My Response To "Stereotype Threat"

According to Wikipedia, the Stereotype Threat refers to the possibility that people exposed to negative stereotypes may perform worse on tests because they are worried about confirming those negative stereotype. The research itself is controversial, with some studies arguing that the effects of the “stereotype threat” are either nonexistent or minimal. But this blog post is not about whether this Threat exists, but about my response to it.

While I have never encountered the sterotype threat myself, I can understand how stress associated with a negative sterotype can lead to text anxiety, and how text anxiety can help reduce a person’s performance on a test. I can also understand how this can lead to a vicious cycle, where a person’s self-worth becomes lowered as a result of lowered performance, further increasing text anxiety.

There are ways to deal with steretoype threat through “interventions” designed to reduce the influence of those negative steretoypes. Those interventions are on Wikipedia, and sounds like they would help students in a variety of ways, not just in dealing with the immedidate issuer of stereotype threat, but also in increasing a student’s self-worth so that they will not have to worry about the negative sterotypes at all.

But the most direct way to fix the stereotype threat may be to simply reduce test anxiety. Students need to be taught that tests are not there to judge their performance but to help them learn the material by forcing them to recall information and identify their weaknesses. Having tests be open-notes also allow reduce test anxiety as well, as students can use their notes as a crutch to help them recall information. Finally, gamification of tests also reduces tension while still gaining accurate data and feedback. My favorite form of gamification is Kahoot!, a quiz-show-style application which allows students to answer questions in a fun and competitive environment, without having fear of those results being used to confirm or deny any steroetypes.

Addressing test anxiety directly also can help those people who do not have to worry about “steroetype threat”, but are still stressed about tests for other reasons. These people would still suffer the same vicious cycle, if left unchecked. Killing multiple birds with one stone is indeed a very good policy.