Teachers’ implicit attitudes, explicit beliefs, and the mediating role of respect and cultural responsibility on mastery and performance-focused instructional practices.

Abstract

The theory of planned behavior and the dual process attitude-to-behavior MODE model framed an examination of how White teachers' (N = 241) implicit and explicit attitudes toward White versus non-White students were related to their classroom instructional practices in 2 school districts with a high percentage of Arab American and Chaldean American (ArChal) students. We proposed a model in which the relations would be mediated by teachers' desire to promote respect in the classroom and to take responsibility for providing a culturally responsive curriculum and resolving interethnic conflicts. The Implicit Association Test assessed teachers' implicit preference for White relative to ArChal adolescents, and explicit measures assessed teachers negative stereotypic beliefs regarding minority and poor adolescents. Path analysis indicated that teachers' explicit and implicit attitudes, mediated by their desire to promote respect and by their personal sense of responsibility for engaging in culturally responsive teaching, explained 30% and 13% of the variance in teachers' endorsement of mastery-and performancefocused instructional practices, respectively. Teachers who held more implicitly favorable attitudes toward White relative to ArChal adolescents were less likely to promote mutual respect among students and were consequently less responsible for engaging in culturally adaptive practices and for resolving interethnic conflict among students. Explicit negative belief regarding minority and poor students was directly related to endorsing performance-focused instructional practices. Results imply the need to provide teachers the opportunities to reflect and deliberate on their attitudes and understand the links among implicit attitudes, explicit beliefs, and classroom instruction.

Examining the Academic Motivation of a Diverse Student Population: A Consideration of Methodology

“…The authors argue that teachers' implicit expectations about students' ability levels might influence how they interact with the student and lead to worse performance. Consistent with this idea, Kumar, Karabenick, and Burgoon (2015) demonstrated that the more teachers show implicit preference for White students, the less likely they are to promote mutual respect of cultures in their classrooms. Recently, Jacoby-Senghor, Sinclar, and Shelton (2016) demonstrated how the implicit attitudes of a teacher can influence student outcomes in a lab setting.…”

Teachers' Implicit Attitudes Toward Students From Different Social Groups: A Meta-Analysis

“…Only few studies investigate the link between implicit attitudes and teachers' expectations and students' achievement and provide mixed results. More specifically, only in one study implicit attitudes were associated with differential expectations, whereas in others this association was not significant Kumar et al, 2015). Only two studies investigated the association between implicit attitudes and students' actual achievement outcomes van den Bergh et al, 2010), both supporting the notion that teachers' negative implicit attitudes were related to differences in achievement between student groups.…”

“…Only two studies investigated the association between implicit attitudes and students' actual achievement outcomes van den Bergh et al, 2010), both supporting the notion that teachers' negative implicit attitudes were related to differences in achievement between student groups. Kumar et al (2015) were able to show that teachers' with more negative implicit attitudes toward ethnic minority students were less likely to promote respect among the students and resolve interethnic conflicts. Due to the correlational nature of the analysis, cause-effect relationships remain unclear.…”

Ethnic and Racial Disparities in Education: Psychology's Role in Understanding and Reducing Disparities

“…Troublingly, membership in ethnic or racial minority group does not make adults immune to implicit bias against their own group (Nosek et al, 2002). Available research suggests that teachers' implicit racial attitudes mirror the general population (Kumar, Karabenick, & Burgoon, 2015).…”

“…The presence of high-bias classrooms across the school years would lead to an accumulation of disadvantage, which is consistent with widening of ethnic and racial disparities the longer a student is in the educational system. Kumar et al (2015) documented how those teachers with greater racial bias tended to use less culturally adapted curriculum and promote less mutual respect among students.…”