The Rooney Rule

[Imari]

When discussing tasks with a person of 5 one was more likely to find that a female can list tasks/outcomes and describe a framework for their attainment than one was with a male - and by quite some margin.

You know what most people call this? Planning.

It's not multitasking, because no task is being undertaking.

Multitasking is doing more than one thing "simultaneously", with that in quotes because you and I both know that the simultaneity thing is a bit of an illusion and it's merely quick task switching going on. Listing tasks and outcomes does not require a person to do more than one task at once.

If you've got a different definition of multitasking then write it out for me so that we can be on the same page.

Research shows that females switch between these tasks more easily than men - in most situations.

You'll have no difficulty quoting this research then, given that I quoted you articles summarising papers that very much did not say that.

I have my own experience, but I'm not relying on it to make my case. You seem to be dependent on me accepting that you are an independent and conscientious observer with no previous biases, who has accurately observed and analysed the data before him.

Come on, man. You may be right, but give me more to go on than your word.

 

[TenEightyOne]

Come on, man. You may be right, but give me more to go on than your word.

My bad, I started annotating (can't find the works open-published) and then forgot

The wiki page has some good links. The multitasking (females 'better' than boys) is by Rebecca Adlington and Keith Laws in "Methods for Modularity of Mind", 2010. I've read of Chinese research showing men perform better in certain "spatial" tasks but am still looking for source; I included that information for balance.

 

[Imari]

Yeah, I know. Finding actual sources that aren't behind a paywall these days is damn near impossible. Trawling off the wiki is about as good as it gets, and it's where I got my links too.


Interesting study, although their findings are better summarised as "females are better at multitasking some specific tasks, other tasks they're even as far as we can tell". And they note in their Limitations section that there are studies that have found no appreciable difference, and also at least one study that has found that men perform better, although it was again a different task to those that they were using. It feels a lot like they're trying pretty hard to make their conclusion more bombastic than it actually is.

Reading this stuff says to me that women may have an advantage multitasking some things, and men may have an advantage multitasking others, and there are yet more things that neither group has a real advantage on.

You seem to find use in the concept that girls are better at multitasking than boys. When teaching, anything that works is good. Perhaps all the tasks that you use regularly fall into the "girls are better at" pool.

I'm still pretty dubious about stating that women have an advantage in general, although it is interesting to know that genders have advantages in different types of tasks.

http://download.springer.com/static...978_b20fd31c42b35e2d60cadf3e756c16c4&ext=.pdf

This was somewhat interesting in that in a way it's the reverse of the one you presented. I'm not really sure that the people researching this topic quite know how they're approaching it, it feels like a "throw it all on the wall and see what sticks" approach. Hence the somewhat conflicting results as everyone does their experiment in a different way and gets a different result.

 

[TenEightyOne]

@Imari, I missed the earlier part of your comment ('planning'). You're quite right, that isn't part of operationally multitasking. However, it reinforces the observation made in practice. I wasn't saying that before every single task I spoke to each child to find out how they'd planned...but my observation in such discussions has reinforced the idea that females are more likely to create a multi-pronged plan of action in addition to being more likely to be able to implement one.

And I'm not saying that one method or approach is better than another or that multitaskers have an advantage. There are only outcomes (and Every Child Matters). As you know yourself the best teaching leads a person to discover their own pathways in addition to their own outcomes making uses of each person's abilities and potential. That's why I was always careful (as careful as one can be) to base teaching on live observations rather than preconceived assessment (like what the old days was).

We should get back to talking about race... but in the meantime here are some tests regarding implicit concepts that might interest you and others.

 

[Liquid]

Just as an update to this.

Bramble & Dyer Don't Want Rule

Ipswich Town coaches (BrE: members of staff who exclusively deal with training) Kieron Dyer and Titus Bramble, both black, have slammed the touted introduction of a Rooney Rule into English football on the back of fresh calls for 20% black and ethnic minority coaches by 2020.

In a detailed interview with The Daily Telegraph, Bramble intimates how such a rule would be patronising:

I think it’s disgraceful that someone might be shortlisted for the job just because of their skin colour. You could say it’s just as bad being given a job because of your skin colour as it is not being given a job. My skin colour certainly wasn’t a problem for Ipswich at any stage, either as a player or a coach. I think they have employed me because of what I’ve achieved in my career as a player.

Dyer, who has stated his ambitions to move into a management (head coach) position in future, also spoke about such a rule's patronising nature:

I want to be interviewed because the chairman wants to interview me. I don’t want to be interviewed because it’s filling a quota. I don’t want to be on a shortlist because football clubs are told I have to be because I’m black. I don’t agree with the Rooney Rule either. That’s me personally, it doesn’t mean it hasn’t worked in America, but I don’t like the idea here. I don’t want to sit down with a chief executive or a chairman and think I’m only here because I have to be. I want to prove myself independently of quotas. I want to impress them with my CV and ideas about the game.

A recent report by the SPTT announced that just 3.4% of coaching jobs in English football are filled by black, ethnic or minority coaches. Bramble went into more detail about something @Keef and I mentioned several posts ago about whether players from x background even want to go into coaching.

I’d like to see the figures which show how many black players want to go into coaching. I can say that because I’m black and I’m struggling to think of a single black team-mate who showed any interest in coaching. Kieron is the only one. How many black people have applied for coaching jobs or management jobs and not got them? We don’t know. We haven’t been shown any proof black coaches and managers have gone for jobs and not got them. We’ve got people saying they’ve been discriminated against, but we’ve not seen any evidence.

I find these gentleman talking much sense.

 

[Keef]

I find these gentleman talking much sense.

Indeed they are. And will we ever find out how many actually apply or actually get denied? Not easily because that is a privacy issue - employers aren't supposed to share application information with anybody.

There is absolutely nothing stopping anybody from applying to be leader of any company you can think of. Go ahead and send an app and resume. The only thing stopping people is their own lack of interest. Until somebody can organized some sort of anonymous application study, I guess we won't be able to judge what types of people are actually interested in what types of jobs. I have a feeling the results will put a real dent in the arguments of people who say women or black people never get hired. To get hired, you must apply.