Helping Teachers Help Kids Explore Bias

This paper addresses practical ways to incorporate activity to stimulate thought toward promotion of an anti-bias curriculum in early childhood.

2018

I would like to dedicate this work first to my family-Eddie, Conner, and Josie. Eddie, I'm sorry it cost so much money, but it was worth every penny. Conner and Josie, thank you for not being too embarrassed of your mom. I love you very much. I'd also like to thank my Chapin High School family. I literally could not have maintained the stamina to finish if it hadn't been for your friendship and support. Finally, Dr. Ross, I'd like to thank you for talking me into doing this in the first place.

2017

Anti-bias education is needed because children live in a world that is not yet a place where all of them have equal opportunity to become all they could be." (Derman-Sparks & Edwards, 2010, p. 3)

While researchers have identified (a) innate cognitive and (b) implicit culturally mediated biases in all human beings and while medical, legal, and science educators have sought to mitigate such biases to increase better outcomes and decrease economic cost, cognitive debiasing reduction (CDR) strategies and research at the elementary, secondary, and tertiary general education levels is still in its infancy. This study is a result of a literature review and inquiry into bias mitigation in educational research, pedagogy, and andragogy. Having made a preliminary search of Psychinfo, PsycArticles, and ERIC, the author found no studies dedicated to examining cognitive biases for those levels of education. The author suggests adopting and adapting a medical, educational CDR for implementation and application.

Critical thinking is often taught with some emphasis on categories and operations of cognitive biases. The underlying thought is that knowledge of biases equips students to reduce them. The empirical evidence, however, doesn't provide much support for this thought. We have previously argued that the emphasis on debiasing in critical thinking education is worth preserving, but in light of a more explicit and broader conception of debiasing. We now argue that this broader conception of debiasing strategies obliges critical thinking instructors and curriculum designers to reflect on the teaching approaches that might facilitate the use of those strategies. We propose some teaching techniques to expand the scope of debiasing in the classroom – some untested, some only rarely and recently characterized as critical thinking strategies, rather than as pragmatic considerations in, e.g., design, engineering, marketing. These methods and others like them, we suggest, broaden the prospects for teaching a range of effective critical thinking techniques for debiasing.

While researchers have identified (a) innate cognitive and (b) implicit culturally mediated biases in all human beings and while medical, legal, and science educators have sought to mitigate such biases to increase better outcomes and decrease economic cost, cognitive debiasing reduction (CDR) strategies and research at the elementary, secondary, and tertiary general education levels is still in its infancy. This study is an inquiry into bias mitigation in educational research, pedagogy, and andragogy. Having made a preliminary search of Psychinfo, PsycArticles, and ERIC, the author suggests adopting and adapting a medical, educational CDR for implementation. Strategies for Reducing Biases

This paper addresses practical applications for current issue with our nation and young children. The author grapples with strategies and activities that are meaningful to young children and respectful of their families. Connections to literature from decades ago to this year affirm the need for more than a tourist curriculum, beyond the holidays and heroes approach. Meaningful connections to approach diversity through similarities and the shared collective reality children experience with one another in a place called school.

Exchange, 2016

Anti-bias education is inherently about change. This means embracing some level of uncertainty while holding tight to the vision of a more just world. Demographic changes, shifts in social views and polarizing political issues, widely disseminated during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign, present challenges and complexities as we seek to be more inclusive and equitable in our early childhood programs. The pervasive and easy access to media daily brings issues and current events into our lives. Children are aware of and influenced — sometimes harmfully — by media messages as well as adults’ reactions to them (Costello, 2016).

Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 2012

College students frequently encounter prejudice, discrimination, and stereotypes, but there is no research on effective teacher responses to classroom bias. Three studies examined students' perceptions of teacher responses to bias in the classroom. Study 1 experimentally manipulated the level of bias expressed and the teacher's response. Students perceived responding to bias as more effective than ignoring bias. Study 2 demonstrated that students perceive differences in the intensity of common responses to bias. Study 3 manipulated if bias occurred publicly or privately and if the target of bias was present or not, and students evaluated teacher responses of differing intensity for their effectiveness in achieving specific goals. The results provide evidence for the efficacy of matching responses to specific goals.j asp_784 506..534

2008

One goal educators have is to empower students at all levels in this diverse and changing society whether they work with teacher candidates or with P-12 students. Teachers are seeing increased differences in race, ethnicity, culture, and special needs in children in their classrooms (Corso, Santos, & Roof, 2002; Ladson-Billings, 2005; North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1998). The changing composition of early childhood classrooms challenges educators to be more responsive to the diverse needs of all children. Therefore, implementing a curriculum that is culturally responsive and inclusive to assist children's needs is imperative (Gay, 2002; Hein, 2004). To prepare teacher candidates to integrate anti-bias or diversity curriculum with the regular curriculum then becomes a crucial goal of every teacher preparation program (Van Hook, 2002; Wasson & Jackson, 2002). Unfortunately, many teachers currently in the classroom report that they feel inadequate to teach multicult...