Category Archives: Training

LGBT+ History Month 2022 – Round Up

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A UoR branded graphic with 'LGBT+ History Month' written on it and a heart with the LGBT+ progress flag designed in it.

LGBT+ History Month – ‘Round up’

There was a lot of activity across the University in February for LGBT+ History month. Here are some of the highlights to keep your LGBT+ inclusion going beyond the major celebratory months.

 

What is LGBT+ History month and why is it important?

LGBT+ History Month happens in February every year in the UK. It is important that we celebrate LGBT+ history to recognise and celebrate the contributions and achievements of LGBT+ people throughout history. Some historical figures could not be openly ‘out’ in their own time (Oscar Wilde, for example) and for this reason it is important to celebrate them today and recognise them as their whole selves.

The LGBT+ community also have a long history of having to fight for human rights. Still today, 70 countries criminalise same-sex relationships. This map shows the stark reality of current global rights for LGBT+ people, which makes it even more important that we critique, as well as celebrate the community’s history, and by doing this, we can look ahead to the future.

 

The Library’s D&I resources  

A message from Tim Chapman, D&I Lead, Library.

“Our online reading list system, which is widely used by academic staff for most taught courses across the University, has been of huge benefit to students since we adopted it in 2015. It gives direct links to the library catalogue and instant access to any material available to us online.  

We are also able to develop bespoke reading lists such as this one - highlighting some great YA and Children’s material that we hold in the library, covering a range of LGBTQ+ issues and themes. Check it out.   

Our online reading lists enable us to get the broadest reach possible and they help us to widen readership, which from a diversity perspective, must be a positive thing.  

We also produce a reading list that keeps track of all the material purchased from our Diversity Fund. Anyone can suggest a purchase that relates to any of our diversity and inclusion themes (LGBTQ+, race & ethnicity, disability & inclusion). It’s a great way for you to help us to shape your Library’s collections.  

If you want more information, or to suggest a book for purchase, contact your School Academic Liaison Librarian here.” 

 

Prepster: PrEParing and HIV

Dr Will Nutland, co-founder of prepster, talked about why testing for HIV is important, who should be thinking about testing, and how frequently. He talked to us about how testing has changed over time and in addition, talked about the available options -including PrEP for those who are negative and new options for those folks that test positive for HIV.

Re-watch the event here: Prepster:PrEParing and HIV

 

 

‘Ice and Fire’ – a rehearsed reading and Q&A 

Brought to us by Dr Ruvi Ziegler, Chair of the LGBT+ staff network on Wednesday 02 February. Prior to the reading, between 2-2.45pm, there was also an asylum mapping workshop open to interested law students and staff.

The event was a rehearsed reading of LGBT+ asylum testimonies by Ice and Fire followed by a Q&A moderated by Sebastian Aguirre, Director of Actors For Human Rights (a queer human rights activist and theatre practitioner from the Chilean refugee diaspora in the UK), with Ruvi Ziegler and a representative of the Reading Refugee Support Group.

Here is tweet about the event as well as some photos

 

 

LGBTQ+ Britain through Bishopsgate institute collections

Stef took participants at the university on a virtual tour of the collections at the Bishopsgate Institute, talking about the history of LGBT+ Britain. Covering many topics and moments over last 50 years in a light-hearted fashion for all the University Staff and Students.

Watch it again below:

LGBTQ+ Britain through Bishopsgate institute collections

 

 

the Pride in STEM logo

LGBT+ History Month Whiteknights Campus trail

The Central Diversity and Inclusion team released a University of Reading ‘talking or walking tour’, in collaboration with the LGBT+ Staff Network.

We reached out to the Diversity and Inclusion leads across the University and asked for an LGBT+ figure who they associate with their School, Function, or field of study. We collated these figures and mapped out a route through the University’s Whiteknights Campus.

Some departments are not located on Whiteknights campus, and these have been added at the end so that you can learn about the historical figures, without travelling to those locations physically.

Colleagues can listen to an audio version, read about the icons, use the ‘map’ to physically familiarise themselves with Whiteknights campus buildings and departments (and LGBT+ History).

 

Listen to/watch the presentation here: Whiteknights_campus_LGBT_tour_2022.mp4

Whiteknights Campus map here Campuses Map & Key (reading.ac.uk)

We also ran training including an LGBT+ Ally recruitment and information session. You can still sign up to our Trans inclusion training, as it is at the end of March:

A Trans flag being held up against a blue background

Trans inclusion training 

Thursday 31st March 2022 – 10am-12pm (via Microsoft Teams)

Register here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is unconscious bias training effective?

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Ellie Highwood

Largely a summary of….

Unconscious Bias training: An assessment of the evidence for effectiveness , Equality and Human Rights Commission, Research Report 113, by Doyin Atewologun, Tinu Cornish and Fatima Tresh

 

Premise and Reading context:

 

Unconscious Bias training is frequently cited as a solution to reducing bias with respect to protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 in selection processes. Indeed no self-respecting Athena SWAN application would be without it. At Reading some form of unconscious bias training is mandatory for chairs of interview panels across the University and some Schools have trained larger teams as part of their Athena SWAN bids. Currently our unconscious bias training is delivered in a number of ways:

 

  • Embedded within face-to-face recruitment and selection panel and chair training
  • Specific online Unconscious bias module
  • Some historic bespoke training at school or function level.
  • PGR student training developed from undergraduate training work in the School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Science
  • Some coverage in modules for trainee teachers within Institute of Education

 

We are in the process of evaluating and updating our approach and delivery of unconscious bias training as one of the Institutional Athena SWAN actions. We have several academics with experience of designing and delivering Unconscious Bias Training, however this recent Equality and Human Rights Commission report provides a broad evaluation, highlighting where evidence exists for the effectiveness of this type of training. Here I summarise points from that report which reviewed many published articles and grey literature annual reports of studies into the effectiveness of unconscious bias training (UBT). The studies used varied in terms of robustness.

What can UBT do?

  • Can be effective for awareness raising.
  • Can reduce implicit bias but is unlikely to eliminate it. Most UBT is not designed to reduce explicit bias.
  • The evidence for UBT being effective in changing behaviour is limited – but most of these studies did not use valid measures of behaviour change.
  • More successful in reducing implicit bias relating to gender, than race and ethnicity.

What does the most effective UBT look like?

  • Uses an IAT (Implicit Association Test), followed by a debrief, incorporating theory about unconscious bias rather than detail about impact.
  • The most successful interventions include bias reduction strategies and bias mitigation strategies so that participants feel empowered to do something.
  • There appears little difference in effectiveness between on-line and face-to-face training.
  • However, there is evidence that increasing the sophistication of the UBT (e.g. an interactive workshop) can increase awareness and concern about wider discrimination and that this awareness continues to increase over time.
  • The report emphasises that UBT should be only one part of a programme designed to achieve organisational change.

Who should be trained?

Training teams together resulted in positive group behaviour change despite the evidence for effectiveness in changing individual’s behaviour being weak. However, there is too little UBT specific research to judge whether mandatory or voluntary training has a different effectiveness.

 

What can go wrong? If UBT participants are exposed to information that suggests stereotypes and biases are unchangeable, this can back-fire and result in more entrenched bias.

 

Considering Reading’s approach in the light of this review

 

Our current online offering clearly states that it is intending to raise awareness.

  • It includes a heavier emphasis on theory about unconscious bias compared to statistics about impact.
  • It covers many types of diversity.
  • Although an IAT is not used in this online course directly, they are explained and a link is provided as follow on work.

 

What we may be able to improve –

• More training of teams together – to result in effective group behaviour change.

• Make sure a resource that covers a debrief after the IAT test is available if people take that up as part of the online course

• There is a reference in the start of the training to implicit bias being “hard-wired” and it is a fine line between normalising implicit bias to encourage reflection, and making it “ok” to be biased.

• Provide some specific bias reduction or mitigation strategies

• Better evaluation of implicit bias reduction and behaviour change, if we provided follow up resources for these.

 

Finally – there is a need for more research in this area, specifically UK based (as many studies currently US focused and the race issues in particular can be quite different between the US and the UK).

 

Athena SWAN Training: Thinking like a Charter Panellist

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Thoughts from an attendee – Guest post by Eva Van Herel, Executive Administration Officer, Department of Humanities

 Having decided, before Summer, that our School is to put in an Athena SWAN Bronze submission, a small core group was formed to get things started and to make sure our application runs well through to the end. The Chair of our group attended some meetings, researched the application process and seemed quite at home in the material already, but for me, the whole process was mostly still a black box.

 To familiarise ourselves with the expected outcomes, our Chair recommended we all attend the ‘Thinking Like a Charter Panellist’ training. Nothing like a clear vision of the required outcome to focus the mind.

 And so we attended. Materials were provided by email beforehand. I browsed through them but was really quite unsure what I was supposed to be looking out for. There were exerpts from applications to serve as ‘mock panel examples’, a workbook with lots of charts and graphs, the panellist role description and the Athena SWAN Charter Awards Handbook. If that sounds like a lot, it looked like a lot too and I felt out of my depth going into the workshop.

About 20 people turned up and it was led by James Lush from the Equality Challenge Unit (ECU) which runs the panels, providing administrative support and the knowledge to ensure that panellists are using the criteria correctly. They also write up feedback for the applicants. He took us through the basics of what the applications are all about, how panels work and the mind-set you need to take on a panellist role. The way to learning is done by doing so we studied and discussed the workbook case in groups which resulted in a clear view of how important it is to structure and label the data in your reports so that it makes sense and contributes to your school’s story. So many ways to be unclear were identified it was almost as though it was our job to find mistakes in other people’s work. Come to think of it, lecturers do spend a lot of time marking…

 After a short break for lunch we continued with the practise panels: half the people form a panel and the other half observe. 20 minutes of panel discussion on the case studies and then feedback from the observers. Each panel had a Chair (with prior experience) and they structured the conversation. By now, we had picked up enough knowledge to have a lively discussion on points in the application considered strong or weak. Time flew by and being an observer proved useful too.

 2 things particularly stuck out for me from this session.

  •  The panellists go through one application an hour and this means they have little time to spend on each part of an application – it will be very important to ensure we catch their attention by creating an application that is easy to read and presents its information in a clear and coherent way. The best way to do this is to have a common thread of story running through the whole and binding it together, resulting in the action plan. Pictures and graphs or tables must be to the point and pertinent to the conversation, but can enliven the document and make it more user-friendly.
  • It also became clear that there is a risk of getting so involved with the project that it becomes impossible to see the end result in the same way panellists will look at it – I understand now why it is recommended that you get a ‘trusted friend’ to look at the material critically before finalising it. Perhaps someone who had just followed the ‘Thinking like a Panellist’ training for the first time?

 I left the session feeling my time had been well spent. With a better understanding of what the end result is supposed to be, and how it will be assessed, the end goal is clear. Now for the real work – sitting down and doing the work needed to get there.