Within neoliberal education systems, elements of marketisation are endemic and this brings with it the invasive pressures of performativity. Against this backdrop, discipline in schools is in many instances being more closely monitored and tightly controlled, with the implementation of strict and in some cases 'zero-tolerance' behaviour management…

We report on an experiment to investigate the top-down effect of exogenous social identity cues on a multiple-identity tracking task, a paradigm well suited to investigate the processes of binding identity to spatial locations. Here we simulated an eyewitness event in which dynamic targets, all to be tracked with equal effort, were identified from…

This commentary addresses the analysis in Persson's (2012a) article. According to the authors, the agenda for change amongst scholars has four productive proposals. These are: (1) that scholars should broaden their disciplinary outlook beyond psychology and education; (2) that they should eschew policy borrowing; (3) that they should clarify, for…

In this article, the author shares how a simple writing assignment sharpens students' minds and challenges their biases. He asks his students to go find a place on campus where they can comfortably sit down, a place where anybody associated with the school can go and without leaving this spot to write for 30 minutes, nonstop, about everything they…

Three experiments (total N = 140) tested the hypothesis that 5-year-old children's membership in randomly assigned "minimal" groups would be sufficient to induce intergroup bias. Children were randomly assigned to groups and engaged in tasks involving judgments of unfamiliar in-group or out-group children. Despite an absence of information…

Observational bias can significantly affect results attained through observation. This study focused on 122 preservice teacher educators who conducted a structured observation, using momentary time sampling procedures with 10-second intervals, to measure student on-task and off-task behaviors. The experimental variable altered was the…

When this author began to plan an introductory diversity issues course for the psychology department, she read extensively about teaching for social justice and found that instructors were often up against tremendous odds to convince students that they had absorbed biases from their culture. She read stories of negative evaluations, altercations…

This essay offers Neil Postman's thermostatic metaphor as a model for critical teaching. In this model, the role of the composition teacher is that of a thermostat that responds to a changing ideological environment by offering counterbalance. Such a stance is an anti-stance since it requires the teachers to enact philosophies and pedagogies,…

This historical overview examines the media treatment of native peoples and includes the following: (1) the roots of modern stereotypes; (2) development and maturation, (3) contemporary responses, (4) music, and (5) other media. (RTS)

When a person is characterized categorically with a label (e.g., Linda is a feminist), people tend to think that the attributes associated with that person are central and long lasting (S. Gelman & G. D. Heyman, 1999). This bias, which is related to category-based induction and stereotyping, has been thought to arise because a category label…

This paper considers three clinical judgment biases in clinical inference: (1) illusory correlation bias, the report by clinicians of a correlation between psychodiagnostic test signs and patient's symptoms which are not correlated or are correlated to a smaller degree than that reported; (2) labeling bias, the tendency of exposure to diagnositc…

Examines the way that rehabilitation counselors (n=41) select information to test a hypothesis about a client. Consistent with previous research, rehabilitation counselors systematically noted more negative client information when presented with equal numbers of equivalently weighted positive and negative client factors. (JPS)

When asked to rate the expected behaviors of a hypothetical child assigned to each of three labeling conditions (normal, learning disabled, or emotionally disturbed) 75 elementary teachers differentially responded to the labels. (CL)

The concept represented by the term juvenile delinquency covers a wide range of activities and a complex set of juvenile offenses. Moreover, the concept is vague and its definition is often left to the discretion of law enforcement agencies and the courts. A problem for black youth is that their acts are assessed by outsiders who have the power to…

The effect of presentation labels upon subjects' evaluation of behavior modification was investigated in two experiments. Subjects were two groups of undergraduate and graduate students required to evaluate identical administrations of a lesson under different presentation labels. (Author/YJ)