@inproceedings{gautam-2026-teaching-critiquing,
    title = "Teaching and Critiquing Conceptualization and Operationalization in {NLP}",
    author = "Gautam, Vagrant",
    editor = {A{\ss}enmacher, Matthias  and
      Biester, Laura  and
      Borg, Claudia  and
      Kov{\'a}cs, Gy{\"o}rgy  and
      Mieskes, Margot  and
      Serrano, Sofia},
    booktitle = "Proceedings of the Seventh Workshop on Teaching Natural Language Processing ({T}each{NLP} 2026)",
    month = mar,
    year = "2026",
    address = "Rabat, Morocco",
    publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
    url = "https://preview.aclanthology.org/ingest-eacl/2026.teachingnlp-1.11/",
    pages = "69--77",
    ISBN = "979-8-89176-375-3",
    abstract = "NLP researchers regularly invoke abstract concepts like ``interpretability,'' ``bias,'' ``reasoning,'' and ``stereotypes,'' without defining them.Each subfield has a shared understanding or conceptualization of what these terms mean and how we should treat them, and this shared understanding is the basis on which operational decisions are made:Datasets are built to evaluate these concepts, metrics are proposed to quantify them, and claims are made about systems. But what do they mean, what {\_}should{\_} they mean, and how should we measure them?I outline a seminar I created for students to explore these questions of conceptualization and operationalization, with an interdisciplinary reading list and an emphasis on discussion and critique."
}