People who come from state education are different”: How language use maintains social exclusion in Medical Education
Dr. Tania Fahey Palma
Abstract
People from less advantaged social backgrounds, ethnic and culturally diverse groups remain under-represented in medicine worldwide (Association of American Medical Colleges, 2011; BMA, 2009). Although Widening Access (WA) programmes have been implemented to encourage applicants from diverse social backgrounds, recent evidence from the United Kingdom indicates that those from less affluent backgrounds remain less likely to apply and less likely to gain an accepted offer to study medicine than applicants from more “traditional” backgrounds (Steven et al., 2016). This paper investigates how language use from within medical schools contributes to social exclusion in medical education. By examining authentic data from interviews with Medical Admissions Deans from 26 UK medical schools, this paper considers the linguistic barriers to reducing inequality in medical education. Critical Discourse analysis is employed in order to identify the construction of ‘othering’ discourse in statements that refer to students undertaking WA programmes. The results indicate that language use serves to maintain prejudice and block reform of WA practices. This highlights prevalent social development barriers and a need for a review of language use in medical education to promote inclusivity and reduce social inequality.
Speaker
Lecturer in Linguistics, Programme Director of the MSc Professional Communication, Co Director for Internationalisation for the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture, University of Aberdeen
About the Speaker
Dr Tania Fahey Palma is a Lecturer in Linguistics at the University of Aberdeen where she is Programme Director of the MSc Professional Communication and Co Director for Internationalisation for the School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture. She received the College of Arts and Social Sciences Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2015. She was awarded the AUSA Student Choice Award for Graduate Teaching in 2014. She was also nominated for the College of Arts and Social Sciences Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014.She has teaching experience at a variety of different third level institutions including the University of Edinburgh, Newcastle University, Beijing Language and Culture University and Mary Immaculate College-University of Limerick.
Date
26 April 2016 (Tuesday), 12:45 - 02:00pm
Location
Room 205, 2nd Floor, Runme Shaw Building , HKU
Chair
Dr. Mairin Hennebry
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