EECERA Conference 2025 – Guest Blog # 38: Exploring Teachers’ Racial and Gender Biases in Identifying Adverse Behaviors of Kindergarten Students

One of a series of short blog posts by presenters who will be sharing their work at the upcoming annual conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. Any views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their affiliated institution or EECERA.

Exploring Teachers’ Racial and Gender Biases in Identifying Adverse Behaviors of Kindergarten Students

Written by Dr. Kyler P. Leiter – Mount St. Mary’s University

Photo by PaulaPhoto on iStock

Introduction

In American schools, students’ adverse behaviors and discussions to mitigate such challenges are extremely prevalent. This is especially true in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, most notably with increases in aggressive and avoidant behaviors due to a host of unusual circumstances, including disruptions to daily routines and increased social isolation during children’s most formative years. But how do students’ demographic profiles, more specifically students’ gender and racial identities, impact the identification of these hindering behaviors? This question will drive my presentation at the EECERA Conference 2025 in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Theoretical Framework

In 1784 Immanuel Kant exclaimed, “Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another.” This study was constructed upon a combination of pragmatic and intersectionality theoretical lenses. Pragmatism holds that human actions cannot be separated from past experiences and the beliefs that are derived from those experiences. Humans take action based on perceived and anticipated consequences in connection with previous consequences of past similar actions, ultimately constructing a personal ‘reality’ based on beliefs and habits that are socially constructed. Therefore, it is understood that everyone holds unconscious biases that are intrinsically linked to past experiences, direct or indirect. For educators working with a diverse population, it is critical to build upon reflective practices to shift unconscious biases to consciousness in order to minimize their impact on student interactions and to become enlightened through an “emergence from .. self-imposed immaturity.”

Racial and Gender Discrepancies in Behavioral Identification

The manner in which educators view student behaviors have been shown to be influenced by racialization and stigmatization processes in schools. Students of color typically are identified as oppositional to a higher degree than their White peers, which may be perceived through an interpretative lens that attributes defiance to racial characteristics rather than contextual factors. As implicit biases have been shown to significantly influence how teachers perceive and respond to student behavior, such as a teacher perceiving a Black student’s assertiveness or refusal to comply as oppositional more readily than a similar behavior displayed by a White student, it is important for teachers to participate in reflective practices and identify whether such behaviors are being recognized on a contextual basis or if underlying cultural factors are the root cause of behavioral identification.

Additionally, male students tend to achieve lower ratings for external behaviors in comparison to their female counterparts. Holistically, boys often engage in more physical and verbal aggression than girls, which stem from socialization processes (e.g., societal expectations and norms) that endorse assertiveness and competitiveness in boys while promoting niceties and passivity in girls. Additionally, gender influences have extended to oppositional and disruptive identification where males often manifest opposition through disruptive actions in classroom environments. Understanding these patterns can help educators recognize behavioral challenges in male students as not solely indicative of individual temperament but also as arising from the gender norms embedded in social contexts, as the school expectations generally side with societal feminine norms. This explanation can be reflected upon and utilized as part of an appropriate response to the behavioral concerns of male students, while explicitly instructing on expectations within a school setting through social-emotional curricula and play-based practices.

Study’s Methodology

Through a longitudinal mixed methods approach, the frequency of students’ (n = 200) adverse behaviors (aggression, opposition, distraction, avoidance, and dissociation) were rated weekly on a 5-point Likert scale by their kindergarten teacher (n = 12) for a total of 14 weeks. Utilizing a multivariate analysis, the impacts of students’ race and gender on behavior identification were determined. Additionally, focus groups were held with teachers to gain qualitative insight into the study’s objectives and to analyze the benefits of reflective practices in regard to mitigating unconscious biases.

Concluding Remarks

During this presentation at the EECERA 2025 Conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, I will review the methodology of this study in greater length, as well as provide detailed results. Additionally, I will look at the impact of reflective practices in minimizing the effect of unconscious biases held by teaching staff and the manner in which a school or school district can provide resources and opportunities to address this concern in an effort to improve the equity of all students.

*The results that will be presented at the EECERA 2025 conference are part of a larger study looking at the impact of free-play sessions on social competencies and the frequency of students’ negative behaviors.

About the Author:

Dr. Kyler P. Leiter will present work referred to in this blog in Symposium Symposium Set D2 | Wednesday 27th August 2025 (Schedule liable to change; please refer to final programme for details).