Valuing diversity and establishing an approach to supporting excluded groups

Tudor, Jenna and Penlington, Roger (2020) Valuing diversity and establishing an approach to supporting excluded groups. In: The Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the UK & Ireland Engineering Education Research Network : Excellence in Engineering Education for the 21st Century:The Role of Engineering Education Research. WMG, University of Warwick, Coventry, pp. 164-175. ISBN 9780993424571

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Abstract

Minority students and minority employees in Higher Engineering Education experience inequality. For academic staff these inequalities impact their personal development and career progression. To continue to grow and for engineering education to thrive as a professional discipline we must encourage diversity within both the student and staff populations. This paper cautions against a simple notion of diversity, rather a truly diverse culture within engineering is
needed, one in which there is diversity of opportunity, diversity of thought and diversity of experience. To enable a more inclusive environment to flourish we must understand the scale of the inequalities which exist. However, this paper demonstrates that there are significant limitations to the current diversity data within the UK which leaves room for under-reporting and over-generalising. In addition, there are cultural challenges which give further likelihood to
non-disclosure and lack of self-reporting.
This paper proposes that further research is needed into the true lack of diversity within engineering and describes one example of a ‘thought experiment’ conducted by the researchers to start unpacking the data and highlighting the scale of the issue.

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