Thinking about values
Thinking (and writing) about values: A strategy for mitigating stereotype threat at Sky School
The purpose of this activity is to encourage students to consider their own value systems, and reflect on how their values could connect with scientific fields.
What is stereotype threat?
You are probably familiar with common stereotypes in our culture about the academic abilities of people from certain groups. “Stereotype threat” is the name given to the reduced performance of someone who is reminded of a negative stereotype before performing task. For example, emphasizing gender right before a math test can reduce women’s test scores. The negative effect is generally thought to result from anxiety about disproving negative stereotypes.
What can we do to mitigate it?
Students visit Sky School typically with their peers from school, and bring their social identities with them. Stereotype threat is possibly present and negatively affecting the participation or performance of some groups of students during our programs, as well as in science class back at school.
Recent research has demonstrated that asking students to reflect on values that are important to them can mitigate stereotype threat in vulnerable students without negatively affecting groups that would not suffer from it. The results could even last longer than a program at Sky School, although much more research remains to be done in this area.
Specifically what you (YOU!) can do on each program:
- We have added a section to the the last page of each field journal at Sky School that prompts students to consider a list of values, choose two to three that are important to them, and write a few sentences about why.
- At an opportune moment during the program, ask students to turn to that page and to spend a few minutes writing their answers.
- To help them feel confident in being honest for themselves rather than performing for their peers, emphasize they will not be required to share these answers publicly, but you can read them if they need external motivation to put effort in to the task.
More resources:
This is fairly new and cutting edge research, and such strategies are unfortunately not widely implemented yet. For more background on stereotype threat research and mitigation techniques, check out these websites:
http://www.reducingstereotypethreat.org/reduce.html
and these papers:
Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L. (2006). The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation
theory. In M. P. Zanna (Ed.) Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Vol. 38, pp.
183-242). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Purdie-Vaughns, V., Cohen, G., Garcia, J., Sumner, R., Cook, J., & Apfel, N. (2009). Improving minority academic performance: How a values-affirmation intervention works. The Teachers College Record.
Miyake, A., Kost-Smith, L. E., Finkelstein, N. D., Pollock, S. J., Cohen, G. L., & Ito, T. A. (2010). Reducing the gender achievement gap in college science: A classroom study of values affirmation. Science, 330(6008), 1234-1237.
