IP Blog 2: Faith, Religion, and Belief

This blog reflects on how to support students in sharing their faith and identity within my Computer Science lecturing, drawing on course readings and recent teaching experiences.

Reflecting on Literature

In workshop 2A/2B, we reflected on what constitutes as faith. McKeown and Dunn’s  (2021) point that ethical, but not health, veganism is a philosophical belief broadened my understanding of faith beyond religion. Ramadan’s (2022) report on the challenges of Muslim Women Academics (MWA) also shed light on issues with micro-aggressions and tokenism in intersectional contexts. I was particularly struck by how some MWA would remove their hijabs to progress their careers.  The theme across these papers was that there is evident discrimination on people’s beliefs that, through the lens of the social model of disability (Oliver, 2013), are enabled through governance and institutional practice.

However, Wong et al.‘s (2021) study on students’ perception of academics made a point which resonated most with me and my practice. They noted that the STEM fields’ focus on “hard facts” and “objectivity” can obscure unconscious bias, essentially training computer scientists to overlook social influences. Indeed, HCI research has not fully engaged with faith, religion and spirituality (Rifat et al., 2022; Wolf, Friedrich and Hurtienne, 2024), despite diverse understandings of how people’s consumption and perception of technology being an asset to the field (Ibtasam, 2021).  

Teaching Context: A Recent Example

Reflecting on the literature above, I postulate that the objective epistemic stance dominating Computer Science hinders students’ confidence in bringing forth their lived experiences. We recently had a guest lecturer who discussed how, in the future, people might have computer chips placed into their brains, to manipulate their reality. They asked the class for their perspective on this. One student, in a rare moment of vulnerability, told the speaker that they were Muslim and objected to the idea that computer scientists should be interfering with God’s creation. This was a fantastic, critical, personal insight from the student, based on their lifestyle, norms and values. This student rarely brings forth this perspective in other classes, nor their reflective writing blogs (which directly ask for personal perspectives).  

So what?

To me, bringing forth people’s diverse perspectives seems key to an inclusive teaching environment – where everyone’s intersectional identities are welcome and foreground their critical thinking on the ideas introduced. An open question is how to foster students’ confidence in bringing forth their personal perspective – particularly, in a discipline which emphasises objectivity, not plurality.

One suggestion from in-class discussion was to offer alternative ways for students to give feedback. However, in my experience, when I have offered this option, it is still only the most active students who engage.

Recently, I have found activities which dismantle the student-teacher hierarchy to be useful in giving students’ confidence in being who they are. I’ve had lunch with students and chatted with them at events. Since then, the quieter students have been more forthcoming with their own ideas and perspectives – drawn from their lived experience – in their assignments and classes. Perhaps, there is opportunity for more inclusive, informal events, that improve students’ comfort around me and their peers. Thus, opening them up to giving their viewpoints without the pretense of the disciplines’, arguably unfriendly, ‘hard science’ epistemology.

These are early thoughts, but I aim to better explore how to encourage students’ diverse perspectives – including faith, race, and culture – throughout the module.

References

Ibtasam, S. (2021) ‘For God’s sake! Considering Religious Beliefs in HCI Research : A Case of Islamic HCI’, in Extended Abstracts of the 2021 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (CHI EA ’21). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3411763.3450383.

McKeown, P. and Dunn, R.A. (2021) ‘A “Life-Style Choice” or a Philosophical Belief?: The Argument for Veganism and Vegetarianism to be a Protected Philosophical Belief and the Position in England and Wales’, Liverpool Law Review, 42(2), pp. 207–241. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10991-020-09273-w.

Oliver, M. (2013) ‘The social model of disability: thirty years on’, Disability & Society, 28(7), pp. 1024–1026. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2013.818773.

Ramadan, I. (2022) ‘When faith intersects with gender: the challenges and successes in the experiences of Muslim women academics’, Gender and Education, 34(1), pp. 33–48. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2021.1893664.

Rifat, M.R. et al. (2022) ‘Integrating Religion, Faith, and Spirituality in HCI’, in Extended Abstracts of the 2022 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (CHI EA ’22). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3491101.3503705.

Wolf, S., Friedrich, P. and Hurtienne, J. (2024) ‘Still Not a Lot of Research? Re-Examining HCI Research on Religion and Spirituality’, in Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery (CHI EA ’24). Available at: https://doi.org/10.1145/3613905.3651058.

Wong, B. et al. (2021) ‘Is race still relevant? Student perceptions and experiences of racism in higher education’, Cambridge Journal of Education, 51(3), pp. 359–375. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764X.2020.1831441.