- In the article “Examining Racial Bias in Education: A New Approach”, the concept of implicit bias in regards to education is the focus. In a different book chapter that I came across earlier in this course, the idea of implicit theories of intelligence was introduced to me- where people have an idea that certain ethnic groups have more knowledge than others. This article I am using for my research now uses this but goes further into the field of education and discusses how teachers use this, despite their good intentions and attempts at fostering a diverse climate in their classrooms.
This article is really helpful in my research because I plan on going into education after I complete my BA in History, and this behavior is something that peaks my interests. I was always aware of biases that people had (to include teachers naturally) but never knew that it was such a widespread thing. Finding out more about why a person will predetermine how you are going to perform academically just by the color of your skin is vital for us to understand if we ever want to have an honest discussion about diversity and inclusion and how we can contribute anything of value to help fix this issue.
2. Briggite D. answers the article by giving a little background about her experiences working in office environments, giving us as little personal testimony of how these open environments made her feel. What I feel was important that she brought to the discussion is her introduction of some personal issues that she encountered while working in this type of office environment which is extending the picture for us. Briggite brings up the group mentality of the office as a whole, where she would bring up a complaint to her manager and request to be moved because of noise complaints, breakroom and microwave complaints, etc and she would instantly be singled out for trying to break the group dynamic. This seems like groupthink to me and is very unnerving. The purpose of work (to me) is to get stuff done and be successful, and it seems that she (and i’m sure others like her in other places) would be shut down from trying to do their best because they didn’t have the freedom to work comfortably and were essentially forced into going with the flow.
It’s interesting to consider how a physical environment can foster certain kinds of behaviors while making others less workable. Think about how we do this in classrooms–when desks are in rows all facing the same direction, that encourages a very particular kind of dynamic (teacher talks; students receive), as opposed to a circle that makes everyone visible to everyone else and can help to facilitate dialogue, rather than lecture).