At the next University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE) session, Edwin Mayes, director of the First Year Experience, and Naomi Sigg, director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs, will lead a discussion on the various types of stereotype threats that exist and what we can do to deal with them.
Stereotype threat is a well-researched phenomenon that explains how when students are in an assessment situation where they fear that a bad performance will reinforce a negative stereotype about them based on a collective characteristic—such as their gender or race or ethnicity—their performance suffers in comparison to those who do not labor under that stereotype.
One of the interesting findings of this research is that this adverse impact on performance is not restricted to just minority groups. Everyone can fall prey to it because each group can feel itself inferior to another group with respect to some quality.
Another interesting finding is that what triggers stereotype threats need not be that overt. Very subtle things can cause them and teachers need to have an awareness of them not only so that they do not inadvertently cause them, but also to counter them.
The common reading text for this year’s incoming students is the book Whistling Vivaldi: How Stereotypes Affect Us and What We Can Do (Issues of Our Time) by Claude Steele, now provost of Columbia University and one of the pioneer researchers in this field.
The session on stereotype threats will be Thursday, June 18, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Herrick Room of the Allen Memorial Medical Library.
Lunch will be provided at this session. RSVP to ucite@case.edu.