Developing and Assessing Respect for Human Dignity in College Students

Academic institutions are now expected to engage in developing and assessing learning outcomes; however, responsibility outcomes, such as respect for human dignity (RFHD), can be particularly challenging. As part of our Biopsychology course and Sensation and Perception course over the past decade, we applied the scientist-educator model of learning and drew from the literature on prejudice reduction to develop our RFHD interventions, which involved face-to-face interactions with others who had sensory deficits or brain/spinal cord injuries. We iteratively created two pre-post measures to assess development of different aspects of RFHD: a Behavioral Tendencies Questionnaire and a 4-Factor RFHD Model Questionnaire. Recently, we modified the intervention and the assessments for adoption in our Class, Race, and Ethnicity in Society course. This paper reports findings from these three courses and a control course in engineering (n = 153). Findings support our two sets of hypotheses, regarding 1) the efficacy of the assessments to capture different likelihoods for interacting with others targeted by the interventions and changes over time in these factors, and 2) positive effects of the face-to-face intervention activities. This study demonstrates RFHD can be developed and assessed in a college course and provides new assessments for RFHD that are easily modified for a variety of types of others (e.g., individuals who are homeless versus blind or of a particular race). Click here to read the corresponding ISSOTL blog post

Gênero e deficiência: interseções e perspectivas Gender and disability: intersections and perspectives

O campo de estudos feministas e de gênero tem avançado à medida que se articula com outras categorias de análise, tais como geração, classe, raça/etnia, orientação sexual, região e religião. Uma questão, contudo, permanece à revelia do esforço de interseção dessas categorias, a saber, a deficiência. Para tanto, busca-se aqui avaliar algumas das possibilidades de análise de fenômenos sociais e culturais nas quais se considera oportuno o diálogo entre os estudos feministas e de gênero com o campo de estudos sobre deficiência. Espera-se proporcionar maior visibilidade para o debate dessa questão, avaliando seu potencial analítico e político em vista da sua contribuição para as políticas públicas.<br>The field of feminist and gender studies has advanced while becoming linked with other categories of analysis, such as generation, class, race/ethnic groups, sexual orientation, region and religion. However, one issue still remains isolated from the effort of intersecting those categories, namely disability. Therefore, here we have sought to evaluate some of the possibilities to the analysis of social and cultural phenomena in which the dialog between feminist and gender studies and the field of disability studies is considered to be appropriate. It is expected that greater visibility will be provided to the debate on such issue by evaluating its analytical and political potential in view of its contribution to public policies