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Stereotypes

Stereotypes: What are they?

Paper submitted in partial fulfillments of the requirements for EDRS 812: Qualitative Methods

Fall 2009

Professor: Joseph Maxwell

Faye Huie

A topic of longstanding interest for many social scientists is how different social justiceissues impact behavior, learning, and performance. One of the core issues of social justice that is commonly ignored among educational researchers are stereotypes. Specifically, stereotypes are defined as gross overgeneralizations of groups of people (Steel & Aronson, 1995) and function as a means through which people use to understand and categorize people and society (Aronson & Steele, 2005). Additionally, stereotypes have a strong influence on how people behave and can cause the stereotyped group to be treated and perceived differently (Aronson & Steele, 2005) by teachers (Tyson, 2003), peers (Aronson & Good, 2002), and even parents (Aronson & Steele, 2005). Essentially, stereotypes are social in nature and create different expectations, whether negative or positive, that people have about other people in their categorized groups (Aronson & Steele, 2005). These different beliefs and judgments that people make, however, are largely unconscious and have serious implications for the achievement patterns of a certain group such as African Americans (Steele & Aronson, 1995). However, how do stereotypes act to influence achievement? Although many researchers have attempted to answer this question, to my knowledge, none have examined stereotypes with a qualitative lens.

One of the most popularly researched topics in terms of stereotypes is a phenomenon called stereotype threat. This term was coined after Steele and Aronson’s (1995) groundbreaking study that found that achievement gaps emerged between Whites and Blacks when the students were just asked to classify their race on a non diagnostic achievement test. Specifically, stereotype threat refers to the anxiety that one feels about being judged or treated stereotypically or the fear of conforming to a certain negative stereotype about his/her group (Steele & Aronson, 1995). Many researchers (Steele & Aronson, 1995) have found that the anxiety or threat that one feels actually hinders performance and increases conformity to the gender as well as racial stereotypes (Aronson & Inzlicht, 2004; Steele & Aronson, 1995).

There were two main purposes of this present project. The first was to describe and document my trials and tribulations of my first attempt at qualitative approaches to empirical research. The second was to examine what people believe to be the mediators of the relationship between stereotype threat and achievement. In this final paper, I willfirst describe my initial views of qualitative research. Following, I will explain why I chose to examine stereotypes and my background and beliefs that influenced my interests in stereotypes. Finally, I will discuss my personal beliefs and expectations regarding this subject and how that helped shape my goals and research questions.

The first aim of this project was to learn how to conduct qualitative research. Personally, I came from a very strong quantitative, psychology background. I was always interested in education and got involved in developmental psychology during college. There, I met my mentor, who is very strong in quantitative methods. He taught me the ins and outs of research and I absorbed as much knowledge as I can in terms of how to conduct sound research. After I completed my undergraduate honors thesis with him, I was hooked. I love doing research. I love making my own discoveries and the feeling of accomplishing a project was such a rewarding feeling. However, I also felt a need to provide something of substance to the field of learning, not just basic research that people will read and forget about. The application of research was missing in developmental psychology. Therefore, I enrolled in an educational psychology program, which I felt had a good combination of both the practical applications of research as well as the methodological aspect of research.

However, I was blinded. I truly believed that statistics was the only approach to research that made it rigorous and applicable. A collection of quotes was so arcane and subjective to me that no valid conclusions can be drawn from it. Qualitative approaches to research cannot be applied! In fact, if this qualitative class was not a required course for the PhD in education program, I would not have taken it. However, since I did want to graduate successfully with my PhD, I grudgingly took the class. As I will discuss later, I think that my initial views of qualitative research made this learning experience even more rewarding than it would have been.

Personal Beliefs and Experiences about Stereotypes.

Since enrolling in the PhD program and completing my first class, Ways of Knowing, my worldview has changed dramatically. The way I understand the world today is completely different from the way I viewed the world two years ago because of one topic: Critical Race Theory. Prior to beginning the PhD program I had a very naïve view of the world and what “academic” research was. Although I was fascinated with the science behind learning, I was heavily trained to view learning as a “variable” and to be as objective as possible. However, as a first year PhD student with some very specific expectations about what I would learn in graduate school, the Ways of Knowing class completely evolved my understanding of what education and learning is and why I am pursing a PhD degree.

I can confidently say that the Ways of Knowing class was the most influential class of my academic career thus far and Critical Race Theory has significantly changed my personal philosophy. Critical Race Theory is not the traditional theory built on models that can be tested quantitatively, but more like an approach, view, and understanding of the phenomenon of “race” that is discussed through qualitative research, narrative, and discourse analysis. Through a lot of reflective writings and readings, I realized that one major factor present in Critical Race Theory was the idea of “beliefs”.

It seemed obvious enough. The reason why people think “race” exists is because of their beliefs about other and their own people. Essentially, the very definition of race is based on the different beliefs that people have about any group of people and that those beliefs create a framework for making sense of the world. Unfortunately, most beliefs are implicit in nature and have both positive and negative repercussions. Specifically, most people are not aware of their beliefs and do not reflect upon them, especially with beliefs about race. When I began to reflect on my beliefs about race I was surprised, disappointed, but relieved at the same time. My beliefs about race indicated, according to Critical Race Theory, that I was an implicit racist. In fact, I still am—and so is everyone else. This is the exact point that Critical Race Theory attempts to illuminate: race and racism exists because of our implicit and naïve beliefs about race. The inequalities that are present in today’s society are perpetuated as a direct result of those implicit beliefs. The only way to combat these inequalities, then, is to make the implicit beliefs explicit, no Matter how uncomfortable people may feel.

I believe that the very reason why inequalities exist in today’s society is because of the beliefs that people have about others, namely, stereotypes. I believe that stereotypes directly cause a person to behave, act, and perform a certain way that is largely unknown to both the person practicing and experiencing the stereotype. I strongly believe that the reason why the racial, gender, sexual orientation, age, achievement, employment, economic---any gap exists is because of stereotypes. My beliefs are so strong that even if I read an empirical article that concludes that no stereotype effect is present, I immediately attribute those findings to methodological and measurement issues. In my mind, it is almost impossible for stereotype to really not affect anyone.

Obviously, my beliefs about stereotypes are very strong. I feel almost like a hypocrite when I preach about equality because of my lack of awareness of my own stereotypic beliefs and actions. I feel like I almost have to “fix” things in order to make things “right.” Therefore, I feel personally invested on this topic. On the later sections of this project report, I will discuss how I think my personal beliefs and biases impacted my study.

Taking into consideration of the relationship between stereotypes and performance, it is especially important to examine this relationship in the educational context. Stereotype threat in particular has serious educational implications, especially for standardized testing and evaluation. Specifically, every student who takes a standardized test knows that the purpose of the test is to measure their academic ability. If we all know that stereotype threat is a phenomenon that truly exists, what does the test really measure? Are we implicitly expanding the achievement and social gap between minorities and non-minorities, men and women? With NCLB’s main focus on achievement testing and the serious consequences that schools and teachers face with not meeting benchSeans, it is critical to examine the social effects of how students today are assessed.

Goals.

Based on my beliefs and personal experiences, I have developed several goals for this project which fall under three broad categories: personal, practical, and intellectual (Maxwell, 2005). In terms of my personal goals, they are based on my prior experiences and beliefs about stereotypes. I feel personally invested in this topic and I am completely intrigued by the impact of stereotype beliefs on performance. As a result, the question that I constantly ask myself is, “What is the link between stereotypes and performance?” I reject the notion that beliefs automatically result in some sort of outcome. Specifically, I feel that there is some behavioral link that connects ones cognitions and beliefs to ones outcomes. Behavioral outcomes of stereotype beliefs have enormous implications for not only education, but the workforce and policy as well. Therefore, my personal goalis to satisfy my curiosity on stereotypes and ultimately (or partially with this project) satisfy my urge to at least attempt to alleviate the repercussions of stereotypes on social issues.

Although this research will not substantially change how stereotypes play an amplifying role on social justice issues, this project will further explore and attempt to clarify how people understand stereotypes. I think that an understanding of how people understand stereotypes themselves can equip educational researchers with the proper knowledge to design interventions and combat the negative consequences of stereotypes. Specifically, I believe that in order to promote change, a thorough understanding of the issue that needs to be changed is required. In this case, it is furthering defining the construct of stereotypes down to its specific parts, which is the intellectual goal of this project.

Overall, these goals that I have formulated follow a linear developmental pattern. First, I need to satisfy my curiosity and fascination with stereotypes as well as fulfill my personal responsibility to address and alleviate these social issues (personal goals). Ultimately, my goal is provide insight onto how researchers can develop interventions to target and mitigate the impact of stereotypes on performance (practical goal), however in order to do so, we must understand how people perceive and understand stereotypes (intellectual goals).

Therefore, my personal, practical, and intellectual goals all drove my initial research questions were as follows:

1)What different implicit assumptions do people have about stereotypes; and

2)What do people think are the processes that impact the relationship between stereotypes and academic performance?

Methods

In this section I will describe the approach that I used to examine my initial research questions. In addition, I will also describe how my biases and initial perceptions about stereotypes impacted each stage of the data collection process.

Participants.

Originally, I was going to collect data from college students. I wanted to see the different perspectives that college students held about the relationship between stereotypes and performance. However, the only reason why I did want to look at college student perspectives was that because I was familiar with this sample. All of my prior research experiences centered on the self-regulatory and motivational beliefs of college students. Therefore, I felt comfortable with the sample and wanted to continue my research endeavors with this specific sample of participants. I asked around for potential participants but this was not effective. I had already graduated and none of the people I knew were still in college. Additionally, upon reflecting on participant selection with the course instructor, I felt that I would get better perspectives from knowledgeable individuals from the field.

I contacted several professors in the College of Education and Human Education in the Multicultural Multilingual education program as well as several professors from sociology. I emailed them and very few responded to my emails. Those professors who did respond all said that they were too busy to sit down for an hour long interview with a student for a student project. In retrospect, I am not surprised. Professors are busy individuals with courses to lead and research to complete.

In an hour of desperation, I decided to interview my friends. They were available and willing to discuss with me my project. At this point, I was so frustrated with trying to understand qualitative research that I just wanted to complete the project. I did not care anymore about the participants who I was going to interview and my ultimate goal was no longer to examine my research questions, but just learn how to do qualitative research.Although I did not anticipate that I would get any information that would surprise me, interviewing my friends and family member actually provided me with a different perspective of stereotypes, particularly how a “normal” person perceives stereotypes without any prior knowledge on how race impacts performance. Unexpectedly, interviewing my friends became quite rewarding and the perspectives that emerged were more valuable than I had expected.

Marta. Marta is a 25 year old Asian-American young professional who works for a large consulting firm for about three years. She was born in the U.S. and graduated with a degree in Finance from GeorgeMasonUniversity. She and I have been best friends since the beginning of college and have known each other for approximately 8 years. I purposefully selected her to interview because of one main reason: She holds strong beliefs and opinions about stereotypes and other social justice issues.

Sean. Sean is a 25 year old White man working at a fitness instructor. Like Marta, Sean has been one of my good friends since college as well. We have known each other for approximately five years and have developed a good friendship. In fact, we had been roommates during college and thus have developed a good friendship over the years. Additionally, I purposefully selected him to interview because we have discussed the idea of stereotypes and I believe that he holds some interesting thoughts regarding the topic. Specifically, much of the research, deals with stereotype impacts on people of color. According to my previous discussions with Sean, he also believes that Whites deal with stereotypes as well. From his perspective, he feels almost a sense of animosity that Whites are not impacted by stereotypic beliefs and he feels that there are also expectations that negatively impacts the majority group as well.

Sean grew up in a very diverse low SES background. He was brought up around people of many ethnic backgrounds and has even expressed that he feels uncomfortable when around a relatively homogenous group of people. Therefore, I believe that his insights on stereotypes may bring out a perspective that is relatively ignored in social justice research but nonetheless important in developing an understanding of stereotypes.

My Dad. My father is a 53 year old Chinese man who had immigrated to the United States at the age of 16. He graduated with his high school diploma from the states and although he had worked as a Chinese restaurant chef for about 20 years, he has since then earned several Microsoft certifications and is now working as a network engineer in a well-paid law firm.

Unlike Marta and Sean, I did not purposefully select my Dad to interview. Since I was pressed for time and under a lot of pressure to finish data collection for this project, I selected him to interview because I could not locate any other participants. However, upon reflection, it would be interesting to get his perspective as an immigrant who worked his way up the economic ladder.

It is safe to assume that I know my Dad better than I know my friends. However, unlike my friends, my relationship with him is a hierarchical one. My Dad is also extremely conservative. In fact, he has shared with me that his friends at work call him the Asian “Red-Neck”. Interestingly, however, most of my Dad’s friends are Black. Therefore, I have some strong assumptions about my father coming into this interview. I know how he feels about people of other ethnic groups, sexual orientations, and gender roles. His perspective is extremely different from mine, which I believe are extremely liberal.