Library and Academic Success: Equity, Diversity, Inclusion &amp; Belonging: Higher Education

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Key EDI & B Concepts in Higher Education

This selection of resources offers a good start to reviewing scholarly information on topics of employment equity, initiatives, diverse populations, Indigenous education, international students and barriers encountered in EDI & B within the postsecondary landscape.

Beyond Face Value: A Policy Analysis of Employment Equity Programs and Reporting in Ontario Public Colleges.
As post-secondary enrolment from traditionally under-represented groups in Canada continues to rise, it is unclear to what extent the diversity of student bodies is reflected among faculty. Issues of faculty diversity and employment equity have gained attention within Canadian universities, but they have been overlooked within colleges. In an effort to address this gap, the authors have reviewed the employment equity related policies of Ontario's five largest publicly funded colleges (otherwise known as Ontario Colleges of Applied Arts and Technology, or OCAATs). With a focus on personnel data collection and recruitment, this paper provides recommendations for future research and priorities for organizational policy development.
It's Not Just a Pay Gap: Quantifying the gender wage and pension gap at a post-secondary institution in Canada
To quantify the impact of the gender pay gap in academia over the course of a career and retirement, the authors used a Canadian post-secondary institution as a case study and simulated the effects of the reported difference in salary across multiple academic career trajectories. A starting wage gap of less than $9,000 resulted in a $300,000--$400,000 gender wage gap over the course of a career, and a further $148,000--$259,000 gender pension gap, for a total gender pension and wage gap of $454,000--$660,000, depending on the rank achieved. Concluding that focusing on gender gaps in salary alone leads to a substantial underestimation of the long-term effects of the gender gap.
More Than a Pipeline Problem: Evaluating the Gender Pay Gap in Canadian Academia from 1996 to 2016
This article measures gender pay gaps in Ontario's public post-secondary education sector from 1996 to 2016 using the Public Sector Salary Disclosure Data and a Blinder- Oaxaca decomposition to measure the source of gendered salary differentials. Men were paid on average 2.06%, 2.14%, and 5.26% more than their women colleagues for all employees, university teaching staff, and deans, respectively. Results additionally imply that women's years of experience in academia do not mitigate the observed pay gaps. Suggestions for future research include increasing the scope of our study to factor in finer details such as labour productivity
Rewarding Collaborative Research: Role Congruity Bias and the Gender Pay Gap in Academe.
In this study, the author considers how role congruity bias contributes to the gender pay gap in academia. Bias is more likely to manifest in a context where there is some ambiguity about performance and where stereotypes are stronger. She predicts that bias in the attribution of credit for coauthored research leads to lower returns to research for female professors and tests this prediction using a sample of Canadian faculty. In regressions of salary on individual and institutional determinants of salary, the author found that women earn marginally less than men. However, the pay gap is only evident for women who publish in a selective list of journals; for the subset of faculty with no publications from this list, there are no significant differences in salary.

Anti‐Black Racism on the Sidelines: The Limits of "Listening Sessions" to Address Institutional Racism at Canadian Universities.
The article focuses on the restrictions imposed on listening sessions on institutional racism at Canadian universities. Topics discussed include sessions organized by anti-racism working group, their focus on promoting equity, diversity, and inclusive (EDI) policies, and double consciousness of blacks.
Building Community: Introduction to Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
This thought-provoking eBook from the Office of Diversity and Human Rights, Guelph University, helps people recognize systems of oppression that manifest in society, and encourages people to work proactively, consciously, and continuously to interrupt oppression.
Delving into Institutional Diversity Messaging: A Cross-Institutional Analysis of Student and Faculty Interpretations of Undergraduate Experiences of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in University Websites
This research investigates how university messages about equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) available through public websites, are interpreted by faculty and students. Using a students-as-partners approach, the authors identified and analyzed themes based on their perceptions and understandings of five university websites. The authors identified patterns and observed differences in the ways in which institutions operationalized and represented EDI initiatives. How messages were interpreted by students provided a better understanding of the institutional priorities and the assumed values identified by student co-researchers.
The Diversity Challenge for Higher Education in Canada: The Prospects and Challenges of Increased Access and Student Success.
This paper reviews the literature on the linkages between social inequality and education, before turning to an examination of Canadian data with respect to access issues and the possible barriers to increasing diversity among postsecondary institutions. The authors argue that institutions must commit to developing support services and a more welcoming and inclusive environment in order to ensure student retention and success among an increasingly diverse student population. The paper concludes with a discussion of "best practices" from the perspective of a predominantly undergraduate, liberal arts institution in southern Ontario.
Plurilingualism in Higher Education: A Collaborative Initiative for the Implementation of Plurilingual Pedagogy in an English for Academic Purposes Program at a Canadian University
Little is known about how implementing pedagogy, that is linguistically and culturally inclusive, can take place in language programs. This article reports a researcher-instructor collaboration that aimed at implementing plurilingual practices, such as translanguaging, plurilingual identity, comparons nos langues, and intercomprehension over 4 months in an English for Academic Purposes (EAP) program at a university in Toronto, Canada. The article presents the process of implementation of the plurilingual tasks and proposes a framework for collaboration with four key elements. Implications for the implementation of plurilingualism in English language programs in higher education are discussed.
Policy Analysis of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategies in Canadian Universities - How far have we come?
This paper presents data collected through policy analysis of 50 strategic documents from 15 Canadian universities from 2011-2018. The findings suggest that equity, diversity and inclusion activities have become a policy priority attached to a variety of institutional action plans and performance reports. As a result, there has been an increase in institutional strategic activities including institutional political commitment, student and faculty recruitment with programmatic and research supports, accompanied by broader efforts to create supportive institutional climates. Inconsistencies emerged amongst how equity is defined in policy documents, resulting in either redistributive or inclusive practices in equity, diversity, and inclusion initiatives.

Funding and inclusion in higher education institutions for students with disabilities.
In this article, the funding mechanisms of selected developed and developing democratic countries are described in order to gain an insight into how such mechanisms enhance access, equal participation, retention, success and equality of outcome for students with disabilities (SWDs). A critical literature review of the sample countries' funding mechanisms governing SWDs in higher education and other relevant government documents; secondary academic literature on disability funding; online sources were analyzed using a theoretically derived directed qualitative content analysis.
Gender, Sexual Diversity and Professional Practice Learning: Findings from a Systematic Search and Review
Research shows that those who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans* and/or Queer (LGBTQ), experience direct and indirect discrimination in universities. This paper reports the findings from a systematic search and review on gender and sexual diversity in professional practice placements. Primary themes were identified and showed how students report feeling under-prepared for the realities of working with LGBTQ people in practice. There are examples of positive practices which can support LGBTQ students through navigating disclosure of their own identities, as well as enabling all students to act as advocates and allies for the LGBTQ service users and peers/colleagues that they will inevitably work with and alongside, throughout their careers.
International Comparisons of Inclusive Instruction among College Faculty in Spain, Canada, and the United States
In this study, we examined faculty attitudes toward disability-related topics and inclusive teaching practices, (based on the tenets of Universal Design), and their implementation of these practices using the Inclusive Teaching Strategies Inventory (ITSI). We examined responses from faculty in the United States, Spain, and Canada in order to better understand the phenomenon of inclusive teaching across international contexts. Implications for practice specifically related to disability services personnel and faculty outreach strategies are discussed.
Queer Eye on Inclusion: Understanding Lesbian and Gay Student and Instructor Experiences of Continuing Education
This article discusses the struggles and accomplishments of both lesbian and gay male faculty and students in continuing education (CE) in university settings. Six CE instructors and six CE students were recruited to participate in in-depth interviews from universities across western Canada. Using grounded theory for data analysis, two broad themes emerged: lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ ) content is excluded in orientation processes, and safety is a concerns in heteronormative organizational culture. Despite these drawbacks, study participants demonstrated strategies to minimize risk and find safety and support. Study findings suggest that CE review its work and learning structures to include queer-inclusive pedagogies and content.

Serving Diverse Students in Canadian Higher Education by C. Carney Strange (Editor); Donna Hardy Cox
ISBN: 9780773547506
Publication Date: 2016
This book presents new thinking about how education in general, and student services in particular, should be designed and delivered, Content focused on the best programs and practices in Canadian colleges and universities to improve the educational experiences of students who are Indigenous, people of colour, francophone, LGBTQQ, disabled, and adult learners, as well as international and first-generation students.
Teaching the Teacher: LGBTQ issues in teacher education by Cathy Brant; Lara Willox
ISBN: 9781641138314
Publication Date: 2020
The authors found that LGBTQ issues receive significantly less class time than other issues, especially race, and are, in fact, eight times more likely to actually be omitted from multicultural teacher educator courses. The aim of this book is to support teacher educators as they engage in the work of preparing pre-service teacher to work with and work for LGBTQ youth through explicit discussions of gender and sexuality.

Decolonization and Transformation of Higher Education for Sustainability: Integrating Indigenous Knowledge into Policy, Teaching, Research, and Practice
This article argues that institutions of higher education (IHEs) require a fundamental paradigm shift toward an Indigenous Knowledge (IK) model inclusive of Indigenous Peoples, perspectives, and values. This model acknowledges the sacred value of nature, the rights of non human species, and the power and potential of transformative learning via collaboration with Indigenous communities. Through four personal experiences from one IHE, we highlight challenges and opportunities to decolonize higher education across the domains of policy, research, teaching, and programs.

Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada by Sheila Cote-Meek (Editor); Taima Moeke-Pickering (Editor)
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781773381817
Publication Date: 2020-07-30
This expansive collection explores the complexities of decolonization and indigenization of post-secondary institutions. Seeking to advance critical scholarship on issues including the place of Indigenous epistemologies, knowledges, curriculum, and pedagogy, Decolonizing and Indigenizing Education in Canada aims to build space in the academy for Indigenous peoples and resistance and reconciliation. Written by academics from across Canada, the text reflects the critical importance of the discourse on truth and reconciliation in educational contexts and how these discourses are viewed in institutions across the country. T
Indigenous Identity Formation in Postsecondary Institutions: I Found Myself in the Most Unlikely Place by Barbara G. Barnes, Cora J. Voyageur
ISBN: 9781550598544
Publication Date: 2020
During their research, the authors followed 60 Indigenous students from a variety of backgrounds at six postsecondary institutions in western Canada, and they present their finding here. They explore how the students' experiences fit with conventional and Indigenous identity-formation theories, and they consider the impacts of colonization and the Indian Act. Based on the experiences of the students, the authors build an entirely new model of Indigenous identity formation in Canadian postsecondary institutions.
Indigenous Postgraduate Education by Karen Trimmer (Editor); Debra Hoven (Editor); Pigga Keskitalo (Editor)
ISBN: 9781648021091
Publication Date: 2020
This book focuses on Indigenous participation in postgraduate education and provides a valuable resource by giving voice to Indigenous postgraduate students who share stories of their experience, inspirations and difficulties in undertaking postgraduate study. This book will assist higher education providers to develop understanding of how Indigenous postgraduate students and researchers negotiate research cultures and agendas that permeate higher education from the past, to ensure the experience of postgraduate students is both rich in regard to data to be collected and culturally safe in approach.
Literatures, Communities, and Learning: Conversations with Indigenous Writers by Aubrey Jean Hanson
ISBN: 9781771124515
Publication Date: 2020
This book gathers nine conversations with Indigenous writers about the relationship between Indigenous literatures and learning, and how their writing relates to communities. Relevant, reflexive, and critical, these conversations explore the pressing topic of Indigenous writings and its importance to the well-being of Indigenous Peoples and to Canadian education. In their own ways, these writers are navigating the beautiful challenge of storying their communities within politically charged terrain. This book considers the pedagogical dimensions of stories, serving as an Indigenous literary and education project.
Troubling Truth and Reconciliation in Canadian Education by Sandra D. Styres (Editor); Arlo Kempf (Editor); Jan Hare (Foreword by)
ISBN: 9781772126006
Publication Date: 2022
Troubling Truth and Reconciliation in Canadian Education offers a series of critical perspectives concerning reconciliation and reconciliatory efforts between Canadian and Indigenous peoples. Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars address both theoretical and practical aspects of troubling reconciliation in education across various contexts with significant diversity of thought, approach, and socio-political location. Throughout, the work challenges mainstream reconciliation discourses.
Truth and Reconciliation in Canadian Schools by Pamela Rose Toulouse
Call Number: eBook
ISBN: 9781553797456
Publication Date: 2018-01-25
This book provides current information, personal insights, authentic resources, interactive strategies and lesson plans that support Indigenous and non-Indigenous learners in the classroom. This book is for all teachers that are looking for ways to respectfully infuse residential school history, treaty education, Indigenous contributions, First Nation/Métis/Inuit perspectives and sacred circle teachings into their subjects and courses. The author presents a culturally relevant and holistic approach that facilitates relationship building and promotes ways to engage in reconciliation activities.

Magnifying and healing colonial trauma in higher education: Persistent settler colonial dynamics at the Indigenizing university.
Based on interviews with 23 Indigenous faculty, students, staff, and community members, this paper explores their experiences at an Indigenizing university. Authors outline how encounters with ongoing colonialism and contradictions at an Indigenizing university both generated new pain and echoed existing historical trauma. This study calls attention to the settler colonial dynamics that often persist within North American colleges and universities in their efforts to target and recruit Indigenous students and how such institutions should support robust and culturally appropriate healing practices and resources that depart from default institutional understandings and operative processes.
More Than a Checklist: Meaningful Indigenous Inclusion in Higher Education
Indigenization is a movement centering Indigenous knowledges and ways of being within the academy, in essence transforming institutional initiatives, such as policy, curricular and co-curricular programs, and practices to support Indigenous success and empowerment. Drawing on research projects that span the last 10 years, this article celebrates the pockets of success within institutions and identifies areas of challenge to Indigenization that moves away from the tokenized checklist response, that merely tolerates Indigenous knowledge(s), to one where Indigenous knowledge(s) are embraced as part of the institutional fabric.

'It's a Lot of Homework for Me': Post-Secondary Teachers' Perception of International Students and Internationalization in Canada
Given the importance of teachers' beliefs to how they enact their practices, and especially in a country like Canada that takes pride on their multiculturalism policies, it is imperative to understand how professors perceive the cultural diversity they face daily in the classroom. In this phenomenological study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 professors at a Canadian university. Findings reveal how professors not only feel overwhelmed by this transforming scenario but also how their beliefs and experience pose a challenge to the process of internationalization itself.
Diversity without Race: How University Internationalization Strategies Discuss International Students
This article examines how a sample of 62 higher education institutions (incld. Canada), discuss international students in their official institutionalization strategies, focusing on how ideas of race and diversity are addressed. Authors find that institutional strategies connect international students to an abstract notion of diversity, using visual images to portray campus environments as inclusive of racial, ethnic and religious diversity. Yet, strategy documents rarely discuss race, racialization, or racism explicitly, despite the fact that most international students in all three countries are nonwhite. Moreover, in the few instances when race is discussed, racial injustice is externalized as a global issue and racial diversity is instrumentalized as a source of improving institutional reputation or diversity metrics. They argue that a first step to creating more inclusive and anti-racist campuses is to acknowledge international students' racial identities and experiences with racism in official discourses and strategies.
Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion on Canadian Universities: Where do international students fit in?
Internationalization and equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) are both strategic priorities at Canadian universities. However, they are underpinned by different emphases and rationales, and their goals and associated activities may be contradictory at times. To explore how the discourses and activities associated with these two projects align or conflict, this article examines how international students are, or are not, included in EDI projects at two of Canada’s largest English-speaking universities: the University of Toronto and the University of British Columbia. Our findings show that the discourses and activities associated with EDI and with international student recruitment have largely operated within organizational and discursive silos, representing a classic case of decoupling in the organizational studies literature.
From Enrolment Rates to Collaborative Knowledge Production: A Critique to the Internationalization of Higher Education in Canada
Despite many potential benefits of having a multicultural campus, internationalizing higher education requires more than the physical presence of international students. As stated on the literature, this process must value transnational knowledge as an asset to the educational experience, thus promoting collaborative knowledge production between teachers and students. Through the perspectives of 10 professors at a mid-sized western Canadian university, this critical phenomenological research offers an analysis of the present condition of higher education in Canada. This paper deconstructs some of the challenges of internationalization, in which graduates are to be recognized as active agents of circulation and production of knowledge and not just mere figures or passive recipients of information. Questions about the complexity of incorporating epistemic diversity in a meaningful way through internationalization are proposed.
Learning Opportunities: International Students and Lessons About Education, Immigration and Cultural Diversity On and Off the (Atlantic) Canadian Campus.
This paper explores Canada's accelerated expansion of international university enrollments from the perspective of 72 international students and graduates from 29 countries, who participated in semi-structured interviews conducted in the four provincial capitals of Canada's Atlantic region. Addressing the emerging campus diversity and incoming students' immigration potential, this research illustrates that students encounter campus dynamics and immigration policy landscapes shaped by long-spanning histories of race and ethnic relations, by current multi-scalar iterations of economic development, and by regional reorganizations of immigration and higher education in Canada. In turn, the ways students experience and negotiate their positions within these contexts is directed by multigenerational projects of geographic and social mobility, to include key lessons learned about the possibility of long-term settlement in Canada. Set in less populous urban centers in Canada's Atlantic provinces, the outcomes reported here also provide an opportunity to explore international students' experiences outside Canada's large metropolitan areas and more predictable sites of education internationalization
Strategic Approaches to Glocalising Curriculum Practice: Responding to Faculty Development Needs and Circumstances in Diverse University Contexts
Policy documents espousing inclusion and the strategic institutional importance of local and global engagement, for example, are positive steps to foster institutional change. However, in practice, ad-hoc curricula renewal initiatives aimed at facilitating cultural diversity tend to be far less strategic, and with scant attention to research-informed and evidence-based scholarship. This paper attempts to address these complex challenges and provides insights toward a scholarly approach to glocalising curriculum practice for faculty development in multinational settings. In this context, data suggests that strategic institutional supports are key to glocalising curriculum practices. Further, a glocalised curriculum is inherently situated; socially and culturally mediated; and, is responsive to the professional learning needs and circumstances of educational leaders in diverse institutional contexts.

Strengthening Canada’s Research Capacity: The Gender Dimension The Expert Panel on Women in University Research
This report was initiated by the Minister of Industry as a result of the paucity of women represented in the 2008 Canada Excellence Research Chairs (CERC) program. The results of the 2010 Dowdeswell et al. Report to the Minister of Industry of the Ad Hoc Panel on Canada Excellence Research Chair (CERC) Gender Issues, provided further impetus for this assessment.
Underrepresented & Underpaid Diversity & Equity Among Canada’s Post-Secondary EducationTeachers
While post-secondary institutions are publicly committed to equity and diversity, progress has been slow in achieving employment and wage equity for academic staff. This report provides a snapshot of academic staff representation and income in Canada’s universities and colleges in 2016, noting in particular changes in the university sector over the last decade.
Policy Analysis of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Strategies in Canadian Universities – How Far Have We Come?
Institutional efforts to address equity, diversity and inclusion in educational settings have been often met with critical accounts pointing towards attempts that have reinforced inequity. A new wave of recent developments among Canadian universities is providing a different account of universities’ involvement in addressing the needs of equity-seeking students.
This paper presents data collected through policy analysis of 50 strategic documents from 15 Canadian universities from 2011-2018.
Are gender gaps due to evaluations of the applicant or the science? A natural experiment at a national funding agency
Across countries and disciplines, studies show male researchers receive more research funding than
their female peers. Because most studies have been observational, it is unclear whether imbalances stem from evaluations of female research investigators or of their proposed research. In 2014, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research created a natural experiment by dividing investigator-initiated funding applications into two new grant programmes: one with and one without an explicit review focus on the calibre of the principal investigator.

EDI & B in Open Educational Resources (OER)

The high cost of commercial textbooks is challenging for many students. These issues have higher impacts on certain student populations, which is one of the reasons that people view open OER as a social justice issue.

This curated listing provides a good starting point to discover more about the creation and use of OER and how they can positively impact EDI & B in higher education.

Please consider checking out the library's OERs at Georgian for further information.

Reference:

From: SpringerLink. (2022). Open educational resources: expanding equity or reflecting and furthering inequities? https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-020-09840-y#Sec2

OER & Beyond (Accessibility in Open Educational Resources is Resilience)
This content is hosted by the Journal of Open Educational Resources In Higher Education. This article states that accessibility is for everyone. Designing (OERs) with accessibility in mind is a gift of resiliency.
OER & Beyond (Interrogating and Supplementing OER Through a Decolonized Lens)
This article from the Journal of Open Educational Resources in Higher Education states that while the affordability of OER can increase accessibility for marginalized learners, implementing OER in the classroom that are heavily colonized and center a white patriarchal epistemology does nothing to increase or foster equity for marginalized learners. It merely gives marginalized students increased access to an educational environment that continues to systemically devalue them.
The OER Starter Kit (Centering Diversity and Inclusion)
This starter kit has been created to provide instructors with an introduction to the use and creation of open educational resources (OER). The text is broken into five sections: Getting Started, Copyright, Finding OER, Teaching with OER, and Creating OER. Although some chapters contain more advanced content, the starter kit is primarily intended for users who are entirely new to Open Education. [Version 1.1. Revised September 5th, 2019.]
Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice
Using Open Educational Resources to Promote Social Justice explores the opportunities and challenges of moving the discussion about open educational resources (OER) beyond affordability to address structural inequities found throughout academia and scholarly publishing. OER have the potential to celebrate research done by marginalized populations in the context of their own communities, to amplify the voices of those who have the knowledge but have been excluded from formal prestige networks, and to engage students as co-creators of learning content that is relevant and respectful of their cultural contexts.

Suggested Search Strategies

There are many interrelated concepts within EDI & B in higher education including marginalized students, underrepresented faculty and staff, wage and gender inequity, workplace policies and systemic structures of discrimination.

To locate the most current information from key postsecondary associations, academic institutions, stakeholders and government policies, it's recommended to search the Internet.

While there are many keywords to locate EDI & B information, here are some which serve as a starting point:

Human rights and equity
Marginalized, racialized or underrepresented students
Underrepresented faculty or staff
Staff diversity
Women in research
Gender equality
Equity policies
Wage gaps
Gender bias
Systemic racism
Inclusive research and innovation
Cultural awareness or cultural diversity
Anti-racism
Internationalization
Unconscious or implicit bias