What do course evaluations evaluate? June 16, 2013

It would be interesting if course evaluations evaluated teaching effectiveness. A low evaluation would mean the students did not learn much, while a high one indicated a very good teacher. For this to happen, it seems students need to be able to tell if they learned much.
Given what we know now about self-knowledge,** we shouldn’t expect students to be able to tell how effective some teaching really is. And though the evidence is early and fairly small, it looks as though students are NOT very good at assessing how well they are taught.

See the CHE Article:

http://chronicle.com/article/Smooth-Lectures-Foster-Only/139705/

In an experiment students heard the same lecture—on why calico cats tend to be female—from two instructors, one fluent and engaging, the other halting and stiff. Unexpectedly, both groups of students scored equally well on a test of the material, even though the students with the better lecturer thought they’d learned more.

** easy to read references: Thinking fast and slow, by Kahneman; The Invisible Gorilla, by Simons and Chabris

An interesting bit of history June 5, 2013

This, from the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame, was in my facebook newsfeed this evening and I thought it would be of interest to our readers:

 

“Today we wanted to take a moment to honor Sr. Mary Frederick Eggleston (1893-1975), pictured on the left, who was the first person to receive a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Notre Dame. She (aptly enough) worked in philosophy of religion, graduated magna cum laude in 1934, and her dissertation is available electronically [here].”

Her dissertation is titled, ”Some Effects of the Theory of Evolution on the Philosophy of Religion.” What I find especially interesting about this, is that Notre Dame didn’t become a co-ed university until 1972.

Reading this bit of history reminds me of when I first learned of Ilse Rosenthal Schneider, while reading about Einstein’s philosophy of science: It’s a nice reminder of the continual presence and consistent intellectual contributions of women to our profession, even when and where men seem to take center stage in our history.

Guardian Witness: New shoots of student feminism May 23, 2013

From the Guardian Witness (part of the UK-based Guardian newspaper’s website):

Lad culture appears to permeate all aspects of student life – from Facebook newsfeedsto the debating chamber of Glasgow University. But women are fighting back – or at least that’s what the recent surge in the number of student feminist societies suggests.

From burnt bras to feminist graffiti and event flyers, we want to see the shoots of the new feminism on your campus. Share your images and videos.

Well, go on, then! Head over there and share!

6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism May 20, 2013

6 Women Scientists Who Were Snubbed Due to Sexism (by Jane J. Lee, 5/19/13, for National Geographic Daily News)
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“Despite enormous progress in recent decades, women still have to deal with biases against them in the sciences.”
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“…Today’s women scientists believe that attitudes have changed, said Laura Hoopes at Pomona College in California, who has written extensively on women in the sciences—’until it hits them in the face’.” Bias against female scientists is less overt, but it has not gone away.

“Here are six female researchers who did groundbreaking work—and whose names are likely unfamiliar for one reason: because they are women…”
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Just some of (unfortunately many,) many relevant FP posts:

Minimal Posters – Six Women Who Changed Science. And The World.

Lost Women of Science

Professor Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell

Dealing with offensive comments in seminar May 9, 2013

There’s a post up on this over at NewAPPS; go check it out!

On women students leaving philosophy early on. May 7, 2013

Figures on women in tenure/tenure track jobs usually put the percentage of women at 16 to 20%. Interestingly, the gap between men’s participation and women’s starts early in their undergraduate career. This phenomenon is proving hard to understand for a number of feminist philosophers.

There is an explanation given sometimes in computer science, and it might be worth considering here. The idea is that while men are often keen on abstract problems divorced from all other human interests, women are much less so. Like women in computer science classes, perhaps women in philosophy are considerably more engaged by questions that are not divorced from reality. We needn’t posit innate differences between men and women to ground such a result; differential training would be enough.

I read this explanation for CS sometime very recently and can’t remember where. It is also
in the excellent study of women in CS at Carnegie called Unlocking the clubhouse.

Let me give some examples for philosophy ; note I am not arguing from these examples. They are just illustration. (1)A women explained to me that she was interested in philosophy until they got to Hume’s account of the self. Presumably she didn’t want to spend hours arguing that she did have a self, as she understood the debate. (2) at a university where the women were expressing increasing dissatisfaction with their courses, I was approached by one of the male faculty about why this was happening. I said that he seemed to take philosophical discussion to be a matter of his standing on the top of a hill knocking off all the students until one knocked him off. “Yes,” he responded enthusiastically. “That’s what I do best.”

Note in the second example we can see two issues. One is whether women like the combative style – a well known question – and the other is whether knocking the professor off the hill is something they want to spend 4 years on. It is not exactly an abstract question, but one where it might be hard to say what its interest is. (Phyllis Rooney has a recent paper arguing relatedly that, to puT it roughly, the combative method is disliked principally because it changes the topic.)

Another case: on a recent blog I saw a reference to a prof who spent the semester arguing about a possible elephant on the table. That certainly could dampen my interests however cleverly it was done.

It could be that we have too many Intro teachers who like to demonstrate puilosophy’s lack of relevance. Given what is said about men in CS, irrelevance is not a killer of interest for many of them. But it may well convince women that they’d be happier elsewhere.

Equality in higher education: a fair outlook? May 3, 2013

It could be wishful thinking, but it seems to me that efforts to promote equality in UK higher education have picked up some momentum recently. For instance, last week the latest round of Athena SWAN awards were announced, which

recognise success in developing employment practices to further and support the careers of women in science, technology, engineering, maths and medicine (STEMM) departments in higher education… The Charter exists to instigate real and continuing change for women, and also their male colleagues… departments have to demonstrate not just a commitment to improving working practices but also measure the impact these changes are having, and tackle areas where progress hasn’t been as fast.

The Equality Challenge Unit have also announced that they’re going to expand the pilot which extends the Athena SWAN programme beyond STEMM subjects to humanities and social sciences (philosophy, are you listening?) as well as beginning a small pilot project doing similar work on ‘race’ equality.  And they’ve just published some nice short briefings for academic staff on inclusive practice, promoting good relations and pastoral care.

Then there’s the Royal Society’s programme of work on diversity, including the STEM disability committee and a new diversity blog.  There’s Sheffield University’s Women Academic Returners’ Programme, which offers additional support (worth a maximum of £10,000) to women returning from maternity leave to minimise the impact on research activities.  Oh, and the Guardian Higher Education Network is having a live online chat about diversity in the university, today at midday.

There are things to celebrate: genuinely, if cautiously.  It’s good that the topic is getting attention.

But. But… to me, it feels a bit thin – even (potentially) a bit self-congratulatory.  Lots of us individually know full well that sexual harassment is a real and serious and current problem in universities, and one which is compounded by the failures of institutions to respond effectively.  So is bullying.  But ‘we’ don’t yet seem to know this collectively, as the academy, in a way which would make it intolerable for it to continue.

If the BBC can finally start to be honest about bullying and sexual harassment, why can’t we?

Against replacing us with MOOCs May 2, 2013

An excellent open letter from the San Jose State University Philosophy Department.

Sometimes you win one April 25, 2013

It was many years ago– not even sure how many– that I found out about Sheffield’s wonderful WARP programme, which provides funding to help restart the research careers of women returning from maternity leave. It was a little later that I learned this was only for women in STEM. And it has been every opportunity since then that I have been a broken record, arguing for the extension of this outside STEM subjects. And guess what? It’s finally happening!!

A small happy dance ensues.

Next step: extending it beyond women.

Gender discrimination at Dutch universities April 24, 2013

Two weeks ago at the launch of SWIP-NL, there was an interesting discussion about how universal gender discrimination is. The discussion was triggered by Jenny Saul’s presentation, and particularly the overwhelming number of responses and the often shocking reactions she received on “What it is like to be a woman in philosophy”.

The number of female professors in the Netherlands is appallingly low, so there definitely is a problem there. Recently a website got launched by het Proefprocessenfonds Clara Wichmann to collect accounts of gender discrimination at the Dutch universities. The number of complaints about discrimination in general is on the rise in the Netherlands, so it is surprising that not many stories have come in yet. So maybe it is good to mention it here: find it at www.seksediscriminatieaandeuniversiteit.nl (all in Dutch) and if you have an incident to report, please do so, as it will strengthen our case.