Research Paper on Stereotype Threat

Stereotype Threat in a High Stakes Testing surround Jennifer J. Krebs Wilkes University Abstract Given the rapidly ever-changing demographics of todays classrooms chip in with the game-stakes exam environment created by the passage of No Child Left Behind, it is important to control potential explanations for the persistence of movement gaps. Explanations for the achievement gap have included utmost populations of English Language Learners (ELLs), socioeconomic issues, want of resources at the school, teacher, and savant levels, and even constituent(a) differences in the intellectual abilities of sortd and non- classd hosts.A possibility createed by Steele and Aronson, c anyed assort flagellum, provided a radical view into how association of sort outs affects exercise (McKown & adenineere Strambler, 2009). Stereotype scourge is the come of anxiety or concern in a situation where a psyche has the potential to confirm a detrimental stereotype about their access ible group. The affair of this look for was to locate how and when children get off to develop knowledge of stereotypes and how stereotype holy terror affects faculty member functioning. IntroductionThe diversity of educatee demographics increases every day. Therefore, teachers essential be increasingly more alive(predicate) of the heathenish differences and ch on the wholeenges that students from diverse backgrounds bring to school. non only are these students potential to get wind differently base on their cultural expectations, scarce these students are also in all likelihood to possess knowledge of commonly held affectionate stereotypes which can forbidly impact their military operation (McKown &type A Strambler, 2009). The current emphasis on highschool-stakes testing makes the achievement of all students passing important.Experimental research into executeance gaps was limited prior to a groundbreaking resume that focus on the possibility of stereotyp e threat. first described by companionable psychologist Claude Steele and his colleagues, stereotype threat (ST) has been shown to reduce the implementation of individuals who run short to invalidatingly stereotyped groups (McKown & Strambler, 2009). Since its display into the faculty member literature in 1995, stereotype threat has become wizard of the approximately widely studied topics in the field of view of psychology.However, a major assumption of this conjecture was that children possess knowledge of commonly held complaisant stereotypes. In point to underwrite this assumption, the pastime qualitative studies were implemented to determine how and when children begin to develop knowledge of stereotypes. This research is combined with quantitative studies to determine how ST affects academic performance. order Schaffer and Skinner (2009) examined student interactions within quaternary-spot fourth step classrooms at a diverse public school in the southeast ern United States.Upon observing student interactions and conducting interviews, the detectives discovered several patterns. First, tweed children were less(prenominal) likely to engage in stated race talk, while black students much engaged in openly racial discussions and often used commonly held stereotypes to cite themselves. Second, most minority students who performed at the high end of the class and participated in contend academic programs relied severely on racial stereotypes to bridge the social gap among themselves and their racial peers.These students sought to distance themselves from the white students with whom they took advanced classes. Third, white students were more likely to describe students of other races as brazen-faced or troublemaking (Schaffer & Skinner, 2009). These observations suggest that students were not only aware of commonly held stereotypes, but strategically used them to organize their social world and dictate social functions. close to other get wind, which examined high school students, suggested that these trends continue as students mature rather than diminish. Lisa M.Nunn (2011) observed cardinal classrooms across three different high schools, and conducted 57 interviews with students to determine the ways in which students classroom interactions reflected ideas about commonly held stereotypes. In one school, n betimes half of the students interviewed express that race matters for school success. At some other school, students expressed frustration with being racial targets and felt they had done nothing to plague degrading views from their classmates. Furthermore, in a remedial English classroom consisting of eight students, the researcher noticed a ommon occurrence. Five of the students in this classroom were Hispanic, and three were white. The white students all had learning disabilities which hindered their language usage, while the Latino students only handicap was that English was not their nati ve language (Nunn, 2011). Combining ELLs with students with disabilities effectively treats the native language of ELLs as a learning disability. Between the racial views of the students and the taxonomical reinforcement of prejudices, it is easy to understand why students tend to hold views that race matters for success.The challenge that remains is how does this knowledge of stereotypes affect student academic performance? McKown and Strambler (2009) conducted a study of 124 students ranging in age from grades K-4 in a suburban Chicago area. The students were inclined a series of vignettes to determine their ability to commit stereotypes and then placed in symptomatic or non-symptomatic groups to complete performance tasks. consistent with prior research, minority participants in the diagnostic group performed worse than in the non-diagnostic group and majority participants performed equally well in both groups (McKown & Strambler, 2009).Desert, Preaux, and Jund (2009) ad ministered predates APM to 153 children within first and third grades. In the diagnostic group, students were given the standard politics instructions as provided in the downs APM Administration Manual. In the non-diagnostic group, students were given instructions explaining that the test was actually a series of games that the researchers developed and were testing to determine their appropriateness for the students age groups.Researchers stratified the emergences based on socioeconomic status, arguing that negative stereotypes about the performance of low-SES students could result in ST. The results of the study showed that low-SES students in the diagnostic group performed significantly worse than those in the non-diagnostic group. The performance of high SES students did not differ significantly among the two groups (Desert, Preaux, & Jund, 2009). These results suggested that children in the early elementary years are not immune to ST, even on a test that is supposed to be goal free. While all of these experiments support he theory of ST, one of the strongest arguments to date relies heavily on developing technologies. Derks, Inzlicht, and Kang (2008) offered an overview of breakthroughs in social neuroscience research that highlighted biological factors underlying conditions of stereotype threat. The researchers discussed several experiments that used functional magnetized resonance imagining (fMRI), electroencephalography (EEG), and event-related potentials (ERP) to measure the neurological activities of participants when asked to perform tasks under diagnostic and non-diagnostic conditions.One study tested women under mathematical performance stereotypes and lay down that the conflict monitoring systems of the brilliance showed a mis-regulation of neural responses. This information supported the supposition that emotions aroused by ST conditions lead to a falling off in cognitive ability. The decrease in ability occurred because emotion-re gulation centers of the brain experience increased activity while areas of the brain associated with academic performance and cognition experient decreased activity. The researchers cautioned that neuroscience experiments in the area are too new to allow for generalizations and classical findings.However, they argued that development of this area is crucial to the study and understanding of stereotype threat (Derks, Inzlicht, & Kang, 2008). Results The assumption that the performance gap among stereotyped and non-stereotyped groups is solely rooted in cultural differences and limitations of students background is restrictive. Research has shown that thither is also a factor of social mental threat related to knowledge and perceptions of stereotypes, which can depress test heaps of stereotyped individuals.The use of high-stakes testing in an overall environment of racial inconsistency perpetuates that inequality through the emotional and psychological power of the tests ove r the test-takers. While researchers have begun to delve into the intricacies as to how stereotype threat causes decreases in performance and other negative personal effects, there is still much research that needs to be conducted in order to completely understand the mechanisms that underlie the performance deficits that occur as a result of stereotype threat. ConclusionIn conclusion, stereotype threat is a pervasive phenomenon that has the ability to impact a variety of individuals in a function of ways. Current research offers us brain wave as to what stereotype threat is, how it impacts individuals, what mechanisms withdraw the relationship between stereotype threat and performance, and how we can begin to remediate some of the damaging impacts of this threat. Since the current emphasis on high-stakes testing does not appear to be diminishing, teachers and mentors should at a minimum garment students with knowledge about the possible effects of stereotype threat.In this way, proactive strategies might substitute a powerless situation into one where students are actively participating in discussions that illuminate the complexities and strengths of their raisingal futures. Teacher education programs should review their course curriculum and address any gaps in the discussion of regularise testing and methods to improve test scores. ever-changing test directions from diagnostic to non-diagnostic, educating students in manipulable intelligence theories, and reducing the general distort of the testing environment are all methods which could be implemented.References Derks, B. , Inzlicht, M. , & Kang, S. (2008). The neuroscience of stigma and stereotype threat. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 11(2), 163-181. Desert, M. , Preaux, M. , & Jund, R. (2009). So young and already victims of stereotype threat Socio-economic status and performance of 6 to 9 years old children on Ravens progressive matrices. European daybook of Psychology of Ed ucation, 24, 207-218. McKown, C. & Strambler, M. J. (2009).Developmental antecedents and social academic consequences of stereotype-consciousness in middle childhood. Child Development, 80, 1643-1659. Nunn, L. (2011). Classrooms as racialized spaces Dynamics of collaboration, tension, and student attitudes in urban and suburban high schools. Urban Education, 46, 1226-1255. Schaffer, R. & Skinner, D. G. (2009). Performing race in four culturally diverse fourth grade classrooms Silence, race talk, and the negotiation of social boundaries. Anthropology & Education Quarterly, 40, 277-296.