Research School Network: Biased…who? Me?

Teaching is a helluva busy job. We deal with hundreds of people on a weekly basis, with seemingly too little time and too much pressure. To manage the challenge, we take shortcuts.

Shortcuts are wise. When we mark assessments, group students, adapt our lesson plans, we are making quick thinking decisions, often based on such short-cuts.

Shortcuts are common sense. When we teach a group starting afresh in January after they have been inning on X‑box and social media for a fortnight, we may choose to shake things up a bit and rearrange the classroom seating plan. We may put the ​‘good kid’ with the ​‘not-so-good kid’, or boys with girls, or similar. Our decisions rest on our knowledge of such students and most often they work out just fine.

Crucially, however, our mental shortcuts can backfire and prove damaging. Researchers have found that our biases infect our thinking when we are marking the work of our students. Our bias can stem from prior experience with a student, gender, class, race, being classified as ​‘gifted and talented’ or with an SEN label – even to physical attractiveness! Such biases can account for 4 or 5 marks on a 1 to 100 scale, according to the research undertaken by John M Malhouff et al. (2016).

Our quick thinking can prove to be flawed thinking. Perhaps we don’t give a student a new start that they need this year? Or maybe our feedback makes too many assumptions about individuals in our class? It bears thinking hard about.

The Royal Society have recognised this issue and they have provided a helpful short video that is well worth three minutes of your time. Take a look:

Their short briefing on ​‘unconscious bias’ is excellent and well worth a quick read. It states that they are particularly interested in eliminating such biases from the job interview process too, which should also give us pause. Their findings provide a really useful set of ​‘action points‘ to help us:

Of course, it can prove uncomfortable to recognise our own biases and stereotyping, but recognise it we must. It may slow us down at times, but harder thinking will provide us with better decision making. We needn’t cut out our shortcuts, but simply recognising their limitations is a good start in mitigating our unconscious biases.

Plymouth University have produced a really handy guide, entitled ​‘7 Steps to: Mitigating Unconscious Bias in Teaching and Learning‘ that is well worth a look.