Stereotype Threat

"Teaching Adolescents To Become Learners" summarizes the research on five categories of noncognitive factors that are related to academic performance: academic behaviors, academic perseverance, academic mindsets, learning strategies and social skills. It examines whether there is substantial evidence that noncognitive factors matter for students' long-term success, clarifying how and why these factors matter, determining if these factors are malleable and responsive to context, determining if they play a role in persistent racial/ethnic or gender gaps in academic achievement, and illuminating how educators might best support the development of important noncognitive factors within their schools and classrooms. The review suggests some promising levers for change at the classroom level, as well as challenges for further research.

Too many Americans go through life terrified of equations and mathematical symbols. We think what many of them are afraid of is "proving" themselves to be genetically inferior by failing to instantly comprehend the equations (when, of course, in reality, even a math professor would have to read closely). So they recoil from anything that looks like math, protesting: "I'm not a math person."

Read Chapter 1 and Chapter 5. "Teaching Adolescents To Become Learners summarizes the research on five categories of noncognitive factors that are related to academic performance: academic behaviors, academic perseverance, academic mindsets, learning strategies and social skills, and proposes a framework for thinking about how these factors interact to affect academic performance, and what the relationship is between noncognitive factors and classroom/school context, as well as the larger socio-cultural context. <br /> <br /> It examines whether there is substantial evidence that noncognitive factors matter for students' long‐term success, clarifying how and why these factors matter, determining if these factors are malleable and responsive to context, determining if they play a role in persistent racial/ethnic or gender gaps in academic achievement, and illuminating how educators might best support the development of important noncognitive factors within their schools and classrooms. <br /> <br /> The review suggests some promising levers for change at the classroom level, and challenges the notion that hard work and effort are character traits of individual students, instead suggesting that the amount of effort a student puts in to academic work can depend, in large part, on instructional and contextual factors in the classroom. <br /> <br /> In addition, the review also presents challenges for future research on noncognitive factors. "

This talk by Toni Schmader, Professor of Psychology at University of British Columbia, is part of "Women and STEM: How stereotypes undermine the interest and success of women in science, technology, engineering, and math," a Faculty Curator Speaker Series organized by Jenessa Shapiro, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA. This series addresses the question of why women continue to be underrepresented and underperforming in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. Rather than focusing on possible biological or socialization factors, this series considers the role of stereotype threat. Speakers will present research demonstrating the emergence of stereotype threat in STEM domains, the mechanism that account for this phenomenon, and the ways in which we can intervene to prevent the deleterious influence of stereotype threat. The UCLA Center for the Study of Women is an internationally recognized center for research on gender, sexuality, and women's issues and the first organized research unit of its kind in the University of California system.

Provost Claude M. Steele - Lectures on "Identity and Stereotype Threat: Their Nature and What to do About Them at School and Work"

Learned a lot by watching this video. He talks about the research on how white teachers can give effective feedback to black students. He starts with two examples of what does not work and then describes the narrative that promotes success "I have seen your work, and if you work at this it could be really amazing." Acknowledge the stress, see this as normal and project success. His comments about how to make an integrated setting work is important for any institution who desires to become more diverse. (Stereotype threat triggered by various cues are more pronounced in integrated or diverse settings). Stereotype lift or boost is described which shows that it is advantageous to be on the upside of someone else's negative stereotype. In the experiments he describes, not only do women improve, but the men do worse when the playing field is more level. I heard this quote yesterday that seems relevant, "don't make the mistake of thinking that you hit a triple when you were born on third base."

Rising Above the Stereotype Threat - personal reflection by Satterwaite about his own school experience as an african american man in a predominately white academic environment as it relates to Steele's social-psychological concept of stereotype threat.

Tiltfactor Laboratory's buffalo is a 20-minute card game for 2-8 players, ages 14 and older. It was created as part of a National Science Foundation-funded project to design and study games to combat implicit bias and stereotype threat against girls and women in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields.

"A 2010 research report by AAUW presents compelling evidence that can help to explain this puzzle. Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) presents in-depth yet accessible profiles of eight key research findings that point to environmental and social barriers - including stereotypes, gender bias, and the climate of science and engineering departments in colleges and universities - that continue to block women's progress in STEM. The report also includes up-to-date statistics on girls' and women's achievement and participation in these areas and offers new ideas for what each of us can do to more fully open scientific and engineering fields to girls and women."

Creating a sense of belonging for all students in a classroom and at a school is essential to learning. What can leaders do to make students feel safe and welcome? What can teachers do to create an environment in which students feel supported, capable and competent? Based on Steele and Cohn-Vargas's book, Identity Safe Classrooms: Places to Belong and Learn, participants will study the concept of stereotype threat and then learn a set of behaviors that are within the teacher's and leader's spheres of influence and control in order increase identity safety for all students. Participants will learn how to Apply the concept of stereotype threat to their context Apply the key elements of the Identity Safe Classroom research to their context Refine their understanding of Dweck's growth mindset work and speak to how it connects to creating identity safe environments Thoughtfully choose from a variety of strategies for creating a sense of belonging in one's classroom, and also in one's school, one's department and/or grade level

"My colleagues and I have called such features "stereotype threat"-the threat of being viewed through the lens of a negative stereotype, or the fear of doing something that would inadvertently confirm that stereotype. Everyone experiences stereotype threat. We are all members of some group about which negative stereotypes exist, from white males and Methodists to women and the elderly. And in a situation where one of those stereotypes applies-a man talking to women about pay equity, for example, or an aging faculty member trying to remember a number sequence in the middle of a lecture-we know that we may be judged by it."

"The summit kicked off with a wonderful keynote by Joshua Aronson who is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Education at New York University (NYU). Aronson studies stereotypes, self-esteem, motivation, and attitudes. He showed some remarkable research results that showed that when people are reminded of their race or gender in a testing situation where there is a negative stereotype, they do worse on the test. This is called Stereotype Threat - which he defined as being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group. The threat causes anxiety, and all kinds of measurable changes - from the brain to heart rate, and also greatly impacts test results. Simply putting a box to mark gender, for example, at the front of a math test significantly changed test scores - for both men and women. Compared to a test where gender was not asked for, if gender was asked for at the beginning of a test, boy's scores went up, girls' scores went down. If gender was asked at the end, boys' scores went down, girls' scores went up."

his talk by Joshua Aronson, Professor of Applied Psychology at New York University, is part of "Women and STEM: How stereotypes undermine the interest and success of women in science, technology, engineering, and math," a Faculty Curator Speaker Series organized by Jenessa Shapiro, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at UCLA. This series addresses the question of why women continue to be underrepresented and underperforming in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and math. Rather than focusing on possible biological or socialization factors, this series considers the role of stereotype threat. Speakers will present research demonstrating the emergence of stereotype threat in STEM domains, the mechanism that account for this phenomenon, and the ways in which we can intervene to prevent the deleterious influence of stereotype threat. The UCLA Center for the Study of Women is an internationally recognized center for research on gender, sexuality, and women's issues and the first organized research unit of its kind in the University of California system.

When a black teen was arrested over a $350 belt, it was hardly surprising to many who say they're humiliated in stores & those who admit they've acted on stereotypes.

Recent work suggests that stereotype threat (ST) harms perfor- mance by reducing available working memory capacity. Is this the only mechanism by which ST can occur? Three experiments examined ST's impact on expert golf putting, which is not harmed when working memory is reduced but is hurt when attention is allocated to proceduralized processes that normally run outside working memory. Experiment 1 showed that well- learned golf putting is susceptible to ST. Experiments 2 and 3 demonstrated that giving expert golfers a secondary task elim- inates ST-induced impairment. Distracting attention away from the stereotype-related behavior eliminates the harmful impact of negative stereotype activation. These results are con- sistent with explicit monitoring theories of choking under pres- sure, which suggest that performance degradation can occur when too much attention is allocated to processes that usually run more automatically. Thus, ST alters information process- ing in multiple ways, inducing performance decrements for different reasons in different tasks.

Sian Beilock's blog on "brain science behind "choking under pressure" and the many factors influencing all types of performance: from test-taking to public speaking to your golf swing. "