3.5 Free of Bias
Content is free of cultural, racial, religious, gender, ability, identity, and age bias.
Points: 3 (Essential)
Overview
Does your curated content present items objectively and factually? Bias in instructional materials can take many forms. Consider how students use content to create a knowledge base.
- Imbalance & Selectivity—Does your content perpetuate bias by presenting only one interpretation of an issue, situation, or group of people?
- Invisibility—Does your content exclude or omit a group? Is a group marginalized or viewed as less important?
- Linguistic Bias—Does the language level of your content imply bias related to race/ethnicity, gender, accents, age, (dis)ability and sexual orientation?
- Unreality—Does your content present an unrealistic portrayal of our history and our contemporary life experience? Does it avoid or gloss over controversial topics?
- Fragmentation—Does your content separate issues related to marginalized groups to imply that these issues are less important than and not a part of the cultural mainstream?
- Stereotyping—Does your content portray traditional, rigid views that limit the abilities and potential of a group?
Tips
The article and checklist provided below can be used to guide the creation of Bias-Free Content. Although they are both provided by medical schools, the guidelines are curriculum non-specific and can be applied to any discipline.
- Guidelines for Promoting an Anti-Bias and Inclusive Curriculum (article)
- The Upstate Bias Checklist: A Checklist for Assessing Bias in Health Professions Education (interactive checklist)
See also this Equity-minded Chapter Review Final Checklist for open textbooks.
Resources
- Reducing Bias In and Out of the Classroom
- alex is an open source tool that helps you find gender favoring, polarizing, race related, religion inconsiderate, or other unequal phrasing in text.
Feedback/Errata