Educational Unconscious Bias
In an educational setting, there are natural factors that create opportunities for bias among learners and educators. Some of the biases can be intentional, while some maybe not. Many school settings have diversified student natures ranging from gender to race, ethnicity, and cultural aspects. Such variance in the backgrounds, as well as the inability of an educator to be aware of the unconscious biases she or he poses to the students, can lead to issues to the learner’s performance and the general attitudes towards learning (Fiarman, 2016). For instance, the video from TED Talk revealed how Melissa experienced bias when she was in the 8th grade. Thus, this discussion explores unconscious bias in the educational system.
Cultural bias is rampant in schools. Students in most school settings have different cultures, and hence, they have different perceptions about life and variations in behaviors. As a language learner, my expectations and hopes are to be accepted despite my cultural background, and my uniqueness also honored. Teachers also try to foster an appreciation of cultures in schools to meet the objectives of learning and quality outcomes (Fiarman, 2016). However, there are many instances I have experienced cultural bias in my school. For example, most reading materials in our school reflect the majority of cultures. There are social study textbooks that misinterpret and wrongly view the historical events like the World War and the Westward explosion. The standardized question in classrooms also depicts educators’ cultural bias. I remember one of the language tests we did whose questions were significantly geared to the students that belonged to the majority groups (mainstream audience).
Thus, most educational systems experience unconscious cultural bias. As a language learner, I have been a victim of this bias through the learning materials provided and the social study textbooks available for us as students.
References
Fiarman, S. E. (2016). Unconscious bias: When good intentions aren’t enough. Educational Leadership, 74(3), 10-15.