The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation & Resources
Hosted by Dr. Lisa Hassler, The Brighter Side of Education: Research, Innovation, & Resources is a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) accredited podcast that offers innovative solutions to educational challenges. We bring together research, expert insights, and practical resources to help teachers and parents tackle everything from classroom management to learning differences. Every episode focuses on turning common education challenges into opportunities for growth. Whether you're a teacher looking for fresh ideas or a parent wanting to better support your child's learning, we've got actionable strategies you can use right away.
The podcast's music was created by Brandon Picciolini from The Lonesome Family Band. You can explore more of his work on Instagram.
Curriculum doesn’t start in the classroom—it starts in the knowledge system: the people, institutions, and practices that produce and disseminate research. Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto, a Tom and Marie Patton Professor and School Chair from the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech, explains how publishing and citation practices flow into standards and textbooks.
Dr. Sugimoto highlights the systemic barriers faced by women and underrepresented minorities in academia and how these barriers affect what is taught in classrooms. The discussion also covers the need to redefine success in academia and the importance of inclusive curricula that reflect diverse perspectives. Finally, Dr. Sugimoto encourages educators to foster inquiry-based learning by shifting the focus from what students learn to the questions they ask.
Takeaways
A knowledge system is the ecosystem in which knowledge is made.
The lack of women and minorities in academia affects knowledge production.
Representation in science influences girls' interest in STEM fields.
Words used by educators can significantly impact students' self-perception.
Success metrics in academia often exclude diverse perspectives.
Diversity in research leads to more comprehensive knowledge.
AI-generated materials can perpetuate stereotypes.
Educators should recognize biases in the materials they use.
Encouraging questions fosters a sense of inquiry in students.
Education is influenced by broader societal knowledge systems.
💡 This episode is CPD accredited! Educators can now earn Continuing Professional Development (CPD) minutes by listening. To claim your certificate:
If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share, email me at lisa@drlisahassler.com or visit www.drlisahassler.com. Subscribe, tell a friend, and consider becoming a supporter by clicking the link: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2048018/support.
The music in this podcast was written and performed by Brandon Picciolini of the Lonesome Family Band. Visit and follow him on Instagram.
When we think about improving education , we often think about classroom strategies , technology or testing . But what if the story begins long before the lesson plan is even written ? What if the biggest influence on what we teach starts with who gets to create the knowledge ? Welcome to the brighter side of education , research , innovation and resources . I'm your host , dr Lisa Hassler , here to enlighten and brighten the classrooms in America through focused conversation on important topics in education . In each episode I discuss problems we as teachers and parents are facing and what people are doing in their communities to fix it . What are the variables and how can we duplicate it to maximize student outcomes ?
Dr. Lisa Hassler
Every curriculum , whether in elementary school , high school or at a university , is built on published knowledge . The research we include , the voices we cite and the discoveries we teach all reflect choices made far up the stream in academia . But not everybody has an equal chance to be heard in those systems . Studies show that women and scholars from less representative backgrounds are often published less , cited less and funded less . These patterns don't just affect the researchers . They influence what ends up in the classrooms and our training programs .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
Today's guest , Dr . Cassidy Sugimoto , helps us understand how these knowledge systems work and how we can make them more inclusive and representative . She is the Tom and Marie Patton Professor and School Chair in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology . A leading expert in knowledge systems , her research focuses on how knowledge is produced , shared and supported , with a focus on inclusion and accessibility . Formerly a professor at Indiana University and a program director at the National Science Foundation , dr Sugimoto's groundbreaking work is transforming the landscape of academia and research . Good morning , dr Cassidy Sugimoto , and welcome to the show . Thanks for having me . Just to start us off , can you explain what a knowledge system is and why it matters in the world of education ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
Absolutely A knowledge system is the ecosystem in which knowledge is made , so it's composed of scholars and scholarly institutions , as well as the practices that guide how knowledge is produced , supported and disseminated . The practices that guide how knowledge is produced , supported and disseminated . Everything someone learns in school , whether grade school , college or graduate school , is a product of this knowledge system . All the content we learn , all the teachers we learn from , even the practices that we follow , like the scientific method , come out of this system .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
So when you think about decisions that are made in academia , like who gets published and cited and how they end up shaping
what students are learning in the classrooms , how are those decisions made ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
It's a great question , and so when we think about who gets to produce science , it has massive ramifications on what we learn in the classroom and how students feel about themselves as learners as well . So the lack of women and other underrepresented minorities has incredibly strong impacts upon what knowledge is generated and therefore the type of knowledge that goes into instruction . So , for example , women are 47% more likely to be seriously injured in a car crash . Now , why is this ? It wasn't until the early 2000s that a female-typed crash dummy was introduced , and she was just a scaled down version of a male crash dummy , and she was placed at 108 pounds and only four foot and 11 inches tall . Now , I don't know about you , but I don't meet those specifications , and 95% of women in the United States do not meet those specifications . So we weren't testing cars for how women actually sat in them , and the crash dummy was only placed in the passenger seat . So if a woman was outside of those specifications , or driving the car , or driving the car while pregnant , it wasn't made to support them , and one of the arguments for this is that there are very few women engineers .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
This is one of the fields with the lowest representation of women . Therefore , women's issues aren't at the forefront of research and design , and we see similar things in biomedicine . The lack of sex analysis and pharmaceutical testing has led to significant adverse effects for women . So , simply put , the lack of women and other underrepresented minorities in academia has immediate and adverse effects on the population . Supporting women and other populations brings this breadth of knowledge that improves the knowledge that's produced and makes it representative of our needs and our issues as a population , and all of that has ramifications down the line . When we're not making knowledge that's representative , we're not making products that are representative , we're not creating an environment that's representative . All of that changes what we're learning in the school system and who in the school system grows up to be a scientist .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
So you have a book , equity for Women in Science and you detail how those systematic barriers affect women's recognition in research . How does this lack of visibility influence what students see in their educational content and then how they see themselves reflected in science ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
Women have faced barriers to participation in science and , as we talked about before , this affects how younger girls think about themselves as scientists and the science that they see . So , for example , there are studies showing the strong relationship between the number of professional female scientists in a community and the
likelihood that girls will go into STEM . And this doesn't necessarily mean that it is their mother or their aunt that's in the community , but just seeing parents of other children who are female scientists increases the likelihood that they pursue those fields . Furthermore , we see that their perception of women as scientists affects their own performance .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
So there was a study done where they gathered school-age girls together who were Asian and they gave them two different conditions and these girls were equally good at math across the board , but they split them into two groups and in one room they went in and they reminded them that they were Asian a stereotype that tends to have the advantage of the perception that they're good at math and in the other room they reminded them that they were girls before they took the test . Those reminded that they were girls scored significantly lower on their math test . Now these should have performed the same . These were girls who had historically performed the same . But just priming them that way , saying you're part of a population that's good at math , you're part of a population that's bad at math , change their performance , and so this shows how that mere underrepresentation of women changes how they perceive of themselves , how they actually perform , and then the likelihood that they'll pursue careers in science .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
Wow , when you think about how powerful words are to our mental framework and how we perform , given the expectations in front of us . You've advocated for research , for rethinking how we define success in academia . How could that change the kinds of knowledge and perspectives that are included then in curriculum and instruction ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
I'll answer that , but I want to go back to something you just said , because I think it's so critically important that those words right , the words that we use around children , how much that shapes their trajectory and their perception of their ability to pursue science . And that's what makes educators so critically important . The way that they talk to children , the way that they present these ideas
to children , has huge effects and some of it's even just small changing Instead of saying someone is good at math or bad at math , trying to recognize that they're working hard at math , right , changing around that perception . So there was this really interesting study that looked at the degree to which people thought something was an innate ability versus something they could work hard to do . And so things like math and philosophy were just things you were born with it .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
And too often children are told things like that , like wow , you are really good at that , that is something you're innately good at , and so children not told that then think well , then I'm not good at it and you just have to be born with it . You have to be born with some innate math ability or else you don't have it . But things like social work or education , those are things that if you work hard , you can do those , and so we see this differentiation along gender lines in things that people think take an innate talent and things that people think are things you can work hard . And it's all in that way that teachers , educators , parents are talking to children about these different qualities rather than assuming that all fields of knowledge are things that if you work hard , you can do them , and so it's that shifting , I think , is really important there .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
A lot of times , I think , as parents and as educators , when you look at a child , you're trying to find their gifts right , like what are you really interested in , and you want to be able to support that interest . Or what are you really interested in and you want to be able to support that interest ? Or or what are you innately good at , and you want to be able to support that , because maybe that is their strength . And then that same way we could be affecting the outcome based on just something simple , as we think we're doing a great thing by saying you're really good at this . Also , I've heard teachers where they say I know this is really boring , but we have to do it Right . We're just going to do this little thing and then we're going to be able to move on to something fun .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
And in those ways we're also harming the potential of the kids in their class , exactly , and we see those kinds of splits happen around puberty for girls is that they'll be outperforming boys in many subjects , and then the subjects that you say this is boring or it's not cool , right , right at that identity shift when you're having those moments of trying to establish yourself and you want to be cool . So therefore doing something that's not cool becomes hard . We see girls drop out of chess clubs at the same rates , right , any of those things that start to get a stigma associated with it . And teachers contribute to this by saying something is boring or saying , okay , now we're going to do something fun , right . And so those kinds of things have really very critical priming effects .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
And I think to your point too about recognizing strengths . We all have path dependencies . I can only recognize the strengths of attributes I know . So you see a lot of families where all the children are doctors and the parents were doctors and the grandparents were doctors , because they can say you would be good at med school , because I've been through med school . But if you don't have a physicist in the family , then recognizing that your kid might actually do really well in physics is going to be harder , right ? So it's all of those things when we're continually recognizing our own strengths in our children rather than giving them that broader array of opportunities and pathways that we may not be familiar with ourselves .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
You were talking about , like redefining success in academia . What would that look like ? You know what is success in academia , and then how do you redefine ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
it . So success metrics in academia are based around assumptions of an ideal scientist . That's completely at odds with the contemporary scholar . It assumes an all-consuming vocation where you work constantly , you have no child care or elder care responsibilities , you can travel as much as you want , and this perpetuates a system in which scientists tend to be white men from privileged backgrounds , and this has an effect on the perspectives that are included in research and therefore instruction . And it also perpetuates the perspective of who can be a scholar , leaving out hosts of the population , women , underrepresented minorities , those with physical disabilities , those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds , and this creates that vicious cycle in that , by not recruiting a diverse population , our knowledge base doesn't broaden .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
Absolutely , and then how does that change then the type of curriculum that is included in our instruction ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
Then we keep having that same perspective . Right , the questions that we ask don't change . We still tend to ask questions that are relevant to that population , and that's a natural thing to do . Right , you're bringing questions from your own perspective and you're asking those . But if you've never experienced poverty , you may not ask questions about poverty . If you are not a mother , you may not be asking questions about motherhood , and we see this throughout biomedical research . Women tend to ask more questions about the female body . Right now , our research on women's health is far beyond men's health , right behind men's health . So we're not asking the questions that are necessary to make women as healthy , because women aren't in the biomedical sciences to the degree that men have been historically , and so it's that kind of thing where we're just not generating knowledge that's relevant and reflects everyone's lived experience , because the scientific workforce is so skewed towards particular populations .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
Yeah , I definitely can see how that happens when you think about why there are things like advisory boards or committees . It's all about gaining the perspectives of different people so that you're going to be able to have a better understanding of the product or of the process , and so gaining perspective is actually a good thing , and it's something that we should be striving for , because then we understand the material and the effects . So now I'm looking at curriculum . Have you ever seen some examples of how that changing knowledge is supported or evaluated and it's made a difference in the educational space ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
Absolutely .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
I think that we see this even in our history curriculum and there have been many conversations around this in the K-12 space of how we're representing historical events and the degree to which those are inclusive of many different perspectives .
Keen example on here they make up less than 1% of doctoral students in academes .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
The amount of research that we're producing coming from that perspective , that's considering that perspective , that's looking at evidence and sources from that perspective is very , very limited , and you can see that throughout our history textbooks across the nation .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
Right , we do not represent that perspective to the degree that we probably should , and so it's those kinds of things that as we diversify the scientific workforce , we create new knowledge , we generate better sources , more robust , more inclusive sources , and then it takes time before that comes down and hits our textbooks in our history classroom , in our social studies classroom . But we see that happening slowly over time with any race , population , ethnicity . As we start to just change who gets to ask the questions , we start to question those textbooks , we question the curriculum in ways that makes it more robust , right , and I think sometimes people see any movements towards inclusivity as being about justice . It's not necessarily about justice . It's about scientific rigor . It's about historical rigor . It's not necessarily about justice . It's about scientific rigor . It's about historical rigor . It's providing accurate representations of what happened in the past and the life in which we're living right now .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
From a curriculum standpoint , what steps can educators take to bring more diverse and representative voices into the materials that they use ?
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
We are doing a study right now examining the use of large language models , or what most people would call AI , in generating prompts , and this is a very common use of AI in the K-12 educators . They will say create a story for this right . I want to create a prompt , I want to create a scenario for my students . So , as you're making materials every day , you're often doing prompt generation . So we asked a number of the leading AI systems to generate prompts of students in the classroom , and in one element , we do this in a neutral way .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
Tell us a story about a student studying biology . In another , we introduce a power hierarchy . For example , tell me a story of a struggling student and a student who's doing well , who helps them . And what we find in the response to these prompts that is , the stories generated by AI is that they overwhelmingly present white female students as the strong students and names associated with non-white races and ethnicities as struggling students , and it's the most striking results I've ever seen in all of my research . And this has strong potentials for harm . If students are presented with material day after day that replicates stereotypes about the performance of their race or gender , this has adverse effects on their own performance and therefore it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy . Educators must take care to recognize these biases , from the AI they use to create course materials to the readings that they assign . It makes a difference when students see themselves represented in the materials that are used .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
And finally , what's one thing that educators , school leaders or parents can do to help create a more complete and representative learning experience for their students .
Dr. Cassidy Sugimoto
Every year , our school , the Jimmy and Rosalind Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech , hosts a conference on science and innovation policy , and one of our keynote speakers years ago was Rush Holt a conference on science and innovation policy , and one of our keynote speakers years ago was Rush Holt , a physicist who served in the US House of Representatives and then led the American Association for the Advancement of Scholars , and in his talk he made one recommendation that has really stuck with me as a parent and as an educator . He said when your children come home from school each day , don't ask them what they learned . Ask them them what they learned .
Ask them what questions they asked . And this is a fundamental shift . It teaches children that science is not static , that we are constantly learning more about the world around us , and it teaches them that they can be the one asking the questions , they can be a part of that system of generating new knowledge , that they too can be scientists , and that's the only way towards a robust knowledge system .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
That's very good advice . I really like that Well . Thank you so much . It has been a real privilege to be able to speak with you today . You've helped us see how education isn't just shaped by what happens in the classroom , but also by the larger systems that decide what published knowledge we see that is recognized and shared . Thank you so much for connecting those dots between research and policy and what happens in the classroom . Thank you so much for having me . Today's conversation reminds us that what we teach is shaped long before it reaches the classroom . Paying attention to where knowledge comes from is the first step towards greater understanding and inclusion .
Dr. Lisa Hassler
If you have a story about what's working in your schools that you'd like to share , you can email me at lisa at drlisahasslercom , or visit my website at wwwdrlisahasslercom and send me a message . If you like this podcast , subscribe and tell a friend . The more people that know , the bigger impact it will have . And if you find value to the content in this podcast , consider becoming a supporter by clicking on the supporter link in the show notes . It is the mission of this podcast to shine light on the good in education so that it spreads , affecting positive change . So let's keep working together to find solutions that focus on our children's success .
