Mathew: Today, I'm with Rod Fong in the School of Law and we're going to have a discussion about stereotype threat. Rod, before we get started, not everybody knows everybody else at USF, so could you just say a few words about who you are and what kinds of things you do in the School of Law?
Rod Fong: Sure. I'm a [unintelligible 00:00:17]. I went to USF undergrad and law school, and at the law school, my official title is assistant professor and co-director of the academic support program. Through the academic support program, I work with students starting in their first year, all the way through their third year.
Mathew: Fantastic. Thanks so much. I know people have either read Whistling Vivaldi by Claude Steele or they could choose to if they haven't done that, and there's other resources too, but just to lay the framework for our conversation, in your own words, how would you describe stereotype threat and why it's something important for faculty to pay attention to?
Rod: There's obviously a official definition of stereotype threat, but when I share the idea with lay folks and especially with students, I basically say that all of us identify in a certain way with certain groups. Some of these groups have different stereotypes or different values associated with them. The theory of stereotype threat basically says that if you're part of that group and you're under a certain situation, for example, a standardized test, you internalize the stereotypes of that group. In trying to break through that stereotype, you actually try harder and you-- And this is a great scientific term, you choke. Essentially, you underperform because you're trying to break the stereotype of the group that you identify with.
Mathew: I think we'll explore this a little more and I think people will understand it. I think what's going to be unintuitive for some listeners is, here you are in the School of Law, so I think as a default assumption, most people have is the School of Law has a bunch of really good students. Why the hell do they need somebody in the School of Law who works for stereotype threat? Could you take us through, because this is a little unintuitive I think for some people that we think of law students as being high achievers, and thus the implicit assumption is they're immune to stereotype threat, so maybe-- Is that true? If it's not, what kinds of things do you see emerging with the students you work with?
Rod: Actually it's really interesting. The theory of stereotype threat as a research by Claude Steele was based on working with students of color who were in college at the universities. Again, we would think that those are the high achievers. What he found was that typically on standardized tests, they didn't do as well as he would expect them to do. Again, through his research, he basically saw that they identified with the racial stereotype, and as a result, underperformed on the exam. In law school, we get it in a couple of areas. I'll take you through a couple of scenarios. One is the standardized test of the LSAT, our law school admissions exam, which is the gateway or the entry into law school.
We see based on the results, the national results, that students of color, particularly African Americans and Latinos don't do as well on the exam. The thought there is that stereotype threat is part of, it's not the sole reason, but part of the reason why these students may not be scoring as high, and thus have difficulty either getting into a law school or barely get into law school. When they get into law school, we see that oftentimes they're carrying this baggage of the stereotype through their performance in class.
That's how we work with the students in the first year with stereotype threat, because even on a final exam, although it may not be a standardized test, even on a final exam, if they're carrying the stereotype through and they think, "Well, law students from African American or Latino descent don't do as well on law school exams," they may take that stereotype and thus underperform also on these exams. The place though, where I really see the biggest impact is on my work with students who are about to take the bar exam. Stereotype threat comes in in full force during the bar exam. First of all, I guess you could call it a standardized test. Secondly, the test results typically show that Latinos and blacks don't do as well as the white students and the Asian American students. Just looking at the stats and the stereotype, these students are under that type of threat.
The exciting thing though that we've noticed is that stereotype threat, although commonly associated with racial and ethnic stereotypes, can be associated with any identity group. I saw, working at other law schools that were not as well known as USF, that students at that school carried the social identity of being a student at a low-ranked or low-tiered school. As a result, there isn't pretty good correlation between law school rankings and bar performance. Again, a student who graduates from a low-ranked school who typically has a low bar pass rate carries that social identity forward into the bar exam, so stereotype could also play there.
Another way it could play out is there is a correlation between law school GPA and bar pass. If you're a student, a low-ranked or a student with a low GPA within a law school, you are carrying that stereotype or that social identity. Take this, a person who is a person of color, African American or Latino, who has low grades within this scope, possibly as a result of some stereotype threat phenomenon in their first year, then going into the bar and also a graduate of a low-ranked law school. Now we're talking triple whammy, so to speak, or triple identity groups, in which case, the chances of that student doing well on the bar are compounded. Or you'll see this person essentially, if you could do it, essentially choke to the third degree, if we want to use that lay term, and their chances of passing the bar obviously become very low.
Mathew: These are great examples. In my understanding of stereotype threat is it seems one of the difficult things about working with it is it's almost instantaneous. Meaning when it takes effect on a person, they don't even know it, they're not aware of it. I suppose it's the same with any of us who have a bad habit. It's become so ingrained, sometimes we're just not aware we're doing that bad habit, but this just seems very quick. It seems like it's a difficult thing to work with or overcome. Can you take us a little bit through what kinds of things you do with your students-- And if I remember it right, I may have this wrong, but if I remember it right, you do some one on one work and you do small group work.
We'll look at expanding that to larger classes later. I think at an initial pass, I would almost throw up my hands, because while I could see it, and while I understand it, I would feel like, "But what can I do about it?" My fear as an instructor, by the way, is sometimes I'm triggering it, obviously unintentionally, but I'm triggering it, because it happens so fast, not just to the person on the receiving end, but the person who may be initiating it inadvertently, I'm not even aware I'm triggering it.
Rod: That's a good point. The timing and trigger factor is really critical. Some of it we can't control. What Professor Steele saw is that the suggestions that are made to the students about that social identity then remind the student that they are of that social group and then triggers it. It could be as subtle as prior to an exam, filling out a basic demographic information sheet which requires you to put down your race or ethnicity, all of a sudden you think, "Oh gee, okay, I'm African American." That triggers it for whatever that task is.
As part of his research, he actually did that and he saw that that was enough of a suggestion as opposed to something overt like, "Gee, African-Americans don't do well on the bar exam." It doesn't have to be that obvious and overt. I'm even thinking, as we talked, whether the fact that the law student population is predominantly white, what if a student walked into the test center where there's maybe a thousand students getting ready for the bar and not seeing anyone of color in their immediate view or vicinity. Would that trigger something that says, "Oh gee, I'm the one black person in the predominantly white room"?
Anyway, we'll have to see if that makes a difference. Coming back to the second point or question you had about how do you reduce the effect of stereotype threat? There's a lot of interventions that can be done to reduce the effect, and whatever the interventions are, they need to be continually administered, so to speak. The strategies that we've been doing here, especially on the bar, is one, reframing the task, and that's really, really important.
I get students coming in saying, "I do poorly on standardized tests. I do really poorly on multiple-choice exam." My job is to convince them that it isn't a standardized test. The way I do it is, while standardized tests like the LSAT and SAT typically are testing skills that are innately developed in you, or skills that you were born with. You can enhance it a little going through these prep classes, but it really doesn't change your score. However, the bar exam is not a standardized test in that sense, it's a test of what you've learned in your three years of law school. Hence it's not your innate ability, hence it's something that you can prepare for and you have been preparing for in your last three years. I need them to believe it and flush that term 'standardized test' down the drain. That's one way.
Another way that we do it is to show them, the students, that they are not in the disadvantaged identity group. They are not a graduate of a low-ranked law school, they're not the graduate having a low GPA. Sure, there's a little bit that we need to do to get those facts out of the way, because they are there, but we can show them that people in their range can still pass the exam if they take certain steps. One of the steps to reduce the effect of stereotype threat is practice. A lot of practice is really important. I'm not exactly sure the mechanism, my guess is the more you practice, the more it becomes second nature, i.e taking the exam becomes more second nature. Once you get into that experience, you just go forward with what you need to do, hopefully without thinking about the threat.
Mathew: I'm also wondering about the inverse. Maybe the reason you don't practice is because at some level, conscious or unconscious, you feel like what's the point? If it's testing innate ability, there's no point in practicing because my innate ability is not going to change. Nobody would say that consciously or talk that way, but that may be the feeling that's going on inside, so the result is, "Why practice?"
Rod: We've come up with a strategy to reverse that. One obviously is the rationalization or the rational answer, which is, the more you practice, the better you're going to do. With this class, we've gone really heavy into the growth mindset theory. We're letting them know, even though it's three years past in law school, that there's still room for growth mindset, and that they can learn and develop. The way I came about that is, in my 10 years of preparing students to take the bar, one of the most frustrating experiences is having students not practice. They won't write an essay in preparation for the bar, because of the fact that they're scared.
It's so frustrating because when we talk to students who don't pass, overwhelmingly, these are students who haven't written an essay, and it just blows my mind. How do you prepare for an essay exam without even practicing and writing? For the last 10 years, I've been trying to figure out ways to get students to practice this, and it's been very difficult. This year, we purposely showed them some videos and talked specifically about the growth mindset, and I think it's been working. More and more students are starting to write.
The last thing I was going to add in terms of one of our strategies is to flip the paradigm again, to let them know that they are not in the disadvantaged group. Not by reframing the issue, but by convincing them that they're in the advantaged group. One of the ways we do it is, we're fortunate enough to have a couple of our professors who are lecturers of some of the commercial bar review courses, and we're fortunate that we have some alums who are former bar graders, and fortunate that one of our alums actually was the director of examinations for the State Bar. He no longer is doing that, so we could talk about it.
What we do is, we bring these folks in to talk about what the bar is about. What we're selling the students on is that they're getting extra additional information that is not necessarily information that the public knows about. I'm not saying at all that we're getting inside information. People can ask these individuals any questions they want, but most schools don't do that. Based on our experiences, we're able to tell our students and hopefully convince them, in fact, in a couple of days, I'll be writing an email to the whole group of students listing all the advantages that they've had over the past three years going into the bar.
I want them to have that list of advantages on their mind as they go in. I need them to have that positive feeling, thinking that, "Oh yes, I've got an advantage over all the other bar takers. Of course, I'm going to do better than them." We have a whole lineup of things that we've been doing for them, as well as you can see, there's a bunch of different strategies that we've been using over the last three years with these students.
Mathew: I don't remember them off the top my head, but I remember once you telling me at your former workplace, I don't know if you have the numbers here, but some of the percentage differences, and I think it was pass rates once you started implementing some of these strategies.
Rod: Yes, overall, my former employer hired a psychometrician to do some stats based on the students entering LSATs, and based on those LSATs, what the projected bar pass would be. Over the eight years I was there, he was able to show that we improved our bar pass seven points above where the students should have been. I guess if we actually put numbers on it, the average that we had for our students over those years was a 68% pass rate. Therefore, I just projected they would have normally had a 61% pass rate without any intervention.
I want to make a caveat there before my former employer and everyone else comes after me, we're just one part of the many factors that affect the bar pass rate. I can only believe that if we don't take these interventions, students will go in, stereotype threat phenomena will take place, and there'll be a number of students who won't perform to the level where they should, and thus, underperform. The other step that I'm seeing that I think represents this is when I look at the top half of the class, typically, the top half of the class will pass at about a 90%, 95% to 100% pass rate, depending on the schools. It's not unusual to have a really high pass rate, at least in the top half of the class for the schools that I've been in.
When I say that, we're talking either 100% or maybe one person not performing. It's not a scientific way of looking at it, but even the top students can be prone to stereotype threat. If we can get the majority of these students who should be passing to actually pass, that means at least they're performing at the level they should be, as opposed by stereotype threat, causing them to underperform.
Mathew: It sounds like the techniques that you guys use is fairly labor-intensive. If I were an instructor who is teaching maybe 40 students, and I see my students two or three times a week, or even 20 students or 30 students, are there any techniques that you know of that would work with the whole group and would be fairly time-efficient? For example, if I'm a biology instructor, I don't have a whole lot of time in my course to talk about stereotype threat, because frankly, I don't have enough time to cover all the biology content. Yet, I'd love my students to do well, love them do well on whatever pre-med exams they have to do, and that kind of thing.
I have to imagine, if we paid attention to this in cumulative level, meaning not just in one course, but over several courses, it could have a big impact. It's fantastic the School of Law is doing this, but I think there'd be a number of people who'd be interested in, "What can I do maybe on a more modest level, but it allows me to work with the whole group?" Maybe I have the time to really seek out one or two or three students and personally give them some extra attention, but I can't do that for 20 students or 40 students.
Rod: There's a lot of things that can be done. When we talk about a class of 20 to 40 students or whatever-- I'm currently working with about 160, although I can't say that I've actually met, working with all of them, but there's a couple of things. One is to inform the students about stereotype threat. Simply informing them that the phenomenon does exist, and letting them read for themselves what it's all about, as well as the ways that they can reduce the effect of stereotype threat. I'm amazed by how bright a lot of our students are, and after a while, they can figure it out themselves.
Another is to continually have many forms of formative assessment. As I mentioned before, the practicing is very, very important. If they practice, practice, and practice, hopefully, they'll be immune, so to speak, to the stereotype threat. The other advantage of formative assessment is that we can identify what students are having difficulty. This is where instead of meeting with everyone, you can meet with a smaller group or one or two individuals, however many are having difficulty. As you meet with them, you could find out what kind of things are interfering with their learning, and listening very closely, you can sometimes hear them talk about the symptoms of stereotype threat. For example, when I meet with students--
Mathew: But you have to be attuned to listening for that.
Rod: Yes.
Mathew: Yes, got you.
Rod: For example, when I meet with students in their third year of law school, I make an open call to students that they can come in and meet with me one on one. I'd say this year, probably about 40% to 50% of students have come in.
Mathew: Wow. That's a huge percentage.
Rod: Yes, it's pretty good. Although at another school, one of my former schools, we actually got it up to about 65%. It showed, because our bar pass rate actually was pretty decent that year. When they come in and I meet with them, I typically ask them what some of their concerns are with the bar exam. These are students who just GPAs run the gamut. I get some of the top students, of course, who you expect to see, and then some other students at the bottom who are fearful. As I talk to them, they identify what things they're concerned with. If you listen closely, you can hear some that may be related to stereotype threat.
The classic example would be a student who identifies that they don't do well on standardized tests, or they don't do well in multiple-choice tests, and it's been that history throughout their life. Although then you raise the issue, how the heck did they get into law school? Then you can take it from that point. They may even be saying things like, "I know Latinos don't do well on the bar exam, I'm really afraid," or "My friend, my best friend who's Latino--," so you know they're thinking about that.
Or they say, "You know, I'm at the bottom of my class, we typically don't do well."
"How do you know that?"
"I talked to some friends."
Now they're identifying with a certain identity group that is prone to have stereotype threat implications. Just talking to them, you can even get that out, and then once you get it out, then you can address some of these stereotype threat issues. Right then and there, I start planting the seeds of reducing stereotype threat. That's when I'll talk about, the bar isn't a standardized test, or it's multiple-choice, but it's not the same as the standardized test that you've taken. Or, why do you think minorities or Latinos or African Americans don't do as well on the bar? Or, why do you think people with low GPAs don't do as well on the bar? What's good and what's important at doing it at that point during the semester versus when they're in bar mode is you have a higher chance of talking to the rational side of them--
Mathew: Before they've completely freaked out.
Rod: The Jekyll versus Hyde, yes, because if you were to walk through the law school right now, you would see some freaky-looking law students.
Mathew: I could feel the vibe as I walked around, yes.
Rod: Because they're really stressed out. This week, the week before the bar is the worst week for them in terms of stress, so any rational talk I have with them now is not going to work. It's got to be purely emotional. This week I've got to be the cheerleader. I've got to be Jim Harbaugh, the coach, "You can do it, you can walk through anything."
Mathew: But you don't always have to be in that mode of being a cheerleader. There's other phases where you can be a little more rational and strategic.
Rod: Definitely. Again, if we meet with them during the semester before finals or before the bar, there's many opportunities. The other thing that's really exciting is it's not something-- Well, first of all, it doesn't work if right before the bar, I started throwing out all these stereotype threat reduction techniques and they've just heard it for the first time. It really doesn't work. They need to be convinced of it and buy into it.
One of the things I find is talking to students during the semester, we don't have to conclude at that point that they believe in the theory of stereotype threat. They don't have to conclude right then and there that that's one of the factors that's going to keep them from passing the bar. It's okay to plant the seeds there and have them start thinking in that way, and then as we go through the semester and get closer to the bar, we can have further conversations, because it's really important that they understand what's going on and that they buy into it.
Mathew: If I think about a regular curriculum, it would be nice if there was a department who in some way they agreed, "For all our courses, we're going to try to touch on this a bit in each course," so that the students are hearing the message or very similar message again and again. Because one course may be just planting the seed, but depending on the resistance level and other things going on, it really may not take hold. That repeated exposure seems important, and yet from the way you're describing it, it doesn't necessarily have to take a lot of time in class.
Rod: No, booster shots are really important, and I think so. Here it's really important that for example, the message comes out, not just from me, but from my colleagues that I work with. It's important that the message not only comes out from me, but from their classmates and their peers. Then periodically as we go through the bar review period, I send them messages every week, and every week there's a little bit of a stereotype threat booster reduction thing in there.
Mathew: Wow, that's cool.
Rod: Yes, it's almost-- I hate to say, but to a certain extent, it's almost like psychological propaganda or warfare and conditioning them over time. I guess the more technical term is conditioning them so that they're aware of this. I'm hoping that not only are they prepared for the bar exam, but that they've learned enough that they can actually use these techniques whenever they have a situation that they may get in which may present a stereotype threat phenomena. Whether it's maybe having to do a hearing, or a trial, or an appellate appearance, or a job interview, or whatever, that they feel that they're in control and that they can do it.
Mathew: I want it to go back to something you were saying earlier too, that all this is fantastic. You had mentioned growth mindsets. For people listening to this, some people may know what that means and others not. I think you're referring to Carol Dweck, and I know Carol Dweck and Claude Steele are friends.
Rod: They're just down at Stanford. We're fortunate enough to have them so close.
Mathew: Well, Claude Steele's out over at Berkeley.
Rod: Yes.
Mathew: Yes, so they are surrounding us.
Rod: Yes, what was fortunate is the Department of Ed puts on programs about every other month, and I'm on their email list, it's called Scope. I'm fortunate enough to be on the email list and I get to see what programs they have. When Claude Steele was going to speak a couple of years ago, I just went down there and fortunate enough to sit in on one of his lectures. The same with Carol Dweck. I got to hear her speak and present her theory, so we're really fortunate to be in the Bay Area and have these superstars of education and psychology, but yes, growth mindset is the study that Carol Dweck has been doing.
Basically, it talks about people having a viewpoint on learning, or intelligence I guess, in the sense that it's either a growth mindset or a fixed mindset. The fixed mindset are folks who I guess have been genetically lucky to be given a big brain or a brain that works in a certain way so that they automatically fall into this definition of a bright intelligent student. Or if we extended it over to the physical side, they are fantastic athletes. The growth mindset says that we are given certain skills and talents and abilities, but we can develop them, we can grow them, we can always practice more.
She has been able to show-- Well, probably not herself, but researchers have been able to show when it comes to intelligence, the more you study and practice, the more neurons or brain cells or connections between your brain cells-- I am not a biologist or physiologist, so I don't exactly know, but you actually get smarter, or you actually can create more pathways to learn things in different ways, thus opening up your ways of thinking. It to me was a revelation to be able to hear her talk about this and immediately I thought, "Wow, I've got to sell this to my students so that they'll start doing practice exams."
The immediacy of it was, "Okay, now I can work with bar students and sell them on this," but then I was thinking, "Wait a minute, we also work with first-year law students," so this year during orientation and during our academic support law plus programming, we are going to work a lot on growth mindset and letting students know that law students don't come in either with the ability or without the ability, but all of them have to learn. Part of learning is making mistakes and growing from it versus being fearful of making those mistakes and thus never doing the work.
The great thing about this is it's not just me saying this, we're able to get a lot of our first-year professors to also deviate from the traditional law school model of just giving a summative assessment or a final exam. We've actually been able to work with our professors to have them give formative assessment and assessments. They're giving more exercises in class and getting students to do it, which hopefully gets students into the routine of practicing. Combined with the theory of growth mindset, maybe they may be more inclined to practice and take it more seriously and not get discouraged or held back by poor performance because they know they're growing. This will make it much easier for us in the third year when they are about to take the bar.
Mathew: Absolutely, that whole practice feedback cycle is important. It sounds like you're describing what growth mindset is, but then really supporting that with some more faculty increasing the practice opportunities given to students. Closing the loop is then those faculty giving good worthwhile feedback on those various practice things so that the student, whether they did well or poorly, get the sense that, "Oh, there's ways that I can get better," and they get tangible sense that even if they went from-- I'm making up stuff, but if they went from 40% to 55%, from the feedback from the instructor, they get a sense that there is improvement, because otherwise it just gets, well, almost debilitating.
Rod: Absolutely, what you described is our goal, to close this loop. There's a couple of components that we're still working on--
Mathew: It's a big project, because there'd have to be a lot of people coordinated to do this well.
Rod: Definitely, and working with the faculty is one of the key components there. Again, fortunately, the faculty has been very open to this, even though, again, it's very different from traditional law school pedagogy. They are becoming the pioneers in this area and it's really exciting working with them, but one of the things that we do have to work on is, one, getting them to give the formative assessment, knowing that giving feedback to 60, 70 students in a class is a lot of work. We've been working with them on ways to give feedback without having to necessarily spend that much time with them, and there's different techniques we've been doing.
The other part of that is being able to give meaningful feedback. It's one thing to point out that this is wrong, but it's another thing to point out this is wrong because, and to suggest some kind of resolution or way to improve on that. The good thing is that because we have a very strong academic support program, we can work with the professors on not only developing their skillsets in this area, but also the professors feel a little more comfortable when they see that a student isn't doing well, to then maybe just refer the student to us so that we can intervene and then take the student further in that sense.
The other component of this is trying to train the students to become expert learners. For a lot of folks, that's a very weird-sounding concept, not the expert learner part, but as you pointed out earlier, these are law students who've gone through 12 plus 4, so at least 16 years of education, and now you're talking about them needing to be expert learners. The reason this is important is, in law school, their ability to study and learn well is critical to what they're doing because most of the skills we teach are not intuitive skills. [unintelligible 00:29:25] skills that they need to learn and develop.
Then we go back to the fixed growth mindset example because a lot of these students have progressed through education as the bright students in a fixed mindset world. They've been told that they've been doing the right thing and they've been doing it. They don't know what they're doing right, they're just doing it. Unfortunately, they've been able to get this far without having to practice a lot. They come here and they hit this solid wall because they're not able to do well or as well as they would like, so we need to train them to be learners now. Again, this is where growth mindset comes in. In the different law schools I've worked at, I think this is a real key factor. A lot of students who don't make it through law school are typically ones who totally believe in the fixed mindset. Once they hit a wall, they become so discouraged that they drop out. In fact, there was an article about the University of Texas undergrad where they were realizing that they were able to get a lot of minority students into the school with the Fisher case and all the admissions, but they started noticing that a lot of their minority students weren't graduating and they weren't getting through the four years or however many years it took to get their degree.
After a bunch of studies, they found out that for a lot of the minority students, when they hit a major challenge, they would tend to bail out rather than fight their way through it. It was fight or flight and they would take the flight mode. I'm sure there's a lot of reasons behind it, lack of role modeling, not knowing how to hit and deal with challenges, probably the fixed versus growth mindset phenomena. We've been following that very closely and noticing that working with the students, especially one on one, is really important to find out what their fears are, and whether or not they believe that if they hit a challenge that they cannot overcome it, and if they can't, then we need to convince them that they can.
One of the great strategies there, of course, is role modeling and mentoring. Unfortunately, in the legal profession, we're not as diverse. We're one of the least diverse professions of all the major professions in the US. I think we're like second from the bottom.
Mathew: Wow.
Rod: Yes, it's actually very poor compared to a lot of professions, so the role modeling is very difficult for us to [crosstalk]
Mathew: Just on a practical level?
Rod: Yes.
Mathew: Got you, wow. I wonder what's the worst?
Rod: I have it someplace, it's just not on top of my head.
Mathew: Yes, it is not important now.
Rod: I forgot if it's something like veterinarians or some small profession.
Mathew: Wow. Well, I've asked the best questions I could and you've given us so much, so thank you. Are there any other issues, factors, that might impact students that we haven't discussed that you think is important to raise?
Rod: Yes, definitely, and I'm grateful to the work that you and Rhonda are doing because you're opening a lot of our eyes collectively to the different things that are happening with students. This last year, microaggressions is something that's really important. Another factor that I'm seeing is implicit bias, and implicit or unconscious bias, at least how I look at it, is kind of the other side of stereotype threat. Stereotype threat is how-- Let's just use a person of color, how a person of color looks at themselves in the world, and how they perceive, either consciously or unconsciously, what's going on with them in relation to the stereotypes presented to them. Implicit bias is the way that the world looks at them, and the world that--
Mathew: That's a nice way of describing [unintelligible 00:32:58].
Rod: Yes, it's kind of like the two angles. The implicit bias part, we could identify as professors, do the professors have biases toward their students? Now, there's obviously the overt bias, "You know, I just don't like whatever." Fortunately, I don't see a lot of it on our campus, but even those of us who really want to help these students also may have implicit or unconscious biases that we don't know about. These biases, if we don't check them and become aware of them, we may not be helping our students in the best way.
There was a study that was done and released just a couple of months ago, where some professors created an email message from a student asking a professor at a university, and I think it was on the post-grad level, "Can I meet with you to talk about my career path?" whether it's getting a doctorate degree or whatever. They sent this email off-- I think there were like 6,500 emails sent out to different professors, different demographics of professors, but the sender of the email was either a man or a woman, I guess [unintelligible 00:34:06], and they had different names that denoted different racial groups, so Juan Fernandez or Rod Fong. [chuckles]
What they found is that the rate of returned phone calls was higher for white males, that even white women weren't getting phone calls back or messages back. The return rate for students of color was way lower. The point of the study was, even in the pipeline to higher education, implicit bias takes out. I don't know if they followed up yet, maybe they're planning on doing this, but maybe asking the professors, "Did you know? Did you think about it?" Just based on an innocent level, if that can be called innocent, they found the rate of return different.
There was another study that was done, and this was done in a law firm, where they drafted a memo, it was a draft of a legal memo in a law firm, it was being submitted by a third-year law associate, either a white male or an African American male. The paper was sent to a group of partners in law firms and they measured the different comments that were given. Not surprising to people, the comments to the white associate were more positive and not as nitpicking, whereas the comments to the African American associate were a lot of little things that were wrong with the paper as well as more critical of the paper.
What the conclusion was, was a conclusion of bias called confirmation bias, that when we believe that a certain result should happen, we look for those results, and when we don't believe certain things, then we're more critical. The best way I can explain in the lay terms is like when we talk about a loved one. We always see the-- Typically, at least when in the courtship stage, we'll see all the good things about the person, whereas maybe our mom might see all the bad things about the person, but that kind of bias comes out.
That's something I think that we should explore more as to whether those of us who really want to help these students may have biases within ourselves that may be harming these students. Whether by not calling them back or grading them more harshly than they should be graded.
Mathew: Some of these things are kind of hard to tell, so we have to be-- If I'm grading-- I think all of us feel like we're fair graders as an example, so if we really are grading harder for some students-- If we're grading unfairly, it can be hard to spot, it's just hard to spot. You almost need like a colleague or a friend who's willing to look at what you did and go, "I'm seeing some issues here," or some real deep self-reflection ourselves, but I think even with self-reflection, it's sometimes hard to catch these things.
Rod: I think so. Some of them we can catch, some we can't catch. You're right, when it comes to grading, we probably need someone from a statistical background to show what's the significant deviation of grades or whatever. I think the starting point though is that we become aware of those issues and whether or not we have those issues going on. I think awareness is just really, really important as a first step. Because then if we notice as we talk to a student or we don't call back that student, if we notice, "Gee, why didn't I call back that student? Maybe it's an implicit bias thing," at least we've caught it.
Mathew: I would imagine if we catch it once, we're more liable to catch it again too. It's like getting the door open.
Rod: Yes, so I think just being educated on it, talking about it with colleagues, just like what you've been doing, raising these issues for us, I think is the best way to go.
Mathew: Thank you very much. Those are very kind words, and I think for all of us who've been engaged in this, it's just-- It's learning more ourselves. I keep going, "Oh my God, I wish I could have had videos of what I was doing 15 years ago--" actually I'm glad I don't, but you know what I mean. It's like in the moment you're not aware of everything you're doing, especially in a classroom, there's too many different things going on. It takes some reflection, it takes some things after the classroom or talking to a colleague to bring out what you did, unless it's something so over the top that it'd be obvious to everybody.
Usually, those things aren't happening-- It's more subtle as you've brought out with some of these issues, very subtle things can initiate stereotype threat as an example. Subtle doesn't mean inconsequential.
Rod: Yes, definitely. Just another thought that came to mind, we can wait for studies to come out to verify some of these things. I'm still waiting for someone to do a study on stereotype threat and the effect of students on the bar exam. I will probably wait my entire life because, one, it's such a small area, two, which student is going to volunteer to be in the control group? You know, "Gee, I don't mind flunking the bar this time, sure, I'll be a part of your study." I don't think it's gonna happen.
As we've learned from, for example, Claude Steele, he was doing this research back in the mid-90s, so it's 20 years later, and probably more 15 years later before other folks started picking it up and going with it. If we wait for that to happen, how many students go through our programs or our classes? I guess the one thing is, to a certain extent, we've also got to have the courage of a pioneer to go forward and trust our gut-- That's a very scientific term, but trust our gut instincts, or talk to colleagues to see if things are happening, and then if so, then to take action and hope that a study later will verify what we did. That's another thing, and yes, providing that forum to do it, I think is really critical.
Mathew: Hopefully we'll find more and more ways to do it. One of the reasons we're doing some of these interviews is for those folks who always take advantage of live events at USF or-- At USF [unintelligible 00:39:56] we have so many adjuncts who come here to teach a class but they're not here for other things, for very understandable reasons, so I'm going to kind of extend our reach. Rod, thank you so much for the generosity of your time, we really, really appreciate it.
Rod: Thank you, Matthew.
[00:40:13] [END OF AUDIO]


File name: Rod Fong on Stereotype Threat.mp3
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