Teacher
Bias: Can we face them?
The
journey of our human unconscious state
Introduction
All
throughout our years of schooling, we get the opportunity to be taught by many
different educators. Either positive or negative, each teacher consists of
creating a chapter in our book. Together, it makes a story of each milestone
we’ve accomplished from our days of Elementary School to our College
graduation. I myself have my own book with chapters from each teacher whom I’ve
had both positive and negative experiences with; till this day, I will never
forget them. As a future educator, these experiences have shaped me into the
teacher I wish to become.
So
what makes us have negative experiences with teachers? My curious mind has
always wondered if these negative experiences are really an underlying bias.
Although several people may have different interpretations of this, what is
bias? A preference or an inclination, especially one that inhibits impartial
judgment; an unfair act or policy stemming from prejudice; a statistical
sampling or testing error caused by systematically favoring some outcomes over
other. (freedictionary.com) It is evident that there are endless examples of
what shape and form bias can be. In this particular case, I have been curious
about ethnicity bias and how/if it affected the student and teacher.
Using the article, “Bias in the Classroom:
Types, Frequencies, and Responses” by Guy A. Boysen and David L. Vogel along
with data collected from interviews conducted with a college student and
Professor; I hope to answer the question, “Can teachers or people understand
when they are being bias or is it human nature?” I will include sufficient data
collected to support this research question from both interviews with the
teacher and student. For methods, I will use the data to discuss the
differences in interviews, the obstacles I faced, and why this occurred. The
categories of analysis will include evasions, easy answers (premeditated
responses), and processing (in depth thinking about questions/unsure how to
answer). In discussions, I will distinguish the conversation challenges and comfort
level between both participants. Lastly, in connections; I will connect the
challenges of speaking/admitting bias. With this, I will unveil the
similarities in both interviews in terms of realizing that bias does not “stem”
from one particular reason. It is clear that its human nature and apart of
society to be bias against something.
Literature Review
I
began my research by reading the article, “Bias
in the Classroom: Types, Frequencies, and Responses” written by Guy A.
Boysen and David L. Vogel. I chose this article because it pertained to bias in
the classroom which is similar to what I was interested in researching. Within this
article, a study was conducted with college students in a Psychology class at
Iowa State University regarding all forms of bias. According to Boysen and
Vogel, 38% of professors perceived explicit and implicit incidents of bias in
the classroom from students. The purpose of this study was conducted to examine
how frequently bias occurs in the classroom, the type of bias that occurs, and
how they are handled within the classroom.
The
participants in this study are as followed; “The majority of the sample
was male (58%) and White (86% White, 6% Asian, 3% Latino/a, 3% and multiethnic;
all others were less than 1%), and these demographic characteristics were
representative of the universities’ faculty population.” (Guy A. Boysen) Data was combined from all groups to
perform this study.
The
measures taken to conduct this study were all students were given a
questionnaire to complete consisting of demographic questions. The reason
behind this was to show if students were demonstrating explicit (expressing all details in a clear and
obvious way, leaving no doubt as to the intended meaning) bias. An example
of a question given is “In the last year has a student said or done something
obviously prejudiced during class?” Next, students were given an open ended
question to describe an implicit (not
stated, but understood in what is expressed) bias. They were asked not only
to describe an incident however, to describe how they themselves responded to
it. The questionnaire was completed via internet and the response rate from it
was as a whole was 36%.
Results of study are as followed; 27% noticed explicit bias
in the classroom. 139 incidences were reported of bias in the classroom (some students got counted more than once to
show the frequency) which concluded to 47% of all cases. The most common
type of bias was stereotype, offensive jokes (20%), isolation (12%), slurs
(9%), insults (9%), and other (3%). For implicit bias, 30% of students reported
seeing it in their classrooms. Some examples are confrontation (25%),
discussion (19%), providing rebuttals (13%), ignoring (13%), asking the student
for counterarguments (7%), private confrontation (7%), and correcting ignorance
(5%). All and all, of the 38% of professors who noticed student bias, 27% was
explicit and 30% implicit.
As you can see, this article is very focused on
statistics that was resulted from the study that was conducted. Although it was
an interesting article in terms of seeing the percentages of bias in the
classroom, it wasn’t geared towards what I was looking for with ethnicity bias.
This article focused more on the students being bias and not so much on teacher
bias. As statistics shows, the demographics of the students in this classroom used
for this study was very diverse. I was interested in knowing how the teacher
themselves not let their judgment get clouded and how they themselves face
bias. Unfortunately, this article did not support my research question and the
specific bias I was looking for from the teacher’s perspective.
Methods
For this,
I chose to do a chat interview with participants, the teacher and student. I
felt more comfortable doing it this way because I’ve never done a face to face
interview and I was uncertain with how it would go. Also, I’ve learned throughout
this process that getting someone to talk about a touchy subject such as bias,
it was more comforting to do it through a chat interview. Both participants
were fine with chat interviews and it also worked better that way due to
scheduling conflicts.
My first
participant (D) is a male professor here at Kean University. He’s been teaching
Business and Professional Writing since September, 1999. I figured it would be
suitable to interview a professor for this topic seeing as he’s had several
years of teaching. He was also my
current teacher at the time when this interview took place. We had to do two
interviews. Our first interview lasted about 45 minutes. As I mentioned, I was
new to the interviewing process. I was prepared with questions to ask. Due to
the nature of this topic, I was very direct in questions in our first
interview. That was not the correct way to go about this. I decided to do a follow
up interview in which I asked enhanced questions that allowed room to get him
to speak of bias. However, both interviews seemed slightly unsuccessful in
terms of getting answers I was looking for. They were pre meditated responses
and a lot of the questions I asked were avoided.
My second participant (Z) is a female student here at
Kean University. She is a junior and will be graduating May, 2014. She is also
going to school to be a teacher, so I felt she would be best to interview for
this project. I might also mention that she is a close friend of mine, however,
didn’t see that as conflicting seeing as we can both be professional. Our
interview was completing different in terms of getting great responses to my
questions asked. This interview lasted over an hour and it honestly could have
gone longer if time wasn’t an issue. Each answer was very thorough and it was
very easy to ask follow up questions throughout the interview because the
responses were great. It was very relaxed and very comfortable. Nonetheless,
both interviews were a complete 180 from each other.
Data and Analysis
For
analysis, I will break it up into 3 content categories that reflect the
interviews; evasions, easy answers, and processing. I will begin by discussing
my interview with the professor, participant D. I began with general questions
such as how long he’s been teaching, background, and so on. I then proceeded to
ask about the students in class, the diversity, and interaction amongst
students. Participant D seemed to treat all of his students the same and
concluded that his class was equally diverse stating, “Not
really - it's pretty evenly distributed between white/black/Hispanic/Indian.” I don’t know exact statistics; However, I don’t believe it
to be possible to have an equally diverse classroom. That is making assumptions
on guessing what someone is and treating everyone the same. He also made it seem as if older students had
something to give to the younger students. He states, “I
like to get older students talking about the day-to-day realities of being in
the workforce, which can help to illustrate my points to the larger class.” It seems as if Participant D may have
an age bias here just by the way he answered questions. When finally bringing
up bias directly, some of the responses were vague and or avoided. He also made
a sarcastic comment since he got a feel that I was asking about race.
Me:
Do
you think any students have been bias against you?
Participant D:
I'm not sure to be honest. I'm still somewhat young so (I hope) the generation
gap doesn't come into play. There must be endless reasons why students ignore the
class material, but I'm pretty certain it's not due to race.
Participant D seemed uncertain on
how to answer when directly asked about bias. Due to his responses, he was
thinking very deeply into his answers, avoiding them, or not realizing what I
was asking. After going back and looking at my data, I realized that I needed
to ask better questions that encouraged him to share more personal experiences without
being direct. Regardless of the lack of information, Participant D brought up a
very good point when I asked if he’s ever caught himself being bias and how he
handled that situation.
Me: Do you feel in the years you've
been teaching that you either noticed or caught yourself being unconsciously
bias against anyone?
Participant D:
Well, I'm only human, so yes - bias (positive and negative) can creep in, and a
teacher must constantly guard against that. And I do.
Me: When you say guard against that-
do you believe it to be a huge problem in terms of ever clouding your judgment
when it comes to teaching, grading, etc.
Participant D:
Not a huge problem - just something to be cognizant of when dealing with the
myriad personalities in the class.
He brought it to my attention in our
first interview that bias is just something that is human as long as you are aware
of not letting it affect you as an educator. Our follow up interview consisted
of great questions on my end that weren’t direct, but more so trying to gain an
understanding for his experiences. This interview is very short; however, he
took very long to respond. Before I even asked a question, he began by talking
up about something. I used what he brought up to ask follow up questions that
pertained to what I was looking for.
Me: Thank you for agreeing to a follow up
interview. I hope I haven't troubled you too much! After going back and reading
our interview, I realized I missed out on asking about more personal
experiences in the classroom and with students. You have lots of experience
teaching, so I hope I can trouble you to share a bit more.
Participant
D: I've had several
students over the year take my class three times. One student actually failed
the class the third time but he was close enough to passing that I gave him the
C and sent him on his way. If you wish, I can provide you with all of his
relevant biographical information, including his gender.
I
used the story he brought up to talk about this student failed the class; was
there a pattern with material students were failing or lack of teacher support
on his end. He claims that “It's
not terribly difficult to do well in my Business Writing course - it's pretty
much paint by numbers. I reward effort and attention to detail.” What might
not be hard for others may be extremely hard for someone else. He is kind of
generalizing everyone into a specific group. This led me to bring up again
about his “equally diverse classroom”. I proceeded to ask does he find it
difficult to teach Business Writing to his diverse classroom and this led to a
smart response of “Well, I couldn’t
imagine teaching not being difficult.” At that moment in time, I realized
that regardless of my improved questions and request with a follow up
interview; I wasn’t going to get what I was looking for out of him.
My interview with the student,
participant Z was much different. It was too the point and great responses. I
began by asking the same general information such as age, career choice, and so
on. Participant Z is 29 moved here when she was 6 from Mexico, and is a
bilingual major. Both of her parents were teachers at the time. I was very
interested in learning from her what experiences she’s remembered from teachers
over the years. Each story she shared was evident that the teacher may have had
an ethnicity bias. Also, she felt from each experience, she stated that she
felt the teacher didn’t like her from the beginning and proceeded with what
happened soon after.
Participant Z: I
remember one time she accused me of cheating and made a snarky remark about how
my parents were both teachers.
This was pertaining to a 2nd
grade teacher that she claims didn’t like her immediately.
Me:
Interesting- Do you remember any other negative experiences you've had with a
teacher that stuck with you as this one?
Participant Z: Ummmm let me think....I know
that my 5th grade teacher made comments to the class that I still remember bc
somehow I felt like he was talking about me. This was the year that I moved
from Perth Amboy to Highland Park. At HP there wasn't a bilingual program so i
was put into a general ed classroom. So he would say things like, some of you
don't belong in this class. There were 4 5th grade classes, I guess they were
group a certain way, idk, I’m not sure, but he said that from time to time.
Then he would say stuff like next year, I will make sure that those of you that
don't belong in this group get moved and surprise surprise, I wasn't with that
class the following year.
There were more stories that were
very similar to these that all proved the same case. She was a Hispanic student
who she felt the teacher didn’t like her from the beginning and supported her
claims by telling me about these teachers who seemed to not only be bias, but
ignorant in terms of their comments. One particular story, she stated a teacher
made a comment about his wife working in Perth Amboy (a large Hispanic
community) and stating “I actually just remember something, he had
mentioned that his wife was a teacher in Perth Amboy and how "different"
and "bad" the kids were.” It was clear that he was making it about race and
making these comments in front of his students.
Discussions
With both interviews and the data to
support, it proved my case on how dramatically different they were from one
another. Why were they so different from one another? After taking a step back
and thinking long and hard about it; I came to conclude why there were
conversation challenges. In my first interview with participant D, I was too
direct with such a touchy subject. After revising my questions, I didn’t accomplish
much more than I did with the first interview. There could have been several
reasons that factored into this. First, he was still my current teacher at the
time. That being said, he has a reputation to keep, especially me as his
current student. He had a guard up the whole time because of this. He still has
an image to maintain and didn’t want me to see him any differently. Although I
chose him because I was comfortable, it probably wasn’t the best idea with me
still as his student. However, I feel like it wouldn’t have been significantly
different even if I was done with his class. In regards to participant Z, the
student; her and I are friends. That being said, I was more comfortable with
asking things and she was more honest and direct with me. I also came to
realize that it was probably easier for her to discuss because she didn’t have
anything at state such as participant D. Regardless of the differences in
interviews, I learned a lot with both experiences in terms of making better
decisions, how I ask the questions, and so on. This will serve purpose in
future interviews.
Conclusion
So, as my
curiously and research wraps up about teacher bias, what have I learned?
Throughout all the data, the interviews, and the analyzing process; I’ve
learned that a particular topic such as teacher bias is very tricky. Bias is
something that has always and will always exist in today’s society. It is very
direct and can be uncomfortable for most people; especially when asking them to
admit their bias (which is very unlikely someone will do- participant D as
example). To not be bias would be lying and unhuman like. As humans, we have to
understand and not allow our bias to interfere in our everyday lives;
especially as a teacher when dealing with so many different people. Quite
frankly, I’ve learned that someone isn’t a bad person if they are bias as long
as it is not clouding their judgment. We are all bias against something and
this is in fact a big part of our human unconscious state.
WORK CITED
Guy A. Boysen, David L. Vogel. "Bias in the
Classroom: Types, Frequencies, and Responses." Teaching of Psychology
(2009): 7. Article.
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