Whether we recognize them or not, we all have biased perspectives.
Being mindful of the way our personal views influence our interactions with others can be immensely challenging. But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, especially when we have positions of influence. This is especially true for educators.
College students are — as they should be — independent thinkers. However, knowing that the person grading your assignments has certain political, social or cultural perspectives can influence the way students complete their work.
Just as professors have unconscious biases, so do their students. In a classroom setting, this may impact assignment topics, discussions and how involved or engaged students are.
You are more likely to lean heavily towards a professor’s perspectives due to authoritative bias. Students will intentionally or unintentionally change their practices or stances to try and appeal to their professor’s perspectives. This can even impact students’ identity development.
The same stands for students who think their professors will disagree with their opinions. If you agree strongly with opinions that oppose the professor’s own perspectives, there is pressure to make work appear more neutral.
Both students and professors recognize that students find it hard to disagree with their educators. Who can blame them? Appealing to those who determine your grades is a logical thing to do for your academic success.
Another plain reality for those who disagree with their professor’s views is that it can cause friction between the two sides.
Students who write or present on stances opposing their professors may feel additionally frustrated by grades that they receive and misattribute the reasoning to their differing perspectives. This means a student may disregard any helpful constructive feedback being shared that could benefit them moving forward.
The way we communicate and personalize our stances on political and social issues during our college career can hold larger impacts on our ability to think and communicate critically.
Critical thinking is one of the most important skills people can have. In fact, most employers value these skills over a college degree, though the two may go hand-in-hand. Our professors should support every opportunity to strengthen critical thinking skills.
In my experience, courses in which professors maintain neutrality result in the most productive peer-to-peer communication. Allowing students to discuss and debate matters amongst themselves creates more of an open discussion or seminar environment where individual opinions can be developed.
All professors can benefit from practicing strategies to decrease their biases for lectures and grading. There will never be a truly opinion-free classroom, but teaching skewed material does not solve the issues surrounding authoritative bias — students don’t need professors to explicitly state their stances to know what they are.
This isn’t to say professors should pretend their biases don’t exist. Oftentimes, professors involved in polarizing fields already have an established body of published work sharing their perspectives. Students are free to search online if they are curious about what their educators’ beliefs are. Still, it makes more sense to keep that discussion out of a classroom setting.
In educational settings, the presence of personal biases among both professors and students is an inevitable reality that significantly impacts learning experiences. Striving for an open and neutral environment provides a safe space for the success and development of college students. Professors should be mindful of their biases and minimize the opinions they share with their students in class.
