My brilliant STEM educator friend Dr. Claire Meaders often makes the point that selection, attrition & gatekeeping are not the same thing as "rigor" in STEM pathways. The same can be said for any hiring and evaluation of junior folks. Maybe a metaphor that would work here is leaning on "only x% of applicants get one of our jobs" is like the Lines of Code way of measuring evaluation efficacy. If you built a super great identification system the majority of the identified could qualify.
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Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 16:48:31 JST Cat Hicks
- pettter and Matthew Lyon repeated this.
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Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 16:49:29 JST Cat Hicks
When I've consulted on candidate evaluations sometimes from the pov of assessing achievement outcomes I've often advised that the evaluation needs to STOP sooner when it is starting to fail to accurately distinguish between candidates. This is a classic selection problem.
If you ultimately have a role for which many people do qualify (which is most roles), do not double down on parsing increasingly arbitrary differences between people. Just face that situation.
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Kristin (vis.social Admin) (kristinhenry@vis.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 16:53:42 JST Kristin (vis.social Admin)
@grimalkina So much effort is put into screening out and selecting the most promising future scientists, that we've raised generations of adults who were told they weren't good enough or rigorous enough to learn about science in their daily lives.
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Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 16:53:43 JST Cat Hicks
Jointly pre-defining what qualifying is, is a known protection against bias later in the process. I think that it's an underappreciated part of this whole thorny problem, the fact that the END of a hiring process can start to warp and introduce uneasy and invisible bias as people start to parse things as differences under the pressure of decision making. Same with grad school admissions imo: it's foolish to act like we are identifying the ten best when the top 100 are completely comparable.
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Cat Hicks (grimalkina@mastodon.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 16:53:43 JST Cat Hicks
"What is rigor?" According to the best science of learning and achievement, the most EFFECTIVE classes that have the best real outcomes for society should be ones where we commit to learners' growth, recovery, second and third and millionth chances. Maybe the right question is "who the hell is all this 'rigor' FOR." It's so foolish and upside down that sometimes we penalize the most inclusive, impactful work BECAUSE it's reaching more people.
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Kristin (vis.social Admin) (kristinhenry@vis.social)'s status on Wednesday, 12-Jun-2024 16:53:43 JST Kristin (vis.social Admin)
@grimalkina omg, I think it was what 15-20 years ago, when I was seeking advising on grant writing for public science literacy projects...and I was told that I had to focus on kids, because funders saw adults as a 'lost cause'.
So instead, I focused on families at the Maker Faire. If I could get a parent to sit down next to their kid and be taught cell biology by a child, I might make a tiny impact?
pettter repeated this.