Our Findings
What we found when analysing the readings assigned to students:
Authors:
We discovered an overwhelming reliance on readings written by White male authors, as shown by the figure to the right. 71% of readings written by White men, 22% of readings written by White women, 5% of readings written by men of colour and only 2% of readings written by women of colour. This ignores the talent and scholarship that is produced by women and people of colour. By perpetuating the inclusion of predominantly White male voices, important scholarship is overlooked and disregarded.
Topics:
We coded readings according to whether or not they included discussion of one or more of the following topics: gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, or disability. We labelled as ‘inclusive topics’ for convenience.
We found that the topics of sexuality, gender, race and ethnicity and disability were relatively rarely discussed in our readings, with issues of sexuality and disability very rarely appearing on reading lists at all. Engagement with these areas can provide students with the knowledge and tools to understand the politics surrounding the issues which might affect them or their loved ones now or later in their lives
Diversity of ideas and approaches:
Through our study, we found that the vast majority of our readings take a mainstream, usually positivist, approach to knowledge, where “non-mainstream” was coded as:
Critical theory
Critical race theory
Postcolonial and decolonial approaches
Poststructural approaches
Marxist approaches
Feminist theory and approaches
Queer theory
Social model of disability
The figure to the right shows that the voices of feminists, disability activist scholars, race theorists, and queer theorists are currently not well-represented in our curriculum - each arrow represents twenty readings. Only 17.5% of our readings would count as non-mainstream, if counted in this way.
More representation of different approaches and voices would make for a better-rounded syllabus and allow students to develop their own responses to these ideas, which tend to be of particular interest to students and scholars of colour and disabled and LGBTQ students and scholars. This is not to suggest that the ‘mainstream’ approaches are not valuable, but simply to propose that more diversity of ideas leads to a better educational experience.
Mainstream versus non-mainstream readings
Who assigns which readings?
Our research shows that male lecturers set more readings with male authors. Women lecturers also set more readings by men than women, but, importantly, the proportion of women authors on their reading lists is a lot higher. Female lecturers also assign a much higher percentage of readings from non-mainstream approaches. This presents a powerful argument for why it might make sense to hire a more diverse faculty, both when it comes to gender and ethnicity, to guarantee a balanced and broad education for students at UCL.
Methods:
We found great diversity in terms of the selection of both qualitative, normative and quantitative research methods in the readings we analysed. The majority of readings used qualitative research methods, as shown in the figure to the left. Whilst there is a diversity in methodology, the vast majority of readings still adopt mainstream positivist and analytic normative approaches. This, as highlighted before, has consequences in terms of curtailing the breadth and depth of knowledge that students obtain.
Geographical scope:
We found a total of 298 case studies from 74 countries and all six continents. By far the most commonly analysed countries are the United States (76 cases; 25.5%) and the United Kingdom (54 cases; 18.1%). The only other two countries with over 10 case studies are India (14) and Germany (13). In contrast, there is a paucity of case studies from large parts of Africa, especially Western Africa, as well as Eastern Europe and South-East Asia. The concentration of case studies in the Global North is not encouraging, although the department’s three modules on International Development were, as chance would have it, not included in the sample. However, this would seem to be a clear invitation to develop other modules that would invite discussion and learning about large parts of the globe, as well as to add more diverse international examples where possible.
