The Diverse Classroom: Stereotype Threat & First-Generation Students

Luke Mayville

Stereotype threat, defined as “a situational predicament in which individuals are at risk of confirming negative stereotypes about their group,” can be especially harmful in the classroom, where teachers and students alike often express negative stereotypes.

First-generation students—those without a parent who completed a bachelor’s degree—face unique challenges in a college environment that often seems foreign to them.

Ryan Cecil Jobson and I chose to combine these two diversity-related challenges in a single workshop because we found them to be interrelated in interesting ways. We wanted to invite workshop participants to think of the two issues side by side, giving rise to questions such as “How might first generation students experience stereotype threat?” and “How might we, as teachers, reach out to first-generation students to meet their needs without stereotyping them in the process?”

The workshop included two brief presentations in which we overviewed the unique challenges to student achievement posed by stereotype threat and first-generation status. Following these presentations we opened the workshop up for group discussion, asking participants how they might respond to these challenges. After generating a number of responses, we offered our own ideas. For example, participants were encouraged to engage first-generation students in the classroom with active-learning strategies, and to connect students vulnerable to stereotype threat with supportive university services. We ended the workshop by presenting four different problem-scenarios related to stereotype threat and first-generation status. Participants broke up into small groups to discuss how they would respond to the scenarios before sharing their ideas with the entire workshop.

After the workshop, participant feedback expressed a heightened sensitivity to the challenges associated with stereotype threat and first-generation status. Participants found the scenario activities particularly useful for helping them think through how they might discern problems when they arise and how to open up lines of communication with students at risk.