This article explains who gender or racial stereotypes actually effect students and contribute to the achievement gap. This article specifically outline the idea of anxiety and how when students are aware of stereotypes about their gender or racial backgrounds they actually tend to fulfill these stereotypes. Thus, stereotypes are in fact a self-fulfilling philosophy. This is caused by the students who become aware of their stereotypes becoming psychologically anxious and feel that they do not have the ability to succeed. Since knowledge is such a psychological issue, the fact that these students no longer believe that they will succeed makes the students not succeed.
As a teacher this makes perfect sense to me. A big factor in whether or a not a child will succeed is whether they are confident in their ability to succeed. A kid with no confidence does not do well. A kid with high confidence learns better. Thus, if a kid is anxious about the fact that no one like him succeeds in math, then that kid will not succeed in math. It therefore becomes important for teachers to dispel as many of these myths and stereotypes as possible and have children believe that they can succeed. This is tough because you want the kids to not be complacent, and one way you do this is by showing them statistics about the school and their stereotypes and what will happen if they don’t do work. Its important to light a fire underneath them and get them to work. However, I think this catch-22 can be avoided if you simply explain that the statisitics are wrong and that hard-work can prove them wrong. Nothing is set in stone, therefore if they work hard they can break the stereotypes.
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