Abstract
Diversity awareness has enormous benefits, and universities in the United States increasingly require students to complete diversity-related courses. Prior research has demonstrated that students' initial attitudes toward these courses affect their subsequent engagement, as well as the quality of their learning experience; however, very little research has examined how these initial attitudes are formed. We conducted an experiment to examine this issue in the context of a women's and gender studies course in psychology. Participants read one of two identical course descriptions that varied only the course title (i.e., Psychology of Gender versus Psychology of Women) and instructor gender. Participants perceived a women-titled course to be narrowly focused compared to an identical gender-titled course and were more interested in taking the gender-titled course. Instructor gender had no effects on any of the variables. Additionally, female participants had more positive attitudes toward the course than male participants, regardless of title. Exploratory mediation analyses indicated that the main effects of course title and participant gender were mediated by perceptions of course content. Implications for improving student experiences and interest in diversity-related courses are discussed.
Highlights
Given the increasingly diverse workforce and student population, there has been a substantial push to increase diversity awareness in higher education [1]
We explored whether men would be more interested in a Gender course compared to a Women course and whether men would be more interested in taking the course from a male instructor compared to a female instructor
Mediation Analyses Though the central aim of this research was to examine the direct effects of our predictor variables, we wanted to explore whether course title and participant gender affected willingness to enroll in the course through changes in perceptions focus and course credibility
Summary
Given the increasingly diverse workforce and student population, there has been a substantial push to increase diversity awareness in higher education [1]. Many universities have added diversity-related requirements to some of their degree programs [2], and there have been calls for wider implementation of diversity education requirements [3]. Research suggests that these courses provide numerous benefits to students [5,6,7], especially if students already have favorable attitudes toward the subject [8]. While prior research demonstrates that students’ initial attitudes toward their diversity-related course influence their subsequent engagement with the class and the quality of their learning experience, relatively little research has directly examined the factors that shape those initial attitudes. The present research examines two contextual and one student demographic factor that may affect prospective students’ initial interest in and expectations for a diversity course related to gender: course title, gender of the instructor, and gender of the student
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