How to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in Educational Settings: Behavior Change, Climate Surveys, and Effective Pro-Diversity Initiatives

Abstract

We review recent developments in the literature on diversity and inclusion in higher education settings. Diversity interventions increasingly focus on changing behaviors rather than mental constructs such as bias or attitudes. Additionally, there is now a greater emphasis on the evaluation of initiatives aimed at creating an inclusive climate. When trying to design an intervention to change behavior, it is advised to focus on a segment of the population (the “target audience”), to try to get people to adopt a small number of specific new behaviors (the “target behaviors”), and to address in the intervention the factors that affect the likelihood that members of the target audience will engage in the new target behaviors (the “barriers and benefits”). We report our recent work developing a climate survey that allows researchers and practitioners to identify these elements in a particular department or college. We then describe recent inclusion initiatives that have been shown to be effective in rigorous empirical studies. Taken together this paper shows that by implementing techniques based on research in the behavioral sciences it is possible to increase the sense of belonging, the success, and the graduation rate of minority students in STEM.

Student voice in higher education diversity policies: A systematic review

“…• Enhance knowledge and skills of staff members to better meet the needs of diverse student groups (Devlin and O'Shea, 2011). Most unawareness can be explained through negative mental constructs or attitudes of students or staff members being unaware of the needs of diverse student groups, a resistance to behavior change, non-effective diversity trainings and non-effective communication of policies (Moreu et al, 2021). • Evaluate existing interventions in order to improve practices and substructures, which enhance the interaction between minority and majority student populations.…”

Time to act: A rubric-based approach for institutionalizing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion

“…Indeed, doing so is a recipe for ensuring JEDI initiatives remain marginalized rather than institutionalized. Moreover, because JEDI is a continual work in progress and not a “once-and-done” enterprise, goals should be continually adjusted to reflect evolving social awareness and new opportunities [28].…”

Evidence-based strategies for creating age-inclusive campuses.

“…Inclusion initiatives in higher education have been adept at attending to the perspectives of key stakeholders, particularly through the use of climate surveys, which can provide an accurate reading of respondents’ perceptions of the campus culture and suggest concrete steps for initiatives to be implemented (Lombardi et al, 2011; Marchiondo et al, 2023). Focus groups, too, have been useful for gathering perspectives about inclusivity from underrepresented members of the campus community, especially with the aim to raise awareness among other stakeholder groups (Gibson et al, 2016; Haslerig et al, 2013; Moreu et al, 2021; Verbree et al, 2023). While these methods have proven consistently useful for addressing the perspectives of specific groups, vital to age inclusion is the ability to involve the participation of all campus community members in the process of addressing ageism and inclusivity.…”