How to spot bias in your own teaching – and what to do about it — from timeshighereducation.com by Dami Folayan
Bias can materialise as a set of habits no one thought to question. Here’s how to look at your own teaching with clear eyes
Bias in higher education rarely announces itself, but this hidden problem is within a lecturer’s power to put right.
Imagine a criminology lecture on violent offenders, where the slide shows a young Black man in a hoodie. There might not be intended harm or overt racism behind the choice, but that stock image has taught the class something the syllabus never intended: who to picture when we think of a criminal.
Bias takes many forms, and in my research on race, gender and inequality in higher education, it rarely shows up as overt hostility. Far more often, it’s a habit no one has stopped to question, in how we choose examples, award marks and decide who we expect to struggle, whether along lines of race, gender, class or disability.
This bias shapes outcomes because a student who feels out of place gets less from a course than one who thinks it was made for them. These habits sit within our own teaching, so they’re ours to correct.