Implicit biases can negatively affect education when teachers, administrators, and other school staff make decisions and interact with students and families in ways that are influenced by their implicit biases. As a result, implicit bias in the context of education creates unfairness on the individual level (e.g., biased speech) and injustice at the institutional or systemic level (e.g., discrimination).  

Educators’s implicit biases can influence how teachers grade students as well as to whom they give their attention and who they ignore. It can affect which students they praise and reprimand, their body language, and tone of voice. Biases can influence the curriculum choices and which perspectives are highlighted in classrooms. It can affect choices related to guest speakers, books, stories, and more. Implicit biases can also influence how teachers and administrators react to student behaviors and result in inconsistencies across how students are disciplined that fall along racial and ethnic lines.

Implicit biases in education may help to explain pervasive inequities in educational institutions such as gaps in achievement scores based on racial and gender groups, differences in participation in advanced level courses, and differences in detention and suspension rates. It can also influence hiring and promotion practices.

Examples

Biases in Evaluation. A teacher may hold implicit biases about the mathematical abilities of certain groups of students. These beliefs in turn could influence the type of feedback provided, how frequently the teacher calls on students, the types of support and assistance provided, and decisions related to grouping students based on “learning needs.” 

In a randomized controlled study of 390 teachers, Copur-Gencturk et al. (2019) used randomly assigned gender- and race-specific names on 18 mathematical solutions. The teachers did not show biases in assessing the correctness of the answers; however, when the teachers were asked to evaluate the students’ abilities using the same solutions, teacher biases against Black, Hispanic and female students’ mathematical abilities emerged. The biases were the largest for Black and Hispanic girls. 

Using a large dataset of ~40,000 teachers across the nation, Chin et al.(2020) found that counties in which teachers had higher pro-White compared to Black implicit bias (i.e., IAT scores averaged among teachers in each county) also had larger test score disparities between White and Black students.  

Biases in Discipline. For the same behavior, implicit biases may lead a teacher to react to one student’s behavior differently than another’s. It may lead to inconsistent consequences, such as being sent to “time-out,” calls to parents, suspension or expulsion. Nationally, African Americans are four times more likely, and Latinos twice as likely, to be suspended or expelled in elementary school for minor infractions than their peers (Skiba et al., 2011). In Hawaiʻi, higher rates of suspensions appear to be correlated with enrollment of low-income, multi-racial and Native Hawaiian students (Terrell, 2015). Disproportionate representation in arrests and ensuing outcomes (e.g. time in juvenile detention) for youth of Native Hawaiian, Samoan, Filipino, mixed-race and other Pacific Islander backgrounds are also evident in the State’s juvenile justice system (Umemeto et al, 2012). 

These patterns have been referred to as the “school to prison pipeline” and disparities in discipline have been connected to implicit biases. Using a large dataset of ~1.6 million Americans, Riddle and Sinclair (2019) found that county-level estimates of implicit White/Black bias (and county-level explicit biases, as well) are associated with racial disciplinary disparities seen in those counties across ~96,000 schools in the U.S.  

It is important to promote awareness of biases so that educators and institutions can manage their effects (Derman-Sparks & Olsen Edwards, 2016). Developing equitable institutional protocols for such things as hiring procedures and evaluating teachers, as well as on-going professional development with coaching, may help. Additionally, frameworks for Anti-Bias Education can be used to guide educators (e.g., Learning for Justice Social Justice Standards). Such actions can help to mitigate implicit biases that are unfair and disruptive to learning and encourage practices that are restorative versus punitive.

References

Chin, M. J., Quinn, D. M., Dhaliwal, T. K., & Lovison, V. S. (2020).  Bias in the Air: A Nationwide Exploration of Teachers’ Implicit Racial Attitudes, Aggregate Bias, and Student Outcomes. Educational Researcher.

Copur-Gencturk, Y., Cimpian, J. R., Lubienski, S. T., & Thacker, I. (2020). Teachers’ bias against the mathematical ability of female, Black, and Hispanic students. Educational Researcher, 49(1), 30-43.

Derman-Sparks, L., & Olsen Edwards, J.  (2016). Goals of anti-bias education: Clearing up some misconceptions.  Exchange, 14-18.  

Riddle, T., & Sinclair, S. (2019). Racial disparities in school-based disciplinary actions are associated with county-level rates of racial bias. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116(17), 8255–8260.

Skiba, R. J., Horner, R. H., Chung, C., Rausch, M. K., May, S. L., & Tobin, T. (2011). Race is not neutral: A national investigation of African American and Latino disproportionality in school discipline. School Psychology Review, 40(1), 85-107.

Terrell, J.  (2015, June).  Hawaii school suspensions: Are they fair?  Can they be reduced?  Honolulu Civil Beat.  https://www.civilbeat.org/2015/06/hawaii-school-suspensions-are-they-fair-can-they-be-reduced/

 Umemeto, K., Spencer, J., Miao, T., & Momen, S. (2012, June).  Disproportionate Minority Contact in the Hawaiʻi Juvenile Justice System: 2000-2010.  http://ag.hawaii.gov/cpja/files/2013/01/DMC-FINAL-REPORT-2012.pdf