{"id":9234,"date":"2021-05-17T08:55:09","date_gmt":"2021-05-17T07:55:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/?p=9234"},"modified":"2022-02-18T14:01:59","modified_gmt":"2022-02-18T14:01:59","slug":"the-anti-racism-learning-technology-community-of-practice-recruitment-and-staff-development-part-4-of-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/altc.alt.ac.uk\/blog\/2021\/05\/the-anti-racism-learning-technology-community-of-practice-recruitment-and-staff-development-part-4-of-4\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anti-Racism & Learning Technology Community of Practice: Recruitment and Staff Development- Part 4 of 4"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What could you do on an individual day- to-day basis to bring racial equality to the sector? <\/h2>\n\n\n

Teeroumanee Nadan; Tracey Madden, University of Edinburgh; Dr Monica Chavez, University of Liverpool <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having the right person at the table, with an understanding of the impact of racism and Equality, Diversity & Inclusion issues, will ensure that uncomfortable questions are addressed at an early stage in the recruitment process and development of staff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Recruitment & Staff Development subgroup from the Anti-racism & Learning Technology Community of Practice (AR&LTCoP)<\/a> believes that it is important to disrupt the current procedures in place, and to ensure that we can action diversity rather than pay lip service to racism issues in the sector. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This blog post addresses four of the main related issues in the sector:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1.Lack of job security and inclusivity in temporary roles<\/strong>. Research has shown time and again that both job security and inclusivity are important aspects when tackling racism, with neither guaranteed in a short term temporary role. Learning Technologists, Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) administrators, Educational Designers, and related roles, are often misconstrued to be behind the monitor jobs, with often little  involvement in pedagogy. In most institutions in the UK Higher Education (HE), these roles or departments are often not adequately supported, including the little consideration given in recruitment.  In this sector, we are familiar with short term temporary recruitment in order to provide the much needed additional support for development of new courses or short-term projects. These come with high risks with little consideration given to Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (EDI). For instance, most short term roles may be for 3 months maximum, and does not guarantee any job security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

2.Another area of concern while recruiting in the sector is the demographics of the UK and the geographical locations of applicants.<\/strong> As of 23rd Feb 2021, data published from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) indicate that there are 1, 576 000 workers in the Information & Communication, 2, 767 000 workers in the professional, scientific & technical activities sector and 3, 515 000 workers in the Education sector (Office of National Statistics, 2021). Sadly a deeper analysis of learning technologists cannot be undertaken for 2 reasons: 1. Ethnicity is missing from the data, and 2. Learning technologists do not necessarily work in the Education sector only, but can be sourced from any of the above three sectors. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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3.Unequal pay between white staff and other ethnicities. <\/strong>Some more detailed data from ONS, indicate that in 2019 a \u00a3-0.24 difference in median hourly pay between White employees and employees from other ethnicities. The same data for 2019, shows a median hourly pay difference ranging from \u00a3-0.16 to \u00a3-4.11 in North East, North West, Yorkshire & Humberside, East Midlands, West Midlands, London, South East, South West, Wales and Scotland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What effect does unequal pay have across the sector? Just watch  Fran de Waal\u2019s experiment of two monkeys getting paid unequally:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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