Natalie Spadafora is a Research Associate with the Offord Centre for Child Studies at McMaster University and Magdalena Janus is a Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences at McMaster University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Teachers’ perceptions and judgments of student skills are key to measuring children’s academic progress. But educators’ own biases can distort these perceptions and judgments.

For example, research in Canada has shown that racialized students were less likely to be perceived as “excellent” in their achievement and learning skills than white students, despite doing well academically. To our knowledge, no work has been done focusing specifically on teachers, assessment, bias and the Canadian kindergarten population.

Our team at the Offord Centre for Child Studies set out to understand more about how educators perceive the system for assessing kindergarten children’s development, in the context of children’s race, gender and family socioeconomic status.

In Ontario, kindergarten features five full days of play-based learning every week. Classes are led by a team of one teacher and one early childhood educator (ECE). Teachers have knowledge of the curriculum and are responsible for student learning and reporting to parents. ECEs have knowledge of early childhood development and plan age-appropriate activities to support development.

As part of our study, we conducted a series of four focus groups with kindergarten educators (five kindergarten teachers and one designated early childhood educator) from a school board in Ontario.

To be eligible to participate, educators had to have previously participated in cultural responsiveness initiatives and administered a teacher-completed developmental health checklist for kindergarten students at least once. All participants in our focus group were female, taught schools in urban neighbourhoods and five of the six were racialized.

Educators discussed how their feelings and potential biases might creep into their assessments, and the strategies they use to limit this bias. Specifically, we asked about their use of the standard tool for assessing child development in kindergarten: The Early Development Instrument (EDI).

Five areas of child development

The EDI asks teachers to evaluate children in five areas of development: physical health and well-being; social competence; emotional maturity; language and cognitive development; and communication skills and general knowledge.

Race-related data are not routinely collected with the EDI (such as asking teachers to report how a child’s family identifies a child’s race, or in reporting their own race), even though, as some researchers and educators have noted, race-related data could be used to inform provision of supports.

While teachers complete this assessment for every child in their classrooms, the results are aggregated and reported at the population level. All publicly funded school boards in Ontario have collected the EDI roughly every three years since 2004.

Key themes

Several key themes emerged from our discussions with educators. First, educators admitted that the social identities and demographic characteristics of the students in their classrooms could impact how they interpret kindergarteners’ skills and behaviours.

They explained that being exposed to a wide variety of students would increase their own awareness of children’s and their families’ identities, shaped by factors like race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status and language, and help broaden their perceptions. For example, this would allow them to have a greater understanding of the range of behaviours children display.

Second, educators addressed the consequences of racial and gender biases in schools, some of them reflecting systemic racism. Educators acknowledged these systemic biases could impact their internal expectations of students, and potentially their reactions and interpretation of student behaviour.

Recognizing the potential for such unfairness, educators also identified deliberate strategies they use to minimize the impact of individual and systemic biases on their assessment.

They told us they pause and think critically about what may influence their perceptions of students, reframe how they might be looking at certain situations (that is, taking an “asset-based” approach, focusing on the students’ strengths) or check in with colleagues to be sure they’re being equitable.

Scarcity of training about bias

The educators we interviewed revealed many personal feelings come up as they complete assessments and interact with students. For example, educators noted that it can be hard to separate assessing a child from their history with the child, or that they felt they were judging the child’s family.

In addition to the acknowledgement that biases and preconceived expectations could colour their assessments, they also acknowledged that these feelings, whether positive or negative, can make it difficult to assess their pupils objectively.

Similar to exposure to a diverse group of students, having knowledge of the whole child and building trusting and reciprocal relationships with families are other ways educators can reduce the impact of bias. For example, if their family is going through hard times, it could be expected that the child might be sad or worried.

Regarding the specific characteristics of the EDI, educators explained it was sometimes difficult to choose the most accurate responses to each item on a checklist when there were only two or three options.

Educators said they often wished they could explain their responses more.

Finally, educators agreed that the scarcity of dedicated resources, time, attention and training on bias affected their ability to assess their students’ development as accurately as they would like.

Policy improvements needed

While our study used the example of the EDI to elicit the discussion on assessment being influenced by student identities, the issues mentioned by educators go beyond this specific tool.

In our study, educators were not only aware of this influence; they used strategies to overcome it. These educators acknowledge that their expertise in evaluating children’s skills and behaviours can improve with better knowledge of and relationships with individual children and their families, by collaborating with colleagues and by having more time and training.

Our results suggest that policy improvements are necessary to make sure all educators have access to better strategies and opportunities to reduce unintended identity bias and provide more accurate assessments.

Given that the educators in this study had already participated in cultural responsiveness initiatives, further research could examine how interventions mitigate occurrences of particular biases and their potential adverse effects on students.

Natalie Spadafora, Research Associate, Offord Centre for Child Studies, McMaster University and Magdalena Janus, Professor, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioural Neurosciences, McMaster University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.