Bias in my own work
Saanvi Y -
After converting all of the control seating arrangement’s participation data for the Neon and Argon classes into actual numbers for graphing, I realized I had become a victim of bias.
Before actually sitting down in the classroom for 4 weeks to observe the students and categorise their behaviour, I had read some papers that already generalised student behaviour. Male students were considered disruptive and less participative. There were numerous studies that discussed how male students would retract themselves from school in exchange for social status, claiming it was “cool” to seem like you didn’t care. Other research papers discussed how male students would be much more disruptive and harder to manage, creating a reason why all male classrooms would add additional stress to the instructor. On the other hand, there were fewer papers that discussed female student behaviour. The ones that did exist argued that female students cared much more about school, compared to their male classmates. Female students would generally believe it was “cool” to be academically successful. Other papers said female students are more lax and easy to manage. Overall, the previous papers I read all pointed to one direction: male students should be less participative than female students.
While collecting my data, I believed this too. I felt that the female students were overall less disruptive to the whole class and thus should be more participative. I even mentioned it in a previous blog. I had expectations set up that impacted how I viewed the students and their behaviour in class.
However, as I begin analysing the rates of participation in male and female students, the difference is much more subtle, and in favor of male students in one of the classes. In one of the elements, a slightly larger majority of male students participate more than female students. I wouldn’t have known if I had not collected data.
I wonder if teachers can fall victim to this bias too. I am an outside observer with no impact, and teachers can actually reward/punish the group based on what they believe, and impact the students.
The difference in participation levels between the two genders isn’t huge, but it’s there. It’s interesting to see that one element goes against previous research while another goes with. This may be due to the nature of the institution itself. Since Basis places such a high importance to academic success and has created a unique student culture rooted in studying and excelling, it’s possible that the generalised data on gendered behaviour in an average classroom cannot be applied here directly.
I have decided to analyse the classes separately to see if both conditions lead to the same result from the experimental seating arrangement. Let’s see if my new seating chart helped overall!