The impact of any learning material goes far beyond its subject matter and pedagogical objectives. Everything included, from the choice of language, to the imagery, to the text and front covers, has the potential to reinforce stereotypes unintentionally. This can shape a learner’s sense of self and others around them and affect how they feel and behave in a social setting.
A wealth of evidence suggests that early gender bias influences future inequality. It can affect career aspirations, influence the choice of school subjects and ultimately contribute to gender disparity as children grow into adults.?This is a challenge for all sectors and industries across society. Guidelines have been developed for 蜜桃app to ensure that our materials are gender equal and showcase positive female role models.
The guidelines are broken down into three different areas surrounding gender equality:
The guidelines help to ensure that women are represented equally to men in our learning and teaching materials. This includes ensuring that women's representation does not reinforce negative stereotypes. For example, content that shows women as single parents can also present them as single parents and workers. The idea is to .
Another common example is with regards to science materials.
Often, when students are asked to describe a famous scientist, they describe a character similar to Albert Einstein with white hair and a white coat. Female scientists are often overlooked in this respect, and historically, they have not been given as much attention as their male counterparts.
This type of unconscious bias is something the guidelines aim to help change. Our goal is to represent both women and men from various backgrounds across all subjects. For example, some content shows women in traditionally male roles, such as pilots, engineers and soldiers. The objective is to highlight that .
Another issue is the objectification of women. Often, women are presented as not having agency or purpose, and too much focus is placed on their appearance, rather than their intentions, behavior and aspirations. The new guidelines set out to change this.
Our language is gendered and therefore steeped in stereotyping. We aim to promote the use of terminology that is non-gendered. For example, using ‘police officer’, ‘firefighter’ and ‘maintenance worker’ instead of ‘policeman’, ‘fireman’ and ‘handyman’. Although this is a small change, it contributes to removing the unconscious bias surrounding jobs and professions.
Adjectives can also play a role in perpetuating gender inequality. We often associate particular adjectives with genders. For example, words like ‘hysterical’, ‘shrill’, or ‘frumpy’ are typically used for women. Whereas men can be described as ‘assertive’, women are more likely to be seen as ‘bossy’.
Furthermore, parallel language is something that needs to be looked at. Words like ‘girls and boys’ can be replaced with ‘students’. In this way, the guidelines are here to ensure that there is no gendering within materials. This will influence gender equality among our users.
Another key issue involved in the material is the referencing of third-party content. For example, stories based on classic fairy tales are often used to represent certain points, and these typically show the strong male hero saving the weak female damsel in distress.
Although these are stories that our society has grown up with, they could be more helpful in offering a gender-balanced view of society. 蜜桃app’s guidelines are in place to ensure that students see women and men as equals throughout the materials.
To help fight against gender inequality, teachers can think about incorporating more female stories and role models into their lessons. For example, rather than simply focusing on Issac Newton or Albert Einstein in science class.
At a management level, schools can be more aware of what materials they are choosing to bring in, assessing whether the content is balanced, before accepting it. These simple actions can help our learners grow up with a more balanced view of gender.
When you’re teaching English to young learners, you might find that there are a few students in your class who are struggling. But sometimes it can be hard to tell why. Is it because their language level is low? Or are they finding classroom work difficult because of a general cognitive difference, like dyslexia??
Taking English exams can be intimidating and challenging. Everyone has their own set of strengths and weaknesses, and it's common to make the same kinds of mistakes in an exam.
It’s possible to make use of this though, and improve your English from the mistakes you make. Today in our language learning blog, we discuss how we can use exam errors to perfect and improve your English.
Firstly, you want to establish what your weak and strong points are. Write these down somewhere each time and build up a record. It's essential to take note of the mistakes you make and try to see if there's a pattern.
Perhaps mistakes happen on:
These are only a few examples, but recognizing patterns or similarities can help you focus on areas that need improvement or extra attention.
Making mistakes in an exam can really impact a person's confidence, but if you can, look back and rationalize why that mistake was made. It can help your confidence in the future. Sometimes mistakes are made just because of a misinterpretation, perhaps a question wasn’t read correctly, and you realize you knew the answer after all.
Remember, the situation of being in an exam can be stressful and you may not think or respond in the way you normally would outside of the exam room, so don't be too hard on yourself.
Mistakes happen in the real world every day, and being able to look back at them and examine them critically is a valuable skill.
As we’ve already mentioned, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses. It can be a great idea to compare your mistakes with others; they may be making the same ones.
You can team up and try to tackle them together, or you may know someone whose strength is in your weak areas (and vice versa). It's helpful to team up and help each other. They might have some handy tips and techniques for you to try.
It's good to switch up techniques at times and your errors might be giving you some guidance on doing so. If you tend to make errors with your spoken English, consider study techniques that work on that – like using recall or incorporating music to strengthen your speech.
Perhaps memory is an issue, so using tools like flashcards can help you. Some techniques focus on and help improve some areas more than others, so there isn’t one solution for all. Make sure to experiment and see what works for you.
Perhaps an obvious one, but just repeating and practicing the questions/tasks you’ve gotten wrong in the exam is a good approach. By doing it over and over again, with some persistence, it ends up being retained in your long-term memory.
You may want to study variations of the questions you struggle with, as exams tend to alter their questions and you don’t want to be thrown off in an exam if they reword/change the question slightly.
The next time you review your exam results, remember these steps, look for patterns, examine your thought process and don’t be afraid to ask others for help. With enough practice, those errors should be things of the past.
In the era of the Great Resignation, there are lots of factors that influence whether or not someone chooses to stay with their company or decides to accept a job offer from a new employer.
Whilst fair pay remains a constant in this, feeling included, valued, and cared about by colleagues plays a significant role in the decision on whether to stay or go.
?
