School represents an important context for children’s social, moral, and identity development (Killen & Smetana, Reference Killen and Smetana2015; Nucci & Ilten-Gee, Reference Nucci and Ilten-Gee2021). Research indicates that supportive teacher-student relationships are significantly related to positive student academic achievement (Rivas-Drake et al., Reference Rivas-Drake, Syed, Umaña-Taylor, Markstrom, French, Schwartz and Lee2014). While teachers care about their students and value teaching all students, unintentional (and sometimes intentional) bias occurs in the classroom (Marx & Larson, Reference Marx and Larson2012; Tropp & Rucinski, Reference Tropp and Rucinski2022). When teachers display biases, students experience unfair treatment (Glock & Kovaks, Reference Glock and Kovacs2013; Starck et al., Reference Starck, Riddle, Sinclair and Warikoo2020; Tenenbaum & Ruck, Reference Tenenbaum and Ruck2007). While teacher bias has been documented, little is known about children’s perspectives about fairness and inclusivity in the classroom. Classrooms that reflect biased teacher attitudes that are left unchecked result in an exclusive school environment for all members of the community (Dovidio et al., Reference Dovidio, Kawakami, Smoak, Gaertner, Petty, Fazio and Turnes2009; Glock & Kovaks, Reference Glock and Kovacs2013). Biased expectations and prejudicial attitudes have been shown to be related to the ethnic/racial achievement gap, low self-esteem, a lack of school belonging, and low motivation to attend school in addition to mental health outcomes such as stress, anxiety, and depression (İnan-Kaya & Rubies-Davies, Reference İnan-Kaya and Rubie-Davies2022; Okonofua et al., Reference Okonofua, Walton and Eberhardt2016; Peterson et al., Reference Peterson, Rubie-Davies, Osborne and Sibley2016; Rivas-Drake et al., Reference Rivas-Drake, Syed, Umaña-Taylor, Markstrom, French, Schwartz and Lee2014).
Further, children who exclude peers in classroom contexts based on group membership, such as gender, race, ethnicity, and nationality, contribute to the display of bias, the emergence of prejudicial attitudes, and a negative climate (Killen & Rutland, Reference Killen and Rutland2011; Rutland & Killen, Reference Rutland and Killen2015). Inclusion and exclusion of peers involves a number of social-cognitive capacities including the evaluation of social inequalities, social status and hierarchies, detecting bias, awareness of status hierarchies, and decisions to trust peers (Burkholder et al., Reference Burkholder, D’Esterre, Killen, Fitzgerald, Johnson, Qin, Villarruel and Norton2019; Yee et al., Reference Yee, Glidden and Killen2022). Understanding teacher and student perspectives about their social relationships and the broader social context is necessary for creating inclusive classrooms, which, in turn, contribute to healthy child development and equal opportunities for all students to reach their potential in terms of academic learning and achievement (DeCuir-Gunby & Bindra, Reference DeCuir-Gunby and Bindra2022; Starck et al., Reference Starck, Riddle, Sinclair and Warikoo2020).
Objectives of this paper
We begin with an overview of the need for more research on children’s understanding of bias in the classroom context. We then turn to a review of the foundational theory that generated current research, focusing on the development of moral concepts such as fairness and equality in childhood. We turn to more recent research focusing on the group and societal norms that influence children’s evaluations of different types of inequalities, guided by the social reasoning developmental framework (Elenbaas, Reference Elenbaas2019; Rutland & Killen, Reference Rutland and Killen2017). Next, we discuss research on how children think about intergroup inclusion and exclusion, as well as social inequalities, with a specific focus on social inequalities in the classroom and school context. This background provides the basis for investigating children’s perspectives about teacher biases in the classroom and the associated consequences for students in terms of their own intergroup behaviors, academic outcomes, and mental health outcomes. We conclude with recommendations for future research on the factors that create inclusive classrooms.
Schools are often viewed as contexts for promoting caring and fair treatment of others. Research on preservice and early career teachers finds that care for and enjoyment of students is an important motivating factor for teachers’ work (Jarvis & Woodrow, Reference Jarvis and Woodrow2005). However, research finds that many racial-ethnic majority teachers still struggle to relate to racial-ethnic minority students, hold stereotypes about these students, and feel unprepared to teach diverse classrooms (Marx & Larson, Reference Marx and Larson2012). To examine rates of teacher implicit racial bias compared with other American adults, Starck and colleagues (Reference Starck, Riddle, Sinclair and Warikoo2020) analyzed two Implicit Association Test (IAT) national datasets. Data from the IAT, a tool to assess social group preferences based on the speed with which one associates members of that group with positive attributes, revealed few significant differences between teacher and nonteacher adults, indicating that teachers who took the IAT (81 percent White) exhibit pro-White racial bias at about the same rate as the average American adult who took the IAT (71 percent White). Awareness of bias is the first step towards reducing negative attitudes, yet less is known about what helps teachers be aware of their own biases or about how their students make sense of teacher bias in action.
The focus on how students think about bias in the classroom is crucial for how to intervene to create more inclusive learning environments. Research on children’s social and moral development has shown that children begin evaluating unfair treatment of others as wrong as early as 3 years old (Smetana et al., Reference Smetana, Rote, Jambon, Tasopoulos-Chan, Villalobos and Comer2012; Sommerville, Reference Sommerville, Killen and Smetana2022). Yet, little is known about the extent to which children view teacher biases in the classroom context as wrong or unfair. This may have to do with the perceived status of teachers at school in terms of their role as an authority, holding power and prestige in the classroom context (Laupa, Reference Laupa1994). Children’s perceptions of teacher bias involve multiple forms of judgment including the role of authority for decision making, as well as the recognition of unfair treatment that results from group norms and social inequalities. Recently, research has examined when children view group-level social inequalities as unfair and whether they desire to rectify such disparities (Elenbaas, Reference Elenbaas2019; Mistry et al., Reference Mistry, Elenbaas, Griffin, Nenadal and Yassine2021). These data are relevant for understanding how children perceive classroom bias and for creating inclusive classrooms.
Also important is the extent to which teachers are aware that children often exclude their peers based on group membership. Research has documented the factors that contribute to children’s support or rejection of peer exclusion based on stereotypes and biases (Rutland & Killen, Reference Rutland and Killen2015). Further, children’s trust in their peers as a source of knowledge and information reveals the contexts in which they may turn to their peers (instead of teachers) for social support and information (Sebastián-Enesco et al., Reference Sebastián-Enesco, Guerrero and Enesco2020). Students who are rejected by teachers may also be more likely to be rejected by peers (Osterman, Reference Osterman2000). If teacher rejection occurs systemically as a manifestation of unconscious bias against certain groups, this may further intergroup peer exclusion. We propose that addressing the factors that contribute to promoting positive and inclusive classroom environments requires knowledge (a) of teacher and student attitudes toward other groups and toward bias in the classroom, (b) of children’s judgments about fair and unfair treatment of others, and (c) of children’s evaluations of group norms that support bias and exclusion.
Children’s Critical Social-Cognitive and Moral Capacities
Children are capable of critically evaluating teachers’ actions, such as when they punish the group for the misdeeds of one child (Piaget, 1932/Reference Piaget1965) or condone acts of moral transgressions, such as inflicting harm on another person (Smetana et al., Reference Smetana, Rote, Jambon, Tasopoulos-Chan, Villalobos and Comer2012). As well, children recognize the domains of student behavior that fall within and without a teacher’s legitimate authority (Guerrero et al., Reference Guerrero, Cascado, Sausa and Enesco2017; Smetana & Bitz, Reference Smetana and Bitz1996; Yoo & Smetana, Reference Yoo and Smetana2022). In general, children view moral judgments as obligations that apply across scenarios, not as a matter of consensus, nor as under authority jurisdiction (Turiel, Reference Turiel1983, Reference Turiel2002). For example, children view teachers as having jurisdiction regarding conventions in the classroom such as how the classroom desks are arranged, the appropriate attire for classroom participation, and how teachers should be addressed in the classroom. By four years of age, however, children do not believe that teachers have jurisdiction to alter moral rules in the classroom, such as whether it is okay to hit someone, take away other students’ resources, or engage in deception for personal benefit (Smetana et al., Reference Smetana, Jambon, Ball, Killen and Smetana2014); these actions are viewed as wrong and unfair even if a teacher condones them. Extensive research has shown that children in multiple cultural contexts (by nation, urban/rural, SES, and traditional/modern) view teacher jurisdiction over conventions designed to make groups work as distinct from teacher jurisdiction over moral obligations about mutual respect, fairness, and others’ welfare (Helwig et al., Reference Helwig, To, Wang, Liu and Yang2014; Wainryb & Recchia, Reference Wainryb, Recchia, Wainryb and Recchia2014). With development, children’s depth of moral reasoning becomes more nuanced and robust, as they develop an understanding of others’ mental states (Lagattuta & Weller, Reference Lagattuta, Weller, Killen and Smetana2014) and the role of authority (Turiel, Reference Turiel and Lerner2015).
Children’s peer relationships are crucial in this process. Piaget emphasized the role of peer interaction as a unique contribution to development, particularly for facilitating change regarding social-cognitive and moral development (Carpendale, Reference Carpendale2000; Piaget, 1932/Reference Piaget1965). Piaget (1932/Reference Piaget1965) argued that peer relationships are among equals, allowing for greater cooperation and development of reciprocity, equality, and mutual respect. To Piaget (1932/Reference Piaget1965), the “equal status” nature of peer relationships stands in contrast to adult-child interactions, which are unilateral and constraining given that adults have power, knowledge, and status. However, research over the past two decades has demonstrated that both peer and adult-child relationships are multifaceted. Peer relationships may be a context for equality as Piaget imagined, but they may also be unilateral in the case of bully-victim relationships (Rubin et al., Reference Rubin, Bukowski, Parker, Damon, Lerner and Eisenberg2007). At the same time, adult-child relations may be unilateral, but they can also be constructive, with scaffolding and positive communicative interactions (Grusec, Reference Grusec2019; Kuczynski & Mol, Reference Kuczynski and De Mol2015).
These findings have several implications for creating inclusive classrooms. Children’s conceptions of authority play a role in how children view teachers, including teachers who foster inclusive relationships as well as those who display biases. Further, with age, children are capable of critically evaluating biased behavior from peers (Killen & Dahl, Reference Killen and Dahl2021). Teachers can support students who reject stereotypic expectations from peers or resist unfair treatment. For this to happen, though, both students and teacher must bring to bear an awareness of bias, their own group identity, and moral judgments about a fair classroom (see Nucci & Ilten-Gee, Reference Nucci and Ilten-Gee2021).
Group Identity and Moral Judgment: A Theoretical Model
Just as morality naturally develops, so too does an awareness of group dynamics and the human desire to affiliate with groups (Tomasello, Reference Tomasello2014). Social identity theory (Abrams & Rutland, Reference Abrams, Rutland, Levy and Killen2008; Nesdale & Lawson, Reference Nesdale and Lawson2011; Verkuyten, Reference Verkuyten2013) theorizes that in-group preference develops as individuals affiliate with groups. Strengthening one’s in-group affiliation can result in in-group bias which often leads to out-group distrust. Theories of social exclusion have drawn on social identity theory to explain processes of intergroup inclusion and exclusion (Abrams et al., Reference Abrams, Hogg and Marques2004). Extensive research has found evidence of in-group preference from early childhood (Dunham et al., Reference Dunham, Baron and Carey2011; Kinzler & Spelke, Reference Kinzler and Spelke2011) through adolescence and adulthood (Levy et al., Reference Levy, Lytle, Shin, Hughes and Nelson2016). This natural preference does not have to become a bias against a particular out-group, but affiliation with one’s in-group can become bias against an out-group in contexts that promote and perpetuate social hierarchies and inequalities. The social identity approach is consistent with current theories about anti-racism which focus on systemic racism (Kendi, Reference Kendi2016) in that prejudice is characterized as a systemic aspect of societies that allows groups to maintain power and privilege (Dovidio et al., Reference Dovidio, Gaertner and Saguy2015). Thus, understanding how children and adults morally reason through issues like bias and prejudice in the classroom requires consideration of group identity, especially in a sociocultural context that places some groups in power while subjugating others.
The social reasoning developmental (SRD) model draws from social domain theory (Killen & Smetana, Reference Killen and Smetana2015; Turiel, Reference Turiel and Lerner2015) and social identity theory (Rutland et al., Reference Rutland, Killen and Abrams2010) to provide a framework to consider children’s reasoning about intergroup settings, such as a diverse classroom context in which group identity is salient. Social domain theory holds that individuals consider their social world by coordinating concerns in the moral (e.g., fairness, equality, wellbeing of others), social-conventional (e.g., norms), and personal/psychological (e.g., personal preferences, autonomy) domains (Killen & Smetana, Reference Killen and Smetana2015). Social identity theory posits that one’s group identities, such as race or gender, play a crucial role in the development of one’s self concept, affecting how one interacts in social situations (Rutland et al., Reference Rutland, Killen and Abrams2010; Tajfel & Turner, Reference Tajfel, Turner, Worchel and Austin1986).
The SRD model integrates these two frameworks by documenting that children are often conflicted when making moral judgments in intergroup contexts in ways that are different from intragroup situations. When asked to share resources within their own group, children often draw exclusively on moral reasons. Yet, when asked to make the same decision in an intergroup context, the decision is more difficult with in-group biases, group norms, and group identity taking priority (Elenbaas, Reference Elenbaas2019; Mulvey, Reference Mulvey2016; Rutland et al., Reference Rutland, Hitti, Mulvey, Abrams and Killen2015). Not only are situations involving resource allocation subject to conflicting in-group bias and fairness judgments, but most situations involving social inclusion and exclusion decisions reflect this same type of dilemma from childhood to adulthood (Levy et al., Reference Levy, Lytle, Shin, Hughes and Nelson2016), as we review in the next section. Thus, these situations require studying not only moral and conventional reasoning, but judgments and attitudes reflecting group norms, identity, and biases (Rutland et al., Reference Rutland, Killen and Abrams2010). This model also contends that children bring their psychological knowledge to bear on their social cognition, including their interpretations and awareness of others’ intentions, feelings, and mental states (Glidden et al., Reference Glidden, D’Esterre and Killen2021; Rizzo & Killen, Reference Rizzo and Killen2016). These same forms of psychological knowledge about others are likewise relevant to how children think about peer inclusion and exclusion in the classroom.
Children’s Evaluations of Social Inclusion and Exclusion
While interpersonal peer rejection may occur because of an individual’s personality traits, intergroup social exclusion occurs when children are rejected based on their group identity, a result of prejudice and bias. Children often justify intergroup exclusion (based on gender, race, and ethnicity) by using conventions, traditions, and group functioning reasons, for instance rejecting an out-group peer because they expect not to have much in common (Mulvey, Reference Mulvey2016).
Research on bias in the peer context at school finds that children may also encounter and reason about intergroup social exclusion differently based on age and social identity. Cooley et al. (Reference Cooley, Burkholder and Killen2019) found that White 12- to 14-year-olds tended to expect a group of same-race peers to include someone of a different race less than did White nine- to 11-year-olds. This demonstrates that by middle school, children are aware of societal racial biases and take these into account when forming their expectations about peer inclusion behavior. In the same study, Black children evaluated racial exclusion as more wrong than did their White counterparts (Cooley et al., Reference Cooley, Burkholder and Killen2019). This finding suggests that with increasing age, White children expect that their peers will be more willing to include a same race than a different race peer when considering a friendship opportunity. Research finds that as children age, though, shared interests can prevail over group identity (such as race, ethnicity, and nationality), and children can become more capable of valuing diverse peer groups (Hitti & Killen, Reference Hitti and Killen2015). Through classroom discussions, teachers can scaffold this process, helping children to recognize what makes intergroup exclusion wrong and the benefits of including peers of many identities (Killen, Burkholder, D’Esterre et al., Reference Killen, Burkholder, D’Esterre, Sims, Glidden, Yee, Luken Raz, Elenbaas, Rizzo, Woodward, Samuelson, Sweet and Stapleton2022).
Children’s Evaluations of Societal Inequalities
Part of understanding how children think about bias in the school context is to understand how they evaluate social inequalities in general. Recognizing societal level inequalities is especially important for majority group members, contributing to perspective-taking and empathy for groups that are not majority status. By middle childhood, children gain the ability to use their moral reasoning in the context of societal inequalities, recognizing that some inequalities are unfair and need to be rectified. This reasoning gets more complex with age. Rizzo and Killen (Reference Rizzo and Killen2016) studied how five- to six-year-olds and seven- to eight-year-olds thought about resource inequalities between two groups. Children were shown two fictional towns, one with a history of having resources and one with a history of lacking resources, as well as a fictional character from each of the towns. When asked about how many resources to give each of the two characters, five- to six-year-olds considered both a rectifying (giving more to the character from the disadvantaged town) and an equal allocation of resources to each character to be fair. The seven- to eight-year-olds evaluated equal allocations of resources to both characters, which perpetuated the inequality, as less fair than allocations that rectified the inequality (Rizzo & Killen, Reference Rizzo and Killen2016). Here, the seven- to eight-year-olds integrated their knowledge of prior inequity between groups in their judgments about the fairness of different resource allocations, while the younger children’s reasoning had not developed this level of complexity, on average.
Importantly, these social inequalities are not arbitrary. While certain social groups have been given power based on identities such as race and gender, others have been systematically subjugated and disadvantaged, and the child’s world is not free of these influences. As children develop their own sense of group identity, they must navigate how their identification with certain social groups intersects with their sense of morality.
Prior research has explored how children balance moral priorities with group identity through the framework of the SRD model. These studies have examined how children understand societal biases that result in structural inequality. Children recognize systemic biases, such as those based on gender and race, and they bring to bear their own group identities. In the context of resource inequalities, when children identify with a disadvantaged group, they recognize the inequality, disapprove of it, and act to rectify it at an earlier age than when they identify with the advantaged group (Elenbaas et al., Reference Elenbaas, Rizzo, Cooley and Killen2016; Rizzo & Killen, Reference Rizzo and Killen2020). Likewise, Elenbaas and colleagues (Reference Elenbaas and Killen2016) found that when children were shown an unequal distribution of school supplies between a school with African American children and a school with European American children, all children gave more resources to the disadvantaged groups, but younger children were more likely to give even more resources to their own group, displaying an in-group bias. With age, children recognized the societal inequality; older children gave more resources to the African American disadvantaged schools. European American and African American participants were equally likely to rectify the inequality between the two schools.
In another study, Rizzo and Killen (Reference Rizzo and Killen2020) investigated how three- to eight-year-old children evaluated individually and structurally based inequalities. Children were asked to evaluate allocations made by a hypothetical allocator who gave more resources based on merit (an individual is hard-working) or more resources based on group identity (structural gender bias). Overall, children evaluated structurally based inequalities to be more unfair and worthy of rectification than individually based inequalities. However, when given the opportunity to allocate resources themselves, most children allocated equally, which is not the most direct means for rectifying a pre-existing inequality. These findings reveal that even young children have the cognitive capacity to recognize what makes a structural inequality different from an individual inequality but do not consistently use strategies that fully rectify the inequality based on a gender bias.
The recognition of the presence of systemic bias is the first step for children applying their moral reasoning to bias, but the next is the understanding that individuals perpetuate these biases. Additionally complex moral reasoning is required when children must make sense of and respond to bias in an individual whom they may have viewed as inherently fair and just, such as a teacher or friend.
Structural Bias in the School Context
School is a social environment with salient peer and child-adult relationships in which children receive, interpret, and evaluate social information about conventional rules (e.g., norms) and moral rules (Nucci & Ilten-Gee, Reference Nucci and Ilten-Gee2021). Teachers engage with, support, and challenge their students in many ways, but extant literature suggests that normative forms of communication can reflect biases about students’ backgrounds, including group identity (İnan-Kaya & Rubie-Davies, Reference İnan-Kaya and Rubie-Davies2022; Skinner & Meltzoff, Reference Skinner and Meltzoff2019). A meta-analysis examining research on differences in teachers’ behavior toward ethnic minority compared with White American students found that teachers held the highest expectations for Asian American students and held lower expectations for Latino (d = 0.46) and African American (d = 0.25) students compared with White students (Tenenbaum & Ruck, Reference Tenenbaum and Ruck2007). The authors also found that teacher speech toward these ethnic groups differed, with more positive and neutral speech toward White students than Latino and African American students (d = 0.31). Other studies use student self-reports of unjust or discriminatory treatment from a teacher and find that racial-ethnic minority students report discriminatory treatment via grading, discipline, and lack of positive feedback at higher rates than White students (Čiuladienė & Račelytė, Reference Čiuladienė and Račelytė2016; Crystal et al., Reference Crystal, Killen and Ruck2010).
A child’s own racial identity affects not only their vulnerability to racial bias from teachers (Tenenbaum & Ruck, Reference Tenenbaum and Ruck2007) and peers (Greene et al., Reference Greene, Way and Pahl2006) but also the likelihood that they recognize when peers may be victims of bias (Elenbaas et al., Reference Elenbaas, Rizzo, Cooley and Killen2016). Classroom and school norms also play an important role in whether children see instances of bias as the expected status quo or whether they see bias as an injustice to which they have the power to respond. By adolescence, when children report high levels of prior unfair treatment by authorities such as teachers, they are less likely to recognize later prejudicial mistreatment of a peer (Crystal et al., Reference Crystal, Killen and Ruck2010). Instances of teacher bias inherently involve children’s moral concerns, as they think about whether their peers are being treated with equality and fairness. When witnessing bias at school, children are also engaged in the intricate social cognition of understanding others’ mental states, as they might consider the intentions of the teacher as well as the emotions and experiences of peers being treated unfairly based on their identity.
As children gain an understanding of the nature of fairness and inequalities, they also must parse out the reasons for the inequalities they see at school, attempting to make sense of the roles of bias and merit. Rizzo and Killen (Reference Rizzo and Killen2020) found that children tend to approve of group inequalities when they believe the inequality is earned (one group works harder than the other), but not when they see the inequality as structural, or bias-based (one group’s gender is preferred by the leader). Still, a child’s sense of fairness and justice is not impervious to the influence of societal inequalities. Importantly, Pauker and colleagues (Reference Pauker, Xu, Williams and Biddle2016) argue that merit-based and bias-based perceptions of inequalities can become conflated as children internalize stereotypes; when certain social groups are preferred over and over again with merit-based justifications, children may eventually come to assume that disadvantaged groups have somehow earned their lower status. Thus, though Rizzo and Killen (Reference Rizzo and Killen2020) show that though children have the capacity to distinguish between group inequalities that are earned or based in bias, repeated exposure to differential treatment based on stereotypes, such as from peers or teachers at school, may eventually lead to children holding these stereotypes themselves. It is for this reason that research gaining a deeper understanding of how children think about bias in the classroom is so important.
Effects of Teacher Bias on Student Intergroup Behavior
While most current research on how children evaluate bias has been in the peer context, we also know that the peer-to-peer and child-to-adult contexts are not fully independent in a young person’s world, especially in the classroom. In this environment, the way a teacher treats a student is likely to influence the way that student’s peers treat them, and the teacher creates norms around who is worth including and celebrating, and who is not. While many teachers work hard to create inclusive norms in their classrooms, teachers’ implicit attitudes about an out-group can sometimes influence student intergroup attitudes in unintentional ways. Geerlings and colleagues (Reference Geerlings, Thijs and Verkuyten2019) examined the relationship between Dutch teacher interethnic attitudes, student perception of teachers’ expressed multicultural norms (e.g., “all cultures should be respected”), and students’ ethnic out-group attitudes. Classrooms in the study included Dutch majority students, Turkish-Dutch minority students, and Moroccan-Dutch minority students in fourth to sixth grades. Among the Dutch majority students, observing a teacher’s positive relationship with ethnic minority students had a positive effect on ethnic out-group attitudes, but only among those who reported few instances of teachers’ expressed multicultural norms. The authors posit that students may form their ethnic out-group attitudes based more on how their teachers model interaction with ethnic minority students than based on what their teachers state explicitly (Geerlings et al., Reference Geerlings, Thijs and Verkuyten2019).
Importantly, teachers’ interactions with minority students may also be better indicators of teachers’ implicit attitudes than the norms teachers overtly express. Prior research has found that negative implicit teacher attitudes are more indicative of teacher behavior than explicit attitudes (Glock & Kovacs, Reference Glock and Kovacs2013), highlighting the need for further research on how children respond to actual teacher behavior. While teachers (like most adults) tend to report that they have few biases and care about their students (Marx & Larson, Reference Marx and Larson2012), the study of the true impact of teacher bias has been hindered by a dearth of quality measures for this bias in context (DeCuir-Gunby & Bindra, Reference DeCuir-Gunby and Bindra2022). Additional research with emerging tools (e.g., Teacher Race Talk Survey; Milner, Reference Milner2017) is needed to capture more nuances about teacher bias, such as teacher beliefs about the role of their students’ racial-ethnic identities in their education.
Teacher behavior has the power to influence not only majority student bias and moral reasoning but can affect that of minority students as well. Crystal et al. (Reference Crystal, Killen and Ruck2010) examined children and adolescents’ perceptions of unfair treatment by authorities and responses to unfair treatment of a peer. Students in minority racial-ethnic groups reported more unfair treatment by authorities. Also, adolescents who reported fair treatment by authority were more likely to perceive peer interracial exclusion as wrong as were adolescents who reported unfair authority treatment. This is particularly interesting in that it points to the complexity of the teacher-student power dynamic and its effect on how children relate to their peers. One might expect that, given Crystal and colleagues’ (Reference Crystal, Killen and Ruck2010) finding that racially minoritized children experienced more unfair treatment by authority, these participants would thus be more likely to recognize the unfair treatment of someone else in a situation of interracial exclusion. Rather, their repeated experiences of unfair treatment may, by adolescence, have desensitized them to recognizing the unfair treatment of others, now seeing injustice as the norm. The findings suggest that if children are repeatedly subject to teacher bias, they may be less likely to recognize, name, and thus to act to prevent prejudice of others in the future. More research is needed to understand how children and adolescents think about their experiences of bias in the classroom, to inform prevention and intervention.
Effects of Bias at School on Student Achievement and Wellbeing
Experiences of prejudice and bias at school affect not only students’ own intergroup behavior, but also their academic and mental health outcomes. Peterson et al. (Reference Peterson, Rubie-Davies, Osborne and Sibley2016) found that teachers’ implicit racial biases (as measured on an IAT) predicted student performance on an end-of-year standardized test, with students in their teacher’s preferred racial-ethnic group scoring higher on average than students not in this group. A longitudinal study of racial minority students throughout high school similarly found that students who reported unjust treatment in their classrooms showed lower grades on average in the next semester (Dalbert & Stoeber, Reference Dalbert and Stoeber2006). Student reports of unjust and discriminatory treatment in the classroom have also been associated with academic disengagement (Berti et al., Reference Berti, Molinari and Speltini2010; Gasser et al., Reference Gasser, Grütter, Buholzer and Wettstein2018).
Encountering bias at school also has consequences for students’ mental health. Okonofua and colleagues (Reference Okonofua, Walton and Eberhardt2016) review the substantial evidence that racially biased school discipline practices have harmful mental health outcomes for racial-ethnic minority students. Wong et al. (Reference Wong, Eccles and Sameroff2003) followed students from ninth to twelfth grade and found student reports of racial discrimination at school were associated with lower self-esteem among minoritized students over time. Greene et al. (Reference Greene, Way and Pahl2006) similarly followed students identifying as Black, Latino, and Asian American and found adult discrimination at school to be associated with decreased self-esteem and increased depressive symptoms across time. This study also found that perceived peer discrimination remained stable over time, but perceived adult discrimination increased over time. This highlights that the way children recognize and reason about bias at school changes with development and may differ depending on the peer or student-teacher context. This research points to the need for further study of how children and adolescents think about adult versus peer bias at school.
Creating Inclusive and Fair Classrooms: What Comes Next
Developmental research has explored how children think about social inequalities (Burkholder et al., Reference Burkholder, Elenbaas and Killen2021; Elenbaas & Killen, Reference Elenbaas and Killen2016; Olson et al., Reference Olson, Shutts, Kinzler and Weisman2012; Rizzo & Killen, Reference Rizzo and Killen2016), the role of group identity in these scenarios (Elenbaas et al., Reference Elenbaas, Rizzo, Cooley and Killen2016), and the role of group identity in peer inclusion/exclusion contexts (Cooley et al., Reference Cooley, Burkholder and Killen2019). Meanwhile, educational research has established the pervasive presence of teacher racial bias (İnan-Kaya & Rubie-Davies, Reference İnan-Kaya and Rubie-Davies2022; Starck et al., Reference Starck, Riddle, Sinclair and Warikoo2020; Tenenbaum & Ruck, Reference Tenenbaum and Ruck2007) and the associated negative impacts of bias and discrimination at school, primarily for racial-ethnic minority students (Gasser et al., Reference Gasser, Grütter, Buholzer and Wettstein2018; Greene et al., Reference Greene, Way and Pahl2006; Peterson et al., Reference Peterson, Rubie-Davies, Osborne and Sibley2016).
However, there remain important avenues of research to build our understanding of children’s experience of fairness and bias in the classroom to inform interventions at both the teacher and student level. For instance, research has yet to focus on how children think about classroom inequalities that originate from teacher or peer racial bias in the classroom context. The teacher-student power dynamic is unique to and salient in the classroom, yet this context has not been used as the situational basis for developmental studies that ask children about their reasoning and judgments about bias. While prior studies of how children think about authority suggest children are aware of this power differential as they consider the moral acceptability of a teacher’s lying behavior (Peng et al., Reference Peng, Jiao, Zhang, Liu and Zhou2021) or unjust directives (Gingo, Reference Gingo2017), research has not yet examined how children consider teacher bias in the same way. Understanding the child’s experience in this way is crucial for developing interventions to reduce bias from both teachers and peers at school and for making the classroom a more fair, equitable space.
Status hierarchies perpetuate inequalities in children’s lives by benefiting or constraining access to opportunities based on youth’s group identity including gender, ethnicity, race, and wealth status. In many school contexts, youth experience status hierarchies created by school authorities, as biases may lead teachers to unfairly distribute leadership roles to students based on group membership. As an example, in a recent study, U.S. youth (eight- to 14 year-olds) evaluated teachers’ assignments of leadership roles across three conditions: equal (assigning both European American and Latin American students), unequal majority (assigning only European American students) and unequal minority (assigning only Latin American students). Adolescents, but not children, evaluated each context differently, viewing a teacher favoring European American students as most unacceptable, followed by unequal allocations favoring Latin American students. Adolescents viewed equal allocations between the two ethnic groups as most acceptable. Adolescents also evaluated unequal leadership allocations more negatively than did children. These findings revealed that, with age, students distinguish between high and low status groups and view ethnic bias as unfair regarding the allocation of leadership roles in school contexts (Killen, Burkholder, Brey, et al., Reference Killen, Burkholder, Brey, Cooper and Pauker2022). Future interventions for teachers might address the role of status in the classroom, challenging educators to recognize potential status hierarchies in the school context and how students’ group identities intersect with these hierarchies.
Furthermore, findings from educational research have revealed common manifestations of teacher racial bias, such as differential expectations, grading, discipline, and speech directed at students based on their ethnic or racial identity (Čiuladienė & Račelytė, Reference Čiuladienė and Račelytė2016; Tenenbaum & Ruck, Reference Tenenbaum and Ruck2007). These findings can now be used to inform research protocols and stimuli in developmental science focused on both children and teachers. In addition, research should also explore the factors that enable teachers to address bias in the classroom through strategies such as discussing issues of race and discrimination openly with students. One such ongoing study of teacher perspectives uses new measures to gain a more nuanced picture of how teachers think about the role of their students’ social identities in their education (Teacher Race Talk Survey; Milner, Reference Milner2017) and how teachers think about the malleability of prejudice itself (Theories of Prejudice Scale; Carr et al., Reference Carr, Dweck and Pauker2012), potentially revealing important teacher beliefs and perceptions that prior measures of teacher bias have failed to capture (DeCuir-Gunby & Bindra, Reference DeCuir-Gunby and Bindra2022; Glock & Kovacs, Reference Glock and Kovacs2013) (see Kaufman et al., Reference Kaufman, Glidden, Yee, Sims, Burkholder, Luken Raz, Samuelson, Rumberger and Killen2022). Theory of prejudice, or having the mindset that prejudice is more malleable, has been associated with a greater willingness to discuss race and have interracial interactions (Carr et al., Reference Carr, Dweck and Pauker2012). Thus, further study of these measures among teachers can inform interventions that might address teacher and student beliefs about prejudice as a tool to build a willingness to engage on issues of bias in the classroom.
We propose that research needs to pay particular attention to elementary and middle school aged children, as much of the current research on student-reported experiences of teacher bias and discrimination focuses on high school students (Crystal et al., Reference Crystal, Killen and Ruck2010; Greene et al., Reference Greene, Way and Pahl2006; Wong et al., Reference Wong, Eccles and Sameroff2003), leaving more to learn about when and how awareness of classroom racial bias emerges in childhood. Similarly, much of the current literature on outcomes of teacher bias focuses on these outcomes for racial-ethnic minority students (Greene et al., Reference Greene, Way and Pahl2006; Wong et al., Reference Wong, Eccles and Sameroff2003). While it is crucial to identify these negative outcomes for minoritized students so that policy and interventions can aim to mitigate such consequences, research must also examine how White and other majority group students process bias in the classroom, especially in light of research showing that teacher behaviors toward minority students affect majority student ethnic out-group attitudes (Geerlings et al., Reference Geerlings, Thijs and Verkuyten2019).
Importantly, Killen and Rutland (Reference Killen and Rutland2022) note that creating inclusive classrooms is not only a research issue but is also a policy issue affected by socio-historical trends and events. Advancements in addressing prejudice in the classroom have been hindered by disruptions to schooling from the COVID–19 pandemic and by the rise of politically polarized discourse around educating children about structural racial inequality. Hindrances like these make the need for evidence-based interventions and educational policies for creating inclusive classrooms that much more urgent. To inform such policy, further developmental research is needed to understand how children perceive teacher bias, how teachers perceive their own bias, and how teachers perceive their students’ intergroup behavior.
Conclusions
Children’s concepts of fairness and equality develop in an environment laden with the social hierarchies of the surrounding culture, and children must navigate moral decision making and group identity concerns in this milieu. We discussed the social reasoning developmental model as a robust paradigm which aids in understanding the intersection of moral reasoning, group identity, and social norms. Recent research on how children think about moral issues such as social inclusion and resource allocation in intergroup peer contexts reveals novel findings about how children navigate multiple considerations in everyday settings.
We propose that in the classroom, children’s group identities and moral concerns may particularly come into conflict in the context of teacher or peer bias. The classroom is a crucial context for moral development which research has yet to fully explore, especially for understanding how children think about intergroup inequalities caused by an authority figure. Current research on teacher bias, its effects on student intergroup behavior, and associated outcomes for minoritized students reflects the integration of concerns about morality (fair treatment of others) as well as group norms and group identity. Knowledge about how children identify bias in the classroom and how they think about rectifying or addressing such biases informs interventions and policies to support the creation of inclusive and fair classrooms.
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