Marcy Weber and Katherine Sprengelmeyer Post #3

Cobras, Cat Folders, Contingencies, and Other Environmental Hazards

By . . . Marcy Weber (1st grade teacher) and

Katherine Sprengelmeyer (middle school teacher)

How Do Stereotypes Threats Happen?

Marcin. (2018). Science Session Pictograph [Image].
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/session-
science-pictogram-fatigue-1989711/
Creative Commons CC0

Stereotype threat happens when an individual feels pressure not only to perform well, but to break the stigma of his/her social identity group when taking a test or performing a task.  A stereotype threat can occur in many different groups according to social psychologist Claude M. Steele (2010). In Steele’s book, Whistling Vivaldi, he found that a stereotype threat occurred in many of his test participants when they were told prior to taking a test that the test would be measuring something that reflected a stigma for the ethnic, cultural, or social group to which the individual belonged. For example, Steele explored the effects of the stereotype of black students that they are somehow lower achievers and/or have lower intelligence. Researchers told a group of black and white participants that the test they were taking would measure their verbal abilities. When given this information, black students did not perform as well as white students nor as well as black students who had not been given this information.  Steele believed the black students who had been told the test measured verbal ability had felt the stereotype threat and the pressure of disproving this stereotype. This pressure prevented these students from doing well on the test. When a different group of black and white students took the same test but were told it would measure general problem solving, the black and white students performed similarly. There was not a stigma addressed prior to the test.  The black students did not feel a stereotype threat and thus did not feel the pressure to defeat a stereotype when taking the test (Steele, 2010).

The Reality of Stereotype Threats for High Ability/Highly Invested Students

It is interesting to note that in Chapter 3 of Whistling Vivaldi, more testing was done comparing students who cared a lot about school to those that did not care that much about school.  Doing the same type of testing as before, it was found that students who cared more about school did worse on tests when given a stereotype threat than students who did not care that much about school (Steele, 2010).  This makes sense to me because I feel that students who really care about their education and how they are viewed want to fight off stereotypes and disprove them.  The stereotype threat is real in my opinion, and I feel it happens more often with students who care about their education than with those who are complacent.  Students who highly value education do not want to be a part of any stereotype that insinuates that they lack ability. They are trying to carve their own path and do it their way.  They want to be looked at as individuals and not lumped together in a stereotype. These are the students that have high ambitions and want to make a difference.

The Role of the Environment in Our Identity

Garter Snake Forest. (2018). [Image].
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/garter-
snake-forest-macro-crawl-3546237
Creative Commons CC0

At about 18 months, my daughter fell in love with snakes.  Not the plush, cute, cuddly variety, but the realistic looking rubber snakes you find at museum gift shops.  Coral snakes, water moccasins, and cobras dangled out of her crib. It unnerved visitors. It repulsed the babysitter.  It concerned the grandparents.  You could say my daughter has her

own . . . style. I thought her first real identity issue, naturally, would be about something profound.  But no, it came at the back-to-school section of our local big box store . . . over a cat folder. My now eight-year-old wanted to sacrifice buying the cat folder she wanted for a dog folder that she felt would earn her the acceptance of her dog-loving elementary school peers.   “People judge, Mom!  People judge!”

What had changed about my daughter? Was it her personality, her inner qualities, or her values? No, what had changed was her awareness of and response to her environment.

Our environments and the negative identity contingencies they generate can cause us more strongly to adhere to a particular identity while letting other identities subside, particularly when an identity is threatened.  As social psychologist Claude M. Steele states, “This threat makes the identity to which it is directed, of all the person’s social identities, the one that dominates emotion, thinking, the one that, for that time ‘invades the person’s whole identity’” (2010). Imagine, then, that you are the one black child in the classroom during a discussion of the Civil Rights Movement.  The teacher makes a point, and the class turns to you to see if you agree. You might be the most intelligent, eloquent student in the classroom, but in that moment, you may think only about how you are the only black student in the classroom. No one verbally said anything overtly racist, but your environment just unfairly made you the unofficial spokesperson of your race, and the pressure is on!

In Whistling Vivaldi, Steele uses the example of “passing,” presenting oneself as belonging to another racial or ethnic group that differs from one’s actual group, to show how environment influences our response to stereotype threats.  Using the example of black author Anatole Broyard, Steele describes how Broyard changed his opportunities for literary, financial, and social success by manipulating the contingencies of his environment. By passing as white, Broyard changed where he could live, the resources he had access to, and the people he interacted with each day (Steele, 2010).  By manipulating how his environment affected him, Broyard changed the trajectory of his life albeit at a heavy price.

Where Do We Go from Here?  A First Grade Teacher’s Perspective

Altmann, G. (2018). Town Sign [Image].
Retrieved from https://pixabay.com/en/town-sign-place-name-sign-success-1148092/
Creative Commons CC0

What we can do as educators to help decrease stereotype threats is to get to know our students and their families.  We have students coming to us with different backgrounds, income levels, and home lives. As teachers, we need to be sensitive to stereotypes and do our best to treat each student with respect.  We are role models for our students, and it is vital for us to teach our students how to interact appropriately with one another. Educators need to create a safe, welcoming learning environment where all students feel accepted and cared for.

Where Do We Go from Here?  A Middle School Teacher’s Perspective

So, what can I do as a middle school teacher to protect our students from stereotype threats and from an environment that threatens their identity? I think one essential quality of any teacher is the ability to make a classroom feel safe. Students need the opportunity to discuss issues that affect their identity. As an English teacher, I need to remember to give students time to make connections between literature and their lives and take time for teachable moments rather than simply focus on the skill-driven standards of the Common Core. In Whistling Vivaldi (2010), Steele discusses the need to foster group conversations among diverse groups of students and the need to be careful about the ways that we give feedback to minority students.  As teachers, we must foster students’ identities so that they are comfortable expressing themselves in our classrooms. Steele also warns that many of us may feel tempted to avoid discussing issues like race because we feel we should be moving into a “postracial society” where race is no longer an issue, but one look at recent headlines should tell us that we are not there yet and that critical conversations about how we handle diversity are desperately needed.

References

Southern Poverty Law Center. (1991-2018). Diversity, Equity And Justice. Retrieved July 31, 2018, from https://www.tolerance.org/

Steele, C. (2011). Whistling Vivaldi: And other clues to how stereotypes affect us. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company.

 

A couple of students were not able to post to this blog site so they made up their own. I am sharing the link here so you can see their work. If you have personal blogs please feel free to link any of the work here in them.

Melanie & Kim's blog

Stereotype Threat and the Importance of it

The Importance of Stereotype Threat 

Stereotype threats/stigmas are predicaments where one would conform to stereotypes about their particular group. I also believe this occurs when other individuals succumb to stereotypes about one's particular group based on being placed in situations/events/experiences that have a predetermined outcome defined by society.  For example, the education system. I have found that a teacher’s implicit bias based on stereotypes can either make or break a student. There is a School-to-Prison pipeline. This is an institutionalized system where a disproportionate amount of minority students with nonconventional backgrounds become incarcerated due to harsh reprimanding policies. When a teacher has to make a decision of “who gets in trouble” based on a situation of two students, one white privileged student and one underprivileged minority student, without witnessing the situation first hand, the sad truth is that the underprivileged student will most likely suffer from the situation.

The traits of stereotype threat is only solidified through situational happenings  and shouldn’t be confused with an individual's traits. Delving into this aspect of student life as it pertains to the impact on minority groups is an interesting and effective method in understanding the life they live. The situation of conforming to stereotype threat is useful and sometimes necessary when moving throughout life for certain minority groups. While it creates misperceived notions for some people  because they are saving face in their social circles and specifically social situations. Situational occurrences give weight to the understanding that keeping a facade for certain stereotypes for individuals is more comfortable than producing to the best of that person's abilities and putting forth the necessary effort. 

The best way to breakdown stereotype threat and its dynamic involvement that it plays in everyday lives is to take in the limiting factors that it presents in conforming and to look at the options of going against the norm and performing to maximum potential. This understanding of stereotype threat  or the stigma associated with this concept is that it provides minority groups with negatively associated stereotypes to conform to, in a sense. Then these negatively implicated mannerisms get associated to the actual groups. It is also looked at as a contributing factor to gaps that are racially prompted when looking into academic proficiencies and academic competency among students.

For example, I went to the Dominican Republic with some peers for a class about ecotourism within the country and ended up learning more about stereotype threats/stigmas between Dominicans and Haitians. The Dominican Republic and Haiti are two bordering countries that make up an island of what was known as Hispaniola. Historically, these countries have not gotten along but have relied on each other in some events. Mainly, the Dominicans have not had the best relations with Haitians due to their dark complexion. That’s a big component of why they are two countries. The Dominicans wanted to keep their lighter complexions and thought this would be a good way to ensure that. The progressives in the Dominican look past all of that and welcome all, but there is still a big cloud of comfortability between the two groups. The Haitians that live in the Dominican Republic stay off in their own area due to not being able to thrive in the country. There are laws and ordinances in place that keep Haitians from having the same privileges and rights as Dominicans. The stereotype about Hatians are that, to be blunt, they are cannibalistic savages who will never be on the same “level” as the Dominicans. As a Dominican child, you were told that if you didn’t eat all of your food that a Haitian would come and eat you. When you instill this kind of rhetoric in an impressionable child, it stays with them. Now, because of these stereotypes, Hatians don’t actually act upon them because of a stereotype threat, but it creates a huge divide between the two groups, making it really hard to work together and prosper.

"The Effects of Stereotype Threat on the Standardized Test Performance
 of College Students (adjusted for group differences on SAT)".
From J. Aronson, C.M. Steele, M.F. Salinas, M.J. Lustina,
Readings About the Social Animal, 8th edition, ed. E. Aronson

The complexion issue between the two groups is confusing because the Dominican Republic is composed of a lot of dark skinned individuals. Myself being a darker skinned individual, I was expecting to come across some discrimination, but I was loved. The hierarchical rank was baffling. Me being an American trumped the fact that I was black, so I was treated very well. There is this notion that in the Dominican, the darker you are, the more adored you were, which is a huge juxtaposition of them having an issue with Haitians dark complexion. But, as long as you were Dominican, it did not matter. Which brought up the question of: how was one able to differentiate between a dark skinned Dominican and a Hatian? The answer to that was the dialect of Spanish they spoke, crazy.

Along the way I had visited an elementary school. There were about 20 kids and three of them were born Dominicans with Haitian parents. You could obviously tell the children weren’t as included in their class as they would have liked. They were made to go to the back of the line and receive their lunch last, and kids wouldn’t play with them. It was pitiful.

On a side note, they don’t like white people, not just Americans but Europeans. The Dominican Republic is a huge prostitution hub with a majority of recipients being white individuals. Dominicans believe that they are taken advantage of because of their economic instability. The money is good but the people giving it are not. There were four white individuals on the trip and they had very interesting experiences, some leaving them feeling uncomfortable and some feeling welcomed.

I hope to go back some day and learn more about the history and culture of the Dominican.

Reference: 

Steele, C. M. (2010). Whistling Vivaldi: how stereotypes affect us and what we can do.