Category Archives: DEI-BR

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The authors of a study titled “Effective Communication About Pregnancy, Birth, Lactation, Breastfeeding and Newborn Care: The Importance of Sexed Language”, published in Frontiers in Global Women’s Health, warn against the potential consequences of “desexed language”. They refer to an edition of The Lancet medical journal which highlighted an …

“Replacing “mothers” with “birthing people”: is inclusive language around female reproduction going too far?”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The 2021 edition of the ATP EdTech and Computational Psychometrics Summit (ECPS) took place virtually on December 8th and 9th, 2021. On December 8, in the course of a session titled “Developing Equitable and Fair Learning Products: A Discussion of Ethical AI in EdTech”, leaders …

“Developing Equitable and Fair Learning Products: A Discussion of Ethical AI in EdTech at the ATP EdTech and Computational Psychometrics Summit”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village On the 26th of October Helena Dalli, the EU Commissioner for Equality, proudly announced the launch of “EU Commission Guidelines for Inclusive Communication”. The purpose of the document was to set common standards for inclusive communication and to provide practical examples and advice to all …

“EU Commission internal guidelines for inclusive communication withdrawn over widespread protests”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Cultures and societies are dynamic and so is awareness of social justice issues. Recent global movements such as #metoo and #blm have shone a light on many of the inequities in the world and highlighted the need to work towards a more inclusive society. Awareness …

“Why you should include DEI-BR filters in your multilingual tests, assessments and surveys — and how cApStAn can support you”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Recent social justice movements across the world have raised awareness, on an unprecented level, of the inequities in our society, and have set off a global cultural debate around the themes of diversity, equity and inclusion and bias reduction (DEI-BR). During one of the sessions …

“Why diversity, equity and inclusion and bias reduction are important in credentialling: a report from the ICE 2021 conference”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Socioeconomic status (SES) is a variable that the vast majority of the international large-scale assessments (ILSAs) on student achievement derive from questions about parental occupation, parent’s level of education and their income bracket (or proxy indicators of household income). The student SES information is often …

“A new and more equitable approach to measuring socioeconomic status in international large-scale assessments on student achievement”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The last time film subtitles made quite a buzz was in 2020, when South Korean director Bong Joon-ho’s film “Parasite” won the Oscar for Best Picture. Parasite’s win in this category came as a surprise and sparked lively discussions as the film was in its …

“Subtitles rarely make headlines but those of the South Korean series “Squid Game” are breaking the internet”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village This year’s edition of the E-ATP conference was a virtual yet vibrant event, where attendees discussed all the facets of disruption in the testing industry due to COVID-19. We attended E-ATP in Dublin (2015), Lisbon (2016), Noordwijk (2017), Athens (2018) and Madrid (2019). cApStAn’s involvement …

“Discussing accessibility, fairness and equity of tests at E-ATP 2021 as we emerge from COVID-19”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village This year’s (virtual) edition of the E-ATP conference, of which cApStAn is a proud sponsor, focussed on the challenges to the testing industry brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, and how these were met. These include, inter alia, how to address the shift to technology-based …

““Item bias as a consequence of hidden social makers in assessment content”. A coffee conversation with cApStAn co-founder Steve Dept at E-ATP 2021”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village The past few years have seen increased attention drawn to issues of systemic discrimination. Racism, sexism, ableism, classism, homophobia, transphobia … are all being called out as socially, ethically, and politically unacceptable. “But in what appears to also be a recent development, we’re seeing the …

“Is ageism the last “acceptable” bias? High time that it receive the same standard of scrutiny as other forms of discrimination, says a recent UN report”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village Why are women still underrepresented in many high-profile fields like finance and STEM? The reasons behind this are complex and may include gaps in education, lingering gender stereotypes, lack of role models, and concerns over work-life balance. Findings from a recent study titled “Decoding bias: …

“Recent research shows that the language used in job postings may be holding women back from work”

by Pisana Ferrari – cApStAn Ambassador to the Global Village A recent Google AI blog post on the topic of gender bias in machine translation reports an ambitious but sensible endeavour: the creation of a dataset based on translated Wikipedia biographies. The aim of this dataset is to analyze common gender errors in machine translation. …

“Google AI Introduces A Dataset for Studying Gender Bias in Machine Translation”