Everyone has implicit biases, even if you don’t realize it. These correlations are likely built up over the course of several years and molded through experiences starting from a young age. Media such as television shows, books we read, and other news sources reinforce these associations as we grow up. They change our subconscious attitudes about people based on physical characteristics such as race, ethnicity, appearance and others.
Implicit bias is defined as the attitudes and stereotypes we have that affect our actions in an unconscious manner. We often give in to these biases without realizing they are affecting us. That can have both positive and negative implications on the people we are surrounded by and the choices we make.
Implicit Bias in the Classroom
There have been a number of studies showing an association between teachers’ perceptions of student achievement at the beginning of a school year and how well those students end up doing. One of the oldest experiments that was done to test this was conducted in the 1960s by a Harvard professor who gave all students a normal IQ test. He randomly selected 20 percent of the students, and told the teacher that these students had “unusual potential for academic growth.” When he retested students at the end of the year, those who had been randomly selected in the beginning showed significantly better results, suggesting they had been singled out and treated differently by the teacher because the teacher had expected more from them.
Studies have continued to affirm the professor’s results, whether it came to race, gender, even just a child’s handwriting. Whenever a teacher subconsciously identified something from their students as a measure of success, that altered their level of expectations which subsequently caused different student outcomes. This was an introduction to our understanding of the effect of teacher expectations and the students’ academic performance.
Racial Bias in Behavioral Punishments
Some of the most alarming research that has come out of implicit bias in the classroom is the treatment of the behavior between white and black children. This begins as early as preschool. The United States Department of Education reported in 2014 that black students make up 18 percent of all preschool enrollment, but make up 48 percent of students who had been suspended more than once. In preschool. Past preschool, black children in schools are suspended at rates three times greater than white students for the same actions. Similarly, over 70 percent of children from schools who are directly referred to law enforcement agencies are black or Latinx.
Another experiment done by the Yale Child Study Center found that when white teachers watched videos of mixed race classrooms and were told to watch for behavioral problems, they spent longer looking at black children, especially black boys, even when none of the kids in the room were misbehaving. This was found in both white and black teachers. Researchers suggested white teachers were acting on the stereotype that black children misbehave more, while black teachers may believe “black children require harsh assessment and discipline to prepare for a harsher world.” In both cases, when asked to assess a classroom for behavior, more attention was given to black students than their white classmates– which could help explain the higher rates of disciplinary action for black children in schools.
What Can We Do?
This problem is not insurmountable. Even though we all have implicit biases, there are definitive steps we can take to reduce the impact of our own biases as well as policies and other reforms that can reduce the effect of implicit bias in classrooms overall.
For Individuals:
- Recognize our own biases. The first step to being able to work best and actively work against the implicit biases we possess is to acknowledge them. One way we can do this is by taking an Implicit Association test such as this one. These biases can be unlearned, but it takes work to do this and the first step in doing so is awareness.
- Show more empathy and kindness towards others. And especially if you’re an educator, towards your students. Studies have shown that trying to be objective isn’t often successful, but when people can think of the perspective of the other person and empathize with that it helps decrease stereotypical views of others. One study even found that teachers who were trained in empathy had their suspension rates halved.
For Schools and Policy Makers:
- Actively incorporate and mandate anti-bias and cultural awareness training for all educators. Cultural awareness can help teachers understand why and how students react in different situations, and how disciplinary actions should take this into account.
- Create formal policies for addressing discipline. Many places don’t have concrete policies outlining what behavior should warrant suspension or expulsion. One resource for this is the Arkansas Division of Child Care and Early Childhood Education created an “expulsion checklist” and specific guidelines for early childhood education centers to follow to help end suspensions and expulsions in preschools.
- One of the most successful ways to decrease racial bias in the classroom is to have a more diverse teaching staff. Many studies, such as some mentioned above, have shown that white teachers are more likely to discipline non-white students. Support, encourage and hire more teachers of color in the education field so more schools can have staff that better reflect the demographics of the students they teach.
Even if we don’t realize it, we all have implicit biases that impact our attitudes and actions with the people around us. It’s important to recognize that these biases are malleable– we can all work to acknowledge, challenge and change the implicit biases we possess. Especially for educators and policymakers in education, recognizing and actively working against these biases is of paramount importance to successfully create more equity among students in the classroom.
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