A report from the Yale University Child Study Center found that preschool teachers and staff show signs of implicit racial bias when disciplining students and anticipating misbehavior.
In the study, over 130 educators were instructed to watch video clips of children in a classroom setting and look for indications of “challenging behavior.” The clips did not show any misbehavior and the children featured were actually actors. However, the educators were unaware of these details and expected trouble.
Researchers used advanced eye-tracking technology to monitor which children the teachers observed. The results showed that educators show a tendency to more closely observe black students when expecting challenging behavior.
Black boys were the most closely surveyed with 42 percent of teachers saying that they required most of their attention when anticipating misbehavior. Thirty-four percent of teachers said the same for white boys, followed by 13 percent for white girls and 10 percent for black girls.
The research also accounted for the race of the educators. It found that black teachers tend to hold black students to a higher standard of behavior than their white peers, conveying “a belief that black children require harsh assessment and discipline to prepare them for a harsh world.”
Conversely, the study suggested that white teachers “may be acting on a stereotype that black preschoolers are more likely to misbehave in the first place, so they judge them against a different, more lenient standard than what they’re applying to white children.”