cultural critique or areas of research that they find interesting. With the increased focus on ‘teachers as researchers’ in the sector, many qualified teachers are expected to publish the outcomes of any action research projects they undertake. The WJETT blog can be the first step on your journey towards publishing and enables you to experience publishing and reviewing in a friendly and supportive environment.
You will need to scroll down the page below the tags to see the posts.
Diversity by Design: 3 ways to increase diversity in your teaching
We have just co-led the first run of a new Core Module for approximately 600 Warwick Business School undergraduate students called Entrepreneurial Mindset. Looking back over the module, one of the things we feel proud of is how we demonstrated the diversity of entrepreneurs to students. This was certainly no coincidence; it was, in fact, diversity by design. Here we share 3 ways you can also increase and demonstrate diversity in your teaching:
1) The ‘who’ – consider your cast: Think about the opportunities to feature people in your module that represent the breadth of humanity, not just a select few. You can do this through guest speakers, your teaching team, or videos. We made a concerted effort to examine who was appearing on the module, not to tick any particular box, but to ensure a breadth of experiences and perspectives were presented and there was a collective and overall representation. It is of course the easier option to call on the first few names or cases that come to mind, but this could naturally skew towards our own unconscious biases. Taking time to think about the overall composition of your module’s cast (e.g., gender, race, age) will help to counteract this.
2) The ‘what’ – consider your content: In addition to the people who appear on the module, diversity runs through all the materials such as the books you assign, research you reference, podcasts you link to, or examples you give. Everywhere a name is mentioned (individual or organisation) is also an aspect where you can think about diversity. You can make a list of all the elements in your module where you will be mentioning names and increase diversity across all these dimensions. It may also be an opportunity to consider the values represented by those you cite or discuss. For instance, there may be scholars or organizations you discuss who have expressed harmful views that you could be inadvertently promoting.
3) The ‘why’ – consider your mission: Ask or remind yourself why increasing and demonstrating diversity through your teaching is important. We have a globally diverse student body and are conscious of the power and privilege we hold in deciding what students see as possible, now and for their future. Increasing and demonstrating diversity will be just one way we can all help to get them there. We are two female co-module leaders and could easily think we have this covered, but this alone is not enough. It is also easy to fall into the trap of using well-known examples with a wealth of information available on them. For us in entrepreneurship, it may be tempting to discuss Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk, but if we truly want a learning experience that all of our students connect with and see themselves in, we should also be talking about entrepreneurs like Whitney Wolfe Herd, the CEO of dating app Bumble and the youngest woman to take a company public, or Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, a pioneer in the field of biopharmaceuticals and EY World Entrepreneur of the Year.
We hope these practices will inspire you to increase diversity in your teaching too.
Writing guidance
Can I write about anything in my blog post?
Yes pretty much. Academic cultural critique (Thomson and Mewburn, 2013) is always a good source of content for academic blogs. This can include (but is not limited to) comments and reflections on funding; higher education policy or academic life. You might also want to consider blogging about:
- Academic practice (Saper, 2006)
- Information and/or self-help advice
- Technical, teaching and careers advice
- Your research or practice
- How you’ve undertaken research
- The impact of research on your practice
- An area of research/practice that interests you
- Your teaching experiences/reflections
How long can my blog post be?
Each individual blog post should be no longer than 500 words. Long blocks of text are sometimes hard for readers to digest. Break up your content into shorter paragraphs, bullet points and lists whenever possible. Also include a list of keywords or tags as this makes it easier for Google to find your work.
Do I need to use citations?
No, this is a reflective piece so it does not need to include citations (but you obviously can include them if they are relevant).
Can I include links or images?
We would encourage you to include links to any articles that you have considered whilst writing your blog post. We also welcome the use of images (as long as you have permission to use them) as they can often help to illustrate a point and obviously will not be included in the word limit. Please remember this is a public site so if you want to include images of your students in your classes then you will need permission to do this.
What is the process for submitting a piece of work?
Your blog post should be emailed to A.Ball.1@warwick.ac.uk. Once the submission has been reviewed it will either be uploaded at the beginning of the next available week or sent back to you for editing if it requires amendments. You should then send the amended work to me once again and I will then upload it.