Faculty Speaker Series: Anjali Adukia

Join the Lynch School as we kick off the Fall Faculty Speaker Series! Event information below: "What We Teach" Anjali Adukia - University of Chicago Booth School of Business The process of formal and informal education, and its associated books and curricular materials, necessarily and by design transmits knowledge and values desired by society. The presence -- and absence -- of different identities, features, and topics sends messages which can contribute to how children view their own potential and the potential of others, which can then shape subconscious defaults. We apply and develop computational methods from artificial intelligence such as computer vision (converting images to data) and natural language processing (converting text to data) to examine whether and how different messages are communicated through children's content presented in formal and informal settings: (i) four decades of primary school textbooks and (ii) a century of award-winning children's books often found in homes, libraries, and schools. These findings provide a view into the "black box" of education through children’s books in US schools and homes, highlighting what has changed and what has endured.