IES Predoctoral Training Program Seminar: Dr. Anjali Adukia

The University of Pennsylvania Predoctoral Training Program in Interdisciplinary Research Methods for Field-based Research in Education, sponsored by the Institute for Education Sciences (IES), welcomes Dr. Anjali Adukia to our weekly seminar series.

What We Teach About Race and Gender: Representation in Images and Text of Children's Books

Presented by Dr. Anjali Adukia, Assistant Professor, Harris School of Public Policy, University of Chicago 

Books shape how children learn about society and social norms, in part through the representation of different characters. To better understand the messages children encounter in books, we introduce new machine-lef methods for systematically converting images into data. We apply these images tools, along with established text analysis methods, to measure the representation of race, gender, and age in children's books commonly found in U.S. schools and homes over the last century. We find that books selected to highlight people of color, or females of all races, consistently depict characters with darker skin tones than characters in "mainstream" books, which depict lighter-skinned characters even after conditioning on perceived race. Across both sets of books, children are depicted with lighted skin than adults, despite no biological foundation for such a difference. Females are more represented in images than text, suggesting greater symbolic inclusion in pictures than substantive inclusion in stories. Relative to their U.S. population share, Black and Latinx people are underrepresented in the mainstream collection; males, particularly White males, are persistently overrepresented. Our data provide a view into the "black box" of education through children's books in U.S. schools and homes, hightlighting what has changed and what has endured.

More information
The IES Predoctoral Program’s weekly seminar series connects program fellows and affiliates to scholars and practitioners who engage in educational research and the development of research methods.

 Seminars are likely of interest to doctoral students and faculty. If you are interested in attending virtually, please email Melanie Bahti for Zoom information.