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Selection Rubric�Using Anti-Deficit Framework

Jillian Rager

Auburn University

Auburn, AL

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AGENDA

Introduction

Issue, Purpose, & Goal

Anti-Deficit Framework

Rubric

Activity

Implications

Summary & Questions

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ISSUE

Selection is considered a “building block” of peer education (Hunter & Heath, 2001)
Feedback that rubric is not nuanced or demonstrates space for growth

Interview & Selection Using Anti-Deficit Framework

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Hiring fantastic SI Leaders who can showcase their skills, interest, and knowledge throughout the interview experience (Esplin et al., 2012)
Be inclusive, equitable, and reduce bias in the selection process

PURPOSE

GOAL

Create an anti-deficit rubric tool used for candidate evaluation post-interview

3 minutes – describe issue, purpose, and goal, expand on bullets

We created this interview evaluation rubric because of points of concern that current SILs and myself have noticed and shared. Some of these concerns included not having room for nuance, being too vague, and having too many criteria that didn’t reflect the job of an SI Leader. Further, selection is considered a “building block” of a peer education program, along with recruitment and training. Selection is a building block because of the most literal fact of choosing people to do the work, but also it requires balance of allowing opportunities for growth while being thoughtful and considerate of who you’re selecting. This is many students' first career opportunity; it is important we have the understanding that they do not have all the tools and professional development to be perfectly ready for the job responsibilities and interviewing process. We want to take chances on people and make sure the candidates are evaluated on their ability to do the actual job and not just being charismatic or perfectly professional during the interview. The purpose of the creation of the rubric is to hire awesome SI Leaders who feel supported, want to do the job, and have the capabilities, but also have room for growth. Also, I aim for our selection practices to be inclusive, equitable, and reduce bias to get the best SI leaders possible. We do not have the time and space today to cover exactly the systemic biases that our expectations derive from, but we will be exploring how to improve our practices. Ultimately, our goal was to create an anti-deficit rubric tool for candidate evaluation.

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ANTI-DEFICIT FRAMEWORK

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Deficit approaches blame individuals for not meeting certain academic and social standards, not the systemic barriers in place, fault students for perceived shortcomings (Reyes & Duran, 2021)

Derived from the work of Shaun Harper regarding Black male students in STEM (Harper, 2010)

Seeks to reframe the questions asked in research about students (especially students of color) to focus on assets and attributes rather than limitations (Perez et al., 2017)

Most often used to explore retention and persistence

(Perez et al., 2017)

3 minutes – explain anti-deficit framework left to right, how it came about, explain attribution theory

To understand anti-deficit, you need to understand deficit thinking. Deficit approaches are when a student is considered to be lacking something – for example, they’re “at-risk” or “low-income”. This language is the result of social or academic standards, which typically, were established by white people in higher education spaces. Deficit language results in implicit biases, feelings of inadequacy, etc.

The concept of “anti-deficit” was created by Shaun Harper through his work regarding Black male students in STEM. He sought to shift the focus toward the systemic influences on students’ success and away from individual, prescribed traits.

Anti-deficit is all about reframing our thinking about students (and especially students of color) to focus on their assets, attributes, skills, abilities, capabilities, etc. It has been most often used to examine retention and persistence in degree programs, but I have connected this form of thinking to peer educator evaluation, and their persistence and retention as SI Leaders. All in all, I used this framework to create a selection process that will allow students to be evaluated on their attributes and potential as a SI Leaders, and promote their long-term employment in the program.

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THE RUBRIC

Interview & Selection Using Anti-Deficit Framework

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	Insufficient (1)	Developing (2)	Proficient (Goal) (3)	Distinguished (4)
Familiarity with SI	Misinformed about or unaware of SI elements	Mentions elements with some possible misconceptions	Describes or uses elements mostly accurately	Describes or uses elements accurately
Familiarity with AS	Misinformed about or may not acknowledge other AS programs or mission	Mentions other programs or AS mission	Describes other programs or AS mission mostly accurately	Describes other programs or AS mission accurately
Communication (Verbal)	May be difficult to understand, unclear response, speaks off topic	Speaks non-specifically, may demonstrate minimal processing of ideas	Speaks to specific actions or ideas, positive tone, understandable in the group	Volume, enunciation, demonstration of ideas are clear, concise, and effective
Collaboration	Dominates or unwilling to contribute to groupwork	Willing to contribute, but may repeat or restate others	Effectively adds value to conversation or provides new ideas	Synthesizes discussion, adds new ideas or evaluates ideas, may lead group effectively, may use SI facilitation skills
Decision-Making	Rigid or binary thinking	Considers new ideas, but may not apply	Demonstrates flexibility in thinking, teachable	Demonstrates flexibility and application in thinking
Communication (Non-Verbal)	Misaligned body language and speech, negative affect	Generally engaged, may not be actively participating, instances of negative affect	Actively listening to facilitator(s), positive affect, is approachable and friendly, focused	Actively listening to facilitator(s) AND group, positive affect with aligned body language and speech, engaged
Mindset of an SI Leader	Uses terminology such as "teaching", "lecturing“, “kids” (as an SI leader), inaccurately describes elements of SI responsibilities	References experience with SI, describes fundamental aspects of SI accurately	Mentions self-directed learning, student leading, active learning, learning styles, skill integration (may not use exact word)	Describes self-directed learning, learning styles, active learning, student leading, skill integration in relation to SI sessions

5 minutes – this is the product! The idea is that this rubric, combined with instructions for evaluators, will encourage evaluators to rate candidates with an anti-deficit lens, focusing on their assets and attributes rather than shortcomings, but has room for nuance.

�The factors and attributes were selected by considering the essential job duties of SI Leader. An SI Leader must know the core tenants of SI (content mastery, peer connections, skill integration), and be strong referral agents for our office, Academic Support, and campus resources. They must be able to collaborate to lead active learning activities throughout a session and work with other SI Leaders, they must be able to make confident, but flexible decisions, and think of themselves as a peer, a helper, and a learner. Throughout development, I wrote each factor and attribute with intentionality; we used more positive language that encourages growth over time, while scaffolding the potential ranges of a candidate. An example of the anti-deficit thinking is "speaks non-specifically, may demonstrate minimal processing of ideas" - we are measuring the level of what they did do, minimal processing, rather than the level they did not achieve, which would be something like “did not extensively process”. That phrase shifting demonstrates how it’s easier for evaluators to know what we mean for the criteria. The focus is on their demonstrated skill, but still has room for their potential over time. We know very clearly that the candidate would need to learn to speak more specifically. At the end of the day, SI is an on-campus, part time, student job intended to help them develop professional and personal skills as they move to other things post-grad. I wanted a tool that will reflect that.

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR EVALUATORS

Rate each candidate individually on their own merit; avoid comparison to others.
Consider each category through the lens of the person’s demonstrated skills, knowledge, and interests.
Consider the person’s potential to grow through training, experience, and evaluation.
Rate each category with 1-4 scale as indicated on the rubric. Pick the score that most closely matches the person’s behavior during the interview.

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Interview & Selection Using Anti-Deficit Framework

2 minute – It is important that there’s a strong rubric AND that evaluators know how to use it. These steps demonstrate how we train evaluators to use it. Pragmatically, I print these instructions with the rubric so that it’s streamlined and refreshed.

First, we instructed our evaluators to rate each candidate individually on their own merit and to explicitly avoid comparing to others. With the group interview structure this is an effortful and very intentional point we emphasized.

Next, we emphasized listening to each candidate and evaluator thoughtfully and actively throughout the entirety of the interview.

Then, something we had to train and account for when using peers as evaluators is that they may have outside connections, we trained evaluators to focus on only what they witness in the interview and to involve outside connections only when appropriate. For example, if an evaluator shared concerns about a candidate's communication skills that would be appropriate, however if an evaluator shared bias for a candidate given an outside connection such as a club or organization, we would not take that into consideration.

Fourth, our evaluators were instructed to consider each candidate's potential to grow through training opportunities, experience in their SI leader role, and through constructive feedback and relationship with their Peer Mentor.

Lastly, evaluators were instructed to rate candidates individually using a 1-4 scale as indicated on the rubric.

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ACTIVITY

Case Study

During your 12 minutes in the breakout room, achieve the following:

Read through the handout and case study
As a group, discuss how you would rank the candidates using the rubric and what your hiring decisions would be
Discuss the following questions:

What kinds of things did you consider when reading the case study and evaluating?
What candidates would you make an offer?
What were your thoughts on the rubric and using it?
How difficult was it to rank each candidate and make the decision?

We are now going to work through a case study activity. In this activity, you will have 3 potential candidates for SI Leaders. You can see the context and assumptions for this case study on the handout in the chat. We added some background info about each of the candidates, and you can and should use these papers to annotate, take notes, jot down your thoughts as you read through it.

In your breakout rooms, read through the case study and respond to the item/questions on the slide. As you read through the case study, start to consider which candidate(s) you might select. Please know that there is not a "right" answer, we are thinking through our perceptions, selection process, and applying the anti-deficit rubric. We are looking for your thought process and decision-making, not if you are "right". Further, we intentionally phrased the case study to not imply value on the statement.

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IMPLICATIONS & OUTCOMES

Requires more training for interviews
Require ensuring reliability and validity

Partnership with James Madison University

Provides opportunities for continual improvement
Encourages evaluators to examine actions and behaviors rather than intangibles
Promotes a culture of growth and improvement

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3 minutes – As with any new practice, there are potential implications. I avoid viewing these as “positive” or “negative”, rather just things to be aware of could come up as a result of this change. It’s certain that there are implications I haven’t thought of, so I would invite collaborators (other pro staff, SILs, etc.) to provide more feedback once it was implemented.

Some of the implications we considered that have come to fruition were, this change does require more training within our interview process, as well as assurance of both reliability and validity. We are doing a study with a partner at James Madison University to evaluate the reliability and validity of our rubric, and we hope to share the results soon. In addition to this, it promotes a culture of growth and improvement as it allows for evaluators to examine actions and behaviors rather than intangibles and to consider students candidates' overall potential.

In terms of outcomes, we compared interview scores to observation scores. This graph visualizes the relationship between the rubric and their average observation score this past spring. For context, the highest possible interview score is a 28, the highest from this group (n=22) was a 23, and the lowest selected score was a 12. As you may notice, there is not as significant of a correlation as we hoped (with stronger interviews being rated higher on observations) – there was a low correlation of 0.17; however, we felt that our training protocols, ongoing mentorship and support, and growth of the SI Leaders have allowed the candidates who did not score highly on interviewers to do well on observations. Remember that that is based on students that were really selected and hired, so they demonstrated sufficient promise and ability for the work. This graph shows that with a lower scoring interview, there may be more support required, but they are more than capable of fulfilling performance goals.

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IMPLICATIONS

In the chat, please answer at least one of the following:

What questions do you have about Auburn’s process/rubric?
What do you expect of candidates in your selection process? Have your expectations changed?
What are other implications of using a rubric tool such as this?
What aspect of the rubric/selection process resonated most with you?
What changes do you foresee for your program?

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REFERENCES

Esplin, P., Seabold, J., & Pinnegar, F. (2012). The architecture of a high-impact and sustainable peer leader program: A blueprint for success. In Keup, J.R. (Eds.), Peer Leadership in Higher Education (pp. 92-93). Jossey-Bass.

Harper, S. R. (2010). An anti-deficit achievement framework for research on students of color in STEM. New Directions for Institutional Research, 148(1), 63-74.

Hattie, J. & Zierer, K. (2018). I am a change agent and believe all students can improve. In Hattie, J. (Eds.), 10 Mindframes for Visible Learning (pp. 39-58). Routledge.

Hunter, M.S. & Heath, M. (2001). The building blocks of the peer leader program: Recruitment, selection, and training. In S.L. Hamid (Ed.), Peer leadership: A primer on program essentials (Monograph No. 32) (pp. 37-52). Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina, National Resource Center for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition.

Perez, D., Ashlee, K.C., Do, V. H., Karikari, S. N., & Sim, C. (2017). Re-conceptualizing student success in higher education: Reflections from graduate student affairs educators using anti-deficit achievement framework. Journal on Excellence in College Teaching, 28(3), 5-28.

Reyes, H. & Duran, A. (2021). Higher education scholars challenging deficit thinking: An analysis of research informed by community cultural wealth. Journal of Critical Scholarship on Higher Education and Student Affairs, 6(1), 7-21.

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SUMMARY

Using the Anti-Deficit Framework (Harper, 2010), I created a rubric for SI Leader interview evaluation that encourages a growth mindset and examines attributes and assets that can add to the SI program, rather than what a candidate may be lacking in skills and knowledge.

Jillian Rager, Auburn University (jpr0027@auburn.edu)

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Interview & Selection Using Anti-Deficit Framework

THANK YOU!