Historical alignment

The first time I ever experienced a revelation of historical alignment was when I took a Western Civilizations course in the summer after my freshman year of my undergrad. The professor taught the historical timeline in full context of what was happening both in the secular world and in the Biblical world – so everything I learned out of context in Sunday school was juxtaposed on the same timeline as, what I considered, “history”. What an eye-opening experience that was for me, a young 19-year-old, who had never thought of history in this way.

I got the same sensation when I read Amy Bradshaw’s article, “Reconsidering the Instructional Design and Technology Timeline through a Lens of Social Justice.” How amazing to see the two timelines of instructional technology events and individuals placed alongside the social justice timeline of the time in US history. To realize that, in the 1940s, at the same time Gagné was developing his work on instructional systems, the U.S. military was racially segregated, President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 to evacuate and incarcerate US citizens or fully document immigrants of Japanese descent, women were voting for only 22 years, and public schools were still segregated. The same year B.F. Skinner published “The science of learning and the art of teaching”, the Supreme Court declared segregation in public schools as unconstitutional through the 1954 Brown v Board of Education. In 1957, just one year after Bloom published his taxonomy of educational objectives and Maslow his hierarchy of needs, the governor of Arkansas ordered the national guard to block nine black students from desegregating Little Rock’s all white Central High School. Context is so important when we learn anything, and putting relevant, historical context to the IDT timeline is really helpful in my understanding of these theories.

In 1962, the same year Mager published his process for writing instructional objectives and Gagné published his conditions of learning, James Meredith became the first black student to enroll at the University of Mississippi, resulting in riots by whites and 5000 federal troops sent by President Kennedy in response to the violence. “How might the violent reactions to Meredith’s enrollment have helped shape Meredith’s conditions of learning…. Might there be inherent assumptions and blind spots in the perspectives of Mager and Gagné – and among our own perspectives, today, as well?” (Bradshaw, 2018)

“Given the chronological proximity of efforts toward desegregation, racially-motivated lynchings, and work such as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Blooms taxonomy of educational objectives, not making explicit connections between IDT benchmarks and the broader social context is nothing short of miseducative, in Dewey’s sense of growth in an unhealthy direction, since we not only fail to make explicit connections between IDT events and critical social events, we actively learn not to make such connections” (Bradshaw, 2018).

Bradshaw goes on to say that when we make these connections between IDT and the social context, we expand the relevance of our field, making it broader to include a variety of experiences and perspectives and opening up the possibilities of learning. “Raising awareness and supporting positive means of addressing our collective ignorance of the connections to, and ramifications of, social justice issues to the field of IDT, leads to consideration of questions such as ‘How does the instructional system itself reinforce structures of inequality, injustice, and oppression?’ and ‘How can my designs disrupt systems of oppression?’” (Bradshaw, 2018).

Briefly, Banaji, Bazerman, and Chugh’s article, “How (Un)Ethical are You?” was a thought-provoking read that caused a lot of introspection on how I used to manage my team. I’m currently not a manager and feel some relief over that, after managing for 10 years. It gave me a lot to think about and one point, stood out and that was “In-Group favoritism”. The US especially is all about networking and who you know. I was recently on a job search last year and felt that I needed to engage with my professional network in order to get a job. Everything I read was about “who I know” and “where they are” so that they could use their “power” to help me get a job. In the end, it was nothing about networking or who I knew that got me my job, but that’s another story.

“Few people set out to exclude anyone through such acts of kindness. But when those in power allocate scarce resources (such as jobs, promotions, and mortgages) to people just like them, they effectively discriminate against those who are different from them. Such ‘in-group favoritism’ amounts to giving extra credit for group membership. Yet while discriminating against those who are different is considered unethical, helping people close to us is viewed favorably” (Banaji et.al., 2003). Something as benign as a hiring bonus if you refer a friend to a job opportunity is playing into this favoritism.

This article spoke about the person who leveraged their power at a financial institution, for example, to get a home loan for someone less than qualified. Their actions for that unqualified white person puts an unqualified black person at a disadvantage since the same rules were not applied. The white person just happened to be in the in-group of that financial manager and receive the benefit. So often, it looks like a favor, or networking, or using your connections, when, it is perpetuating the disenfranchisement of someone that is not in the “in-group”. Banks in the US are more likely to deny a mortgage to a black person than a white person, even if they are equally qualified. It may not be that “banks are hostile toward African-Americans” (Banaji et. al., 2003), but that the loan officer is showing favoritism toward the white applicant while applying the regular standards to the black applicant.

This article is “chock full” of examples that make you go “hmmm?” Things I never thought about like how commissions work in certain fields, or that a lawyer who is supposed to have their client’s best interest in mind might ask to settle instead of going to court because they will make more money. Bias, conflict of interest, favoritism. All worth the read whether you are a manager or not. This article made me rethink a lot of things that seem harmless at first glance.

References

Banaji, M. R., Bazerman, M. H., & Chugh, D. (2003, December). How (un)ethical are you?

Harvard Business Review, 81(12), 56-65.

Bradshaw, Amy C. (2018, March 23). Reconsidering the instructional design and technology

timeline through a lens of social justice. TechTrends, 62, 336-344.